Hi, everyone. Thanks for joining us today for this one-hour webinar. Before we begin, I'd like to let the audience know that this webinar is being recorded, and a video recording will be emailed to you in a few days. And there's a link to the chat, to the slides that are currently available in the chat. And I'm Abby Schachner. I'm a senior researcher with the Learning Policy Institute. And during this webinar, we're going to discuss opportunities for policymakers, educators, and advocates to more fully understand the depths of the inequities of the COVID-19 has laid bare and the ways in which this moment holds the possibility to rethink school in ways that can transform learning and close opportunity and achievement gaps. We will begin by sharing some insights from LPI's recently released report, Restarting and Reinventing School, Learning in the Time of COVID and Beyond, and then move into our discussion with our esteemed panelists. And as a reminder, if you have any questions, please click the Q&A button at the bottom of your screen. And I'm going to now turn it over to Linda Darling-Hammond, LPI's exceptional president and CEO. Thanks, Abby. We are going to... There we are. We're going to take a very brief moment to just review this report that Abby mentioned, and then we've got an exceptional panel of people who from all parts of the leadership in this country to really respond to it. I'm going to see if this moves ahead. We are in an extraordinary moment, a moment of both a public health crisis and economic crisis, a civil rights crisis, raising up important issues of systemic racism in our country. And in California, we're seeing every day now the extent of the climate crisis. And in such moments, these come generationally, we often get very large social movements and change that are the result of the degree to which the conditions in the environment and in the society disrupt what we have come to know. You can think about the 1870s and reconstruction. You can think about the turn of the century, the 1930s, when the Great Depression led to the creation of a wide range of social policies we experienced today in the 1960s, when civil rights marches and protests as well as a set of assassinations led to sweeping policies for equity and for reducing poverty in this country. Today we are in such a moment where the question is not only how do we come together to deal with this set of crises, but how do we reinvent our society and our systems in ways that bring us back stronger. We have yawning equity chasms that threaten major segments of society, as Abby said and draw attention to really generations of systemic racism and inequality. We have the largest economic disparities since 1929. The top 1% of wealth holders in this country have more wealth than the bottom 50% combined. We have inadequate action right now to address the health safety and economic effects of the pandemic. Of course, schools as one of the few safety nets in many hard hit communities are experiencing that when the schools were closed in the spring. It was the educators all across the country who stepped up to be sure that students would get fed that their families would get fed to figure out how to get devices and connectivity to students to try to close the digital divide and try to invent new ways of doing schooling and we're seeing the results of that in all of the months since and some amazing innovations have occurred. Some incredible creativity about how to address these needs has occurred and we see people beginning to share those across the country will need a great deal more of that if we're going to address all of the needs that currently exist. The effects of the pandemic of course have been most felt and hardest hit in communities of color. Why students of color are a prime to be left behind in the coronavirus is the type of headline that you often see the inequities facing English learners, the digital divide for students. We also see the learning pods that wealthy parents are creating for their students. We're seeing layoffs and a loss of teaching jobs because of the economic hit to state revenues. So all of these things sort of frame the way in which we are experiencing this crisis. These are two little girls sitting outside of Taco Bell trying to get Wi-Fi to do their school but schoolwork in California. That's just a vivid reminder of the disparities that children experience in many, many ways across the country. As this Oakland student put it, I'm concerned about food, jobs, money, my education, racism toward Asian Pacific Islander folks is a big concern for us too. I miss being around my friends. I'm really, really depressed. I can't really tell my family. So this is the situation that a lot of students are experiencing and that educators are trying to address as kids are coming back to school. Some are coming back online, some in hybrid, different kind of hybrid strategies, some in person. But as we know it's variable from day to day and week to week, how educators and children will work together to try to promote both education but also social and emotional well-being and physical health and wellness, which are at the front of every educator's mind as they're working with children. So we have all of this to contend with and at the same time, school is not the same as it has been and we're reinventing every aspect of it. We're reinventing pedagogies, strategies, outreach, family school connections, and many other things. And what our report talks about is how reinventing school in this moment really means focusing on authentic learning and equity, harnessing the knowledge of human development, learning and effective teaching that's accumulated over the last century and needed for the next. We invented the school system we have today about 100 years ago in the 1920s. A lot of that invention of the mass assembly line approach to education because of compulsory education coming online at that time occurred in New York City. And we'll hear from the current Chancellor of Education in New York City where in the last few decades, many of those schools have been in the process of being redesigned and reinvented. We've learned things about how to reach and teach children more effectively that we can put in place as we reinvent the system in this moment. I'm going to pass the ball to Abby. Thank you, Linda. So I'm going to provide a brief overview of the overarching framework and the framework that we have in the report provides 10 interlocking priorities for restarting and reinventing for equity and empowerment. And each of them is grounded in research and accompanied by recommendations, examples and resources for policymakers and educators at the federal, state and local levels and spans early childhood through secondary schooling. And each one of these elements of the framework has a strong equity and racial justice component. So now I'm just going to pretty quickly walk you through each one of them before we dig into the deeper discussion with the panel. So the first set relate to getting back to school. Closing the digital divide is obviously a critical civil rights issue for children and families. And this is the time to close it once and for all through equitable access to both connectivity and high speed internet and devices and federal investments and coordinated state level efforts are key to this. And there are existing opportunities through the SEC E rate program, for example, that could be capitalized upon and expanded. And there are efforts from states that have been leading the way like Wyoming that others can learn from strengthening distance and blended learning is another opportunity, and it's imperative that we take advantage of the knowledge that we have from research on how to do this well, which we summarize in the report. So that we can do it in a way that closes the opportunity gap, rather than exacerbating it further and draw upon lessons from pioneering districts like Lindsay Unified in California, and Miami Dade. We also need to assess what students need by taking stock of their recent experiences in terms of their health, mental health and academic learning in ways that are strengths based rather than deficit oriented and diagnostic in nature, seeing where kids are on a trajectory of learning and identifying the ways to accelerate their learning rather than thinking about labeling and sorting and tracking and remediation and labeling them as at below or above. This really requires a different concept of assessment and how it relates to support for social emotional learning and the kind of academic supports that are going to really empower students. The next set of priorities relate to transforming teaching and learning, ensuring supports for social emotional learning is more important now than ever and there's broad recognition of this. And we provide some examples of ways that this can be done but it's really key to integrate these practices into the life of the school and find a dedicated place in space to also support explicit social emotional learning for adults and as students as well. These supports can be company need to be accompanied by educative and restorative practices that help create a sense of membership and a sense of belonging and a community for students, rather than an environment that's punitive or exclusionary. That can really undermine schools efforts to support social emotional learning otherwise. There's also a real opportunity to redesign schools for stronger relationships, because the cohort designs that are being put into place to safely reopen schools to prevent disease transmission and prevent COVID from spreading within the school also helped to build caring relationships where there are small groups of students and teachers that stay together. Teams of teachers that share students and when this is paired with other structures enable continuity in relationships like looping and advisories that last for multiple years. Schools really have the chance to put into place long standing redesign that research has shown translate into more equitable academic success and where students are more understood and also more able to cope with trauma and stress. Emphasizing authentic and culturally responsive learning is happening more and is needed more than ever to motivate and engage learners during this time particularly during distance and hybrid learning. And this involves connecting lessons to real world applications and the things that students care about and that are happening in the world around them, encouraging them to bring their identities into the classroom, doing hands on projects and presentations of their work. And we also know that this type of student driven learning can happen both in person and virtual settings. And all of these areas preparing educators for reinventing schools in these ways is really important for this to happen. And they need to be able to be prepared to bring a racially just perspective and have the tools and the skills to enact racially just and socially just practices. And there's really also an opportunity to connect educators to one another more easily and provide more opportunities for collaboration and professional learning and planning time with changes to school schedules. And with these shifts we have the chance to provide educators this additional eight hours that the US lacks in comparison to other countries. And the last that relate to rethinking time and resources. So providing expanded learning time for all students can really mitigate instructional loss, including high quality summer programs like the Children Defense Funds Freedom School, tutoring that's infused during and beyond the school day connections with high quality after school programs that really extend learning and full day early learning programs are also a form of expanded learning. And there should be special attention paid to providing opportunities for accelerating learning for students with special education needs, English learners and students who have been disconnected from school during the pandemic. Establishing community schools and wraparound supports really is implied by all of this. And the community schools really offer a path forward for supporting and meeting the social emotional and other needs of students across the education spectrum from early childhood to high school. And that's because community schools are designed to address systemic barriers to education like poverty or housing insecurity, and to draw upon a community's assets and culture, and they prioritize relationships with family members. And because they do this when COVID-19 hit, they had the relationships and the infrastructures in place to really be able to respond quickly and meaningfully and mobilize their supports and services and connect with their students and families in ways that other schools were not poised to do. And lastly, leveraging more adequate and equitable school funding. This may be tough to think about when resources are low, but there's also an opportunity right now for states to adopt new funding formulas that are designed to distribute funds more equitably as resources eventually return to the system. And this can actually be easier to do during an economic downturn, as we've seen California, Maryland and Rhode Island do during and after the Great Recession. And with that, and without further ado, I'm going to turn it back over to Linda to go deeper into these issues with our wonderful panelists. Can you go back one slide. Thank you. You know, one of the parents in Atlanta Public Schools really put it well. She said, reprioritize. This is the time to see if something can be different to reset the system. We have to take a loss, but we can recoup the loss if we actually get kids excited about education and create a more positive space for them to learn. And I saw in the Q&A box, you know, the desired shift from sort of a top down regulatory approach to one that is more humanistic. And I think that is one of the things that is front and center and many people's consciousness in the field right now. So with that, I'm going to ask our panelists to come on the screen. I'm going to introduce them briefly. John King is the president and CEO of the Education Trust, a national nonprofit organization that seeks to identify and close opportunity and achievement gaps from preschool through college. John served in President Barack Obama's cabinet as the 10th U.S. Secretary of Education. Before that position, he was the New York State Education Commissioner. He began his career in education as a high school social studies teacher in Puerto Rico and Boston and a middle school principal. John, thanks so much for being with us. I see Richard on the screen and I'm going to introduce him next year. I realized I was thinking about this. All of us have spent time in New York City, so it's an interesting connection. Richard is Chancellor of the New York City Department of Education, which created the factory model school and has been busy dismantling it in the last couple of decades. It's the largest school system in the nation. He's responsible for educating 1.1 million students in over 1800 schools, most of which are open right now, although it's a back and forth process as we deal with this pandemic. Prior to this position, Richard served in the San Francisco Unified School District, where we got to know each other. He was a superintendent began his career as a high school bilingual social studies and music teacher that is a principal both in Tucson, Arizona. He started school as an English language learner and continues to play in a mariachi band when he's not leading the New York City public schools. I'm thrilled that Randy Weingarten has been able to join us from a bus traveling across the country. Thank you, Randy. That is above and beyond the call of duty. Randy is president of the American Federation of Teachers, which represents 1.7 million teachers, school based staff and other professionals. The AFT champions fairness, democracy, economic opportunity and high quality public education, health care and public services for students, their families and communities. Before her election as AFT president, Randy served as 12 years for 12 years as president of the United Federation of Teachers in New York City. So welcome. What an amazing panel of folks, all of whom have been involved in various ways over the course of their careers in reinventing public education, and all of them are deeply involved right now in this moment in both dealing with the challenges and the inequities that we face, but I'm also trying to do that in ways that move us forward in our understanding of how to serve children humanistically and well. I'm going to start with you, John, and ask about the inequalities that we've been seeing in the system and in the midst of the crises I described. Some of the things that you're seeing in your current role at Ed Trust as the results of the pandemic and what you think we need to be doing about those. Sure. Well, thanks for the conversation. As you said in the framing, COVID has in many ways exacerbated the inequalities that existed before COVID. And it's done so not only in schools, but for children and families. We know, for example, that black and Latino folks are three times as likely to get COVID twice as likely to die from COVID when they get it. The communities have borne the brunt of the economic crisis that COVID-19 has created. It's had a disparate impact on employment and income. All of that impacts kids, of course. And then when we think about what that economic impact looks like for kids and families we have to acknowledge we have 14 million kids who are food insecure. Kids who are now or have a harder time getting food at school when school is closed in the spring or school is either closed now or operating in a hybrid model now. So those are challenges for families. In terms of educational challenges as you highlighted in the opening we had a digital divide before COVID. A digital divide that translated into a lack of internet access. The Pew study shows that 79% of white families have reliable internet access, just 66% of African American families and 61% of Latino families. So folks couldn't even access school in the spring when we had to go to virtual and there are still families today because the federal government has not stepped up in a necessary way. There are still families today that can't get online to access education. There are still teachers around the country who can't get reliable internet service. We have a device gap. Folks like Richard have done incredible work to try to get devices out to students and families but we know there are still kids who are doing their school work on mom's phone because they don't have a device available to them for their school work. So low resource districts struggled to provide professional development for their teachers around using the technology as a teaching tool. Low income students are more likely to be in homes where there were other challenges, whether it's issues of addiction or issues of abuse, and then they've been isolated for months when schools work were all virtual in the spring and in many places around the country schools are still operating virtual or hybrid and socio-emotionally isolated. So these are huge challenges. We also know only about one in five African Americans in the workforce can work from home. Only about one in six Latinos in the workforce can work from home. So for many families of color is very difficult to provide support during the day to their kids as they go through school. So the learning gaps have been widened. So socio-emotional isolation has taken its toll on kids and parents. So this last several months has been an equity disaster. It didn't have to be that way. The federal government completely mishandled COVID-19. And so here we are with these tremendous challenges and I'm grateful to be in this conversation about how we try to meet those. Yeah, yeah. Well, and you know, the federal recovery aid to date almost $3 trillion less than 1% has been directed at K through 12 schools. So states districts have been trying to step up in all the ways that they can. And of course, you know, some of this urgency and some of the obviousness of the inequality has spurred some action in California. We were somewhere between 20 and 30% of our students lacking connectivity and devices. So we've closed that digital divide by more than half at this point and we'll probably close it this year because we finally got mobilized. Well, both with philanthropy and corporation stepping up Google and Apple and others but also because of the way in which we were able to direct, you know, public funds to that purpose but in the meantime, it has been, you know, just enormously challenging. I want to just give Randy and Richard an opportunity if they want to say anything about the ways in which people are addressing some of these needs before we switch to some of the other topics. Richard, do you want to speak to that. Sure. So it's, it's always hard following the eloquent John King and Randy wine garden. So thanks for putting me in the middle because then I have a fighting chance on this one. But look, historically underserved communities became more underserved during this pandemic. And so rightfully appointed out, we are battling at least three pandemics the viral pandemic over 19 the economic pandemic that's associated with that and the abject failure of the federal government to intercede and provide any kind of leadership, not only directional leadership but also the financial leadership that we need to bring schools back in a safe and secure way. So when you add to that the racial pandemic that is across the world, the recognition of systemic racism, and the, okay, let's try to get generations of students. It is no wonder that we see the disproportionate impact in our community. Here in New York City. I would say in New York City. It's one of the reasons why it was so important for us as long as medically feasible and advisable for us to bring back in person learning even if it's a modicum of in person learning, because we understand that there are children that are still falling through and that achievement opportunity gap is is increasing exponentially for many of our students. That's why during the height of the pandemic in New York City we created the regional enrichment centers, which were centers to care for and educate the children of first responders and medical personnel, because they were on the front lines. We were able to in those regional education centers working very closely with our labor partners, establish health and safety protocols so that we had not one student or adult become infected during the height of the pandemic here in New York City where we were truly the epicenter of the epicenter. So when we work together we've been able to prove that we cannot only mitigate some of these disastrous effects of the pandemic, but it also gives us a path forward for what could that new normal look like post COVID-19. Yeah, that's great. Randy, I heard you for a second there you're on mute but if you can come off of mute we'd love to. I am back. You want to add any thoughts on this question and then I'm going to direct another one to you about nature of the teaching and learning. So I would just say, you know, whatever both John and Richard said. You know, now that I see it around the country multiply it by 5000. So just think about and john, you know, john and I really pushed very hard to see if we could get summer school, we needed, you know, we needed resources, the president refused to really negotiate I just saw a tweet that said that he's not going to negotiate any anything further. But, you know, if you just think about all the different crises that you listed Linda. So, I'm a kid with asthma. Who doesn't have internet at home. Maybe I'm, you know, in a rural area, or an urban area. 16 million kids like that don't have internet right now still, even with all the work that Richard and others have done. They don't have books at home. And I'm pretty socially isolated because I couldn't be outside, you know, for a long time we didn't realize that outside was better than inside. And so, and then if we don't have grabbing goes, I'm not eating like I did in in school. You have all of the primal needs that were like we had a five alarm fire and then on top of that, take the places where there were fires like Oregon, Washington, California, you could see the fires, all the way into Ohio. So I would say that every kind of Maslone in need has kind of exposed itself right now. And I want to actually go back then to where you started Linda, in terms of that's why I thought your 10 points learning policy institutes 10 points are so important. And they are actually baked in in a real way to the Biden Harris and Democratic platform, because there's a shift to instead of being top down test based accountability base. There's a shift to kind of thinking about the, the whole child and addressing children's needs, starting with social and emotional learning, as well as well being, and then using that portal as a way to dealing with instruction, like through project based learning and relationship based things. So I would say the inequities are huge. It's going to take hopefully after a vaccine. It's going to take a year or so to try to figure this out. But I would actually push for rapid using and you have this as your number eight, using community schools all throughout the country. Yeah, as a vehicle, an infrastructure by which to do a lot of the other things that we have to do because we need an infrastructure to do these things including extended training, including following every single child and including having the supports, but I watched and and and one of your and I'll shut up here, one of your associates as you were, you know, we saw that the that the schools that either were based on experiment experiments or project based learning and or the schools that had community schooling and wraparound services. They were able to mitigate the inequities better than any other school. Yeah, yeah, we did see that and just for those who may be new to the idea of community schools. These are schools that have either on site or connections to health and mental health resources social services. There's usually a community school manager who can integrate all those services for the kids and the families, so that it's not just getting social and emotional supports to kids who are in traumatic situations it's also also solving the traumatic situations for a lot of families if you're on the verge of eviction. There's somebody there who knows how to get the services that you need to, you know, have a place to stay etc so community schools, you're long standing, but we have seen that the places that had them. They're not enough of them, but really were able to step up and take care of families in this moment in a different way. Randy you mentioned and since we've got you with good audio for the moment I'm going to stick with you for this moment. You mentioned that the kids were involved in project based learning during the pandemic they were already doing inquiry they already had their projects underway they were presenting on zoom to each other. The results state engaged had a meaningful experience and the AFT also produced a sort of a project based capstone project resource that a lot of people used in that time. What do you think that states and districts can be doing to promote the kind of learning that's meaningful for students that will, you know, make them want to be connected to school and enable them to develop those skills during this time. So So I think we, again, we have learned a lot in this situation, I mean in this crisis about what works to engage and what doesn't work to engage. And I think it is time to actually really rethink the assessment processes up and down the line. You know, we tried to do that in ESSA, but because there was so many kind of constraints on project based learning and portfolio assessments, not a lot of schools did it. But this is a moment of time this year to do these things and I would also advise that hopefully we'll have a new president and we will figure out a waiver process of the standardized tests this year and really do what we did at the beginning of ESSA, which is to create some kind of way for states to do this kind of project based inquiry. Because so what states can do is four things that are really important right now. Number one, really thinking about relational learning and with the smaller pods and the smaller classes, really thinking about how to do relational type learning. Number two, understanding that we still need ongoing professional development because remote is really, really, really different than in school and a hybrid takes people are exhausted already hybrid takes a lot of different kind of pedagogy to actually engage kids. So we have to have a lot more of this ongoing professional development and well being for teachers as well as for kids right now. Number three, I think we should be really thinking about capstone or project based learning as a summative way, developmentally appropriate, but as a summative as a way of actually capping the year. For virtually all kids. I, I am not giving up on the second semester of this year, but it has been and I give Richard and New York City a lot of credit. I have been very engaged in that process, but it was really important to try to figure out how to stand things up. But you're going to have weeks where schools are going to go back to remote and weeks where they're going to be in school and you're going to have all of this disruption. So I think that the issue of trying to figure out what do we want at the end for kids to know and be able to do and then back map it, particularly for the second semester is really important and that can be a state issue. So it's relational based well being. What do we want kids to know and be able to do at the end of the year back map it and then also have a lot of professional development this year. All of that can be done right now by states as advice to districts and to teachers and to principals all across America who really, really, really are desperate for it. Yeah, you're making me remember that in the 1990s under IASA, which was an earlier version of the federal law, a lot of states did have both sit down tests, you know, where kids would, you know, reveal what they know in that way, but they would also have project based assessments that you think about Delaware and Maryland and Vermont and Connecticut and Kentucky, where there was a writing portfolio and kids were, you know, entering things in the writing portfolio, teachers learned how to score that in a reliable way. So it could be part of the work that they were doing in classrooms that we did make some headway on this idea of really authentic learning and assessment along with sit down tests that could be combined into measures of broader learning and we're poised to really re-engage that question of how do we assess so that we both have the comparable data that we ultimately need, but also have the kind of learning we want kids to be engaged in. Richard, I'm going to come to you and just note that, you know, New York City has long been the home of a lot of innovation in teaching and learning over many years. And I wonder if you could speak to important innovations that you've seen in response to the pandemic in the city. So I think all of us and my colleagues and everyone across the country in public education was really thrust into a whole new way of thinking in March, February, March, and definitely April. And in New York City, we've learned a lot since we had a remote switch to remote learning March 15th. I'll never forget that date. And I give a lot of credit to our educators and our students and our parents, because in a matter of days we had to convert an entire system from what we knew and were experienced in experiencing into a completely new way of teaching and learning and being. So we've learned a lot from that. And, you know, when you think of innovation, I could, I could talk about, for example, the Williamsburg High School for architecture and design in Brooklyn. They designed and developed a plan to redesign the town of Lake Como, New Jersey, and they presented it to the town council or city council, and many of those elements were adopted into that new design. And we would think of that as being innovative, but I'm going to take this on in a little slightly little different way. Think about what we've not done since March, that we always considered to be part of the system that we did in public education. Since March, we have not suspended any students from school. Think about that. In March, we have not had students go through any metal detectors or have a police presence in schools. Think about that. Since March, we have not applied punitive teacher evaluation systems to teachers. Think about that. Since March, we have not only lifted, but integrated social emotional learning and trauma informed curricula and pedagogy into the very nature of what we do as part of what we do for educating children. And we've recognized that not only have children suffered trauma, but the adults that children have suffered trauma. So how do you pay attention to that? Think about, since March, we've done more to address the digital divide than we've done in the last three decades in America. We all know that there's more to do. Think about, and I can speak about it from here in New York City, where the traditional narrative was that it's management and labor. I can tell you that in New York City, it's been management and labor working together to make sure we have safe, secure physical environments that we have testing protocols that we have school facilities set up so that we're successful in terms of educating our students and that we're working together to address issues of educational continuity of learning for our children. So those students that are learning remotely should not have a markedly different experience than children that are in a blended experience where they have a few days in the building and then a few days in a remote experience. So then how do we create those systems and structures so that the blended learning teachers are collaborating? I'm going to clutch my pearls here because what time to collaborate? Absolutely. Collaborate, coordinate so that you have educational continuity that is happening for the sake of students. How are we integrating then that academic and social emotional learning so that it's not one or the other, but it's integrated and it's part of what we do? And the last thing I would say in terms of what is innovative, but it's really common sense. It's what Randy and John and I and you have been fighting for for decades. How do we provide then the opportunity for the professionals, the teachers, the principals, those that are doing the work to actually share and collaborate and coordinate the work that they're doing and we lift best practices, not from a think tank, not from a profit from afar but from our very own neighborhoods, our very own school communities, and we lift those up and we adopt them here in our local local school system. For us, it may not sound like innovative, but for us, that's really innovative. And I would say that the new normal post COVID-19 must never ever look like the pre COVID-19 normal. Back to suspending kids and using punitive evaluation system and top down, we need to really embrace these new ways of doing the work that we do as we go into a post COVID-19 world whenever that is. You know, I really love the way you're emphasizing the collaboration that's going on in the sharing. And if you think about these moments in human history that have been, you know, extraordinary moments, which cause people to have to invent new ways of doing things, it is the sharing of those inventions that is critically important for the progress that we make. So really, very important. You know, you mentioned the lack of suspension and punitive environments, metal detectors, the need for social and emotional supports. John, you've been very, very involved in an eloquent about the ways in which we need to think about recalibrating how we work with kids in schools. Could you speak to the issues that you and I spoke about in the another conversation recently about social, emotional learning and restorative practices that are going to be so important. Sure. Well, my hope is, as Richard said that we do not just return to the pre COVID status quo, but that we build a stronger, healthier future in our schools and that means moving away from the use of exclusionary discipline which is disproportionately applied to students of color. We know for example that African American girls are more than five times as likely to be suspended from school as white female students. So hopefully we move away from those exclusionary discipline policies towards environments that rely on restorative justice, but that really create cultures of respect among students and teachers. Right, that we invest in kids social emotional well being that we rethink dress codes that are disparately applied to girls of color, for example, that we rethink referrals to police of what should be dealt with at school, which disproportionately affects again students of color. But when we think about those changes we have to think about both the culture and discipline changes, but we also think about resources. We need more counselors, more mental health services for kids and for families. The student and parent stress is through the roof during this period of COVID-19. We ought to respond to that with additional support. Randy mentioned the importance of addressing relationships and building relationships. I would love to see us do what the UK is doing and build a national tutoring core love to see us. Senator Coons has proposed, at least double AmeriCorps and create the possibility for tutoring relationships that that would provide mentoring, as well as support to students. There's one other piece I want to make sure we get in because we focus on the COVID pandemic but we also have, as Randy and Richard and you have all mentioned, the pandemic of systemic racism that has been with our country from the beginning. And lots of folks put out statements in the spring saying that they believe black lives matter and pledging solidarity with the protesters. But I fear that we have not seen enough action on those pledges of solidarity that we haven't yet seen the level of commitment we need to diversifying the teaching profession which I know something you're passionate about Linda. The majority of our kids are kids of color only 18% of our teachers are teachers of color if we believe black lives matter we need more black teachers. We haven't I don't think yet done the work to rethink curricula and to provide kids with the windows and mirrors that they deserve opportunities to see themselves reflected in the authors they read the topics of the text that they study the history that they learn.  If you believe black lives matter, then you do have to change these discipline policies and you have to think in terms of school cultures that validate every kid's humanity that help kids feel seen. Think about the fact that we have more than 15 states where they're still corporal punishment. How can we return from coven to schools where there's corporal punishment where adults are beating students with wooden objects and an active state sanctioned violence. And it's unbelievable. So, if we are serious about taking on this pandemic of systemic racism we have to be very reflective about the things we need to change about how schools operate just as we have to think about how we need to change how all of our institutions operate as a society. Yeah, and you know one of those you gave a wonderful list and mentioned teacher diversity. The other aspect of the educator workforce is that we know that kids in high minority schools in high poverty schools are much more likely to have teachers who come in and leave at high rates or there's high turnover where there's not enough training not enough support, not enough mentoring, you know, for that teacher workforce and that's causing another. We do have shortages of teachers. You know we have both disruptions in the pipeline right now of people coming in and that was already shrinking, and then we have a lot of problems and resignations of teachers, you know, who for a variety of reasons are, you know, just not able or unwilling to continue in the in the workforce right now. So what do we do about really getting a highly trained well staffed culturally competent workforce, you know in the schools that that we care about Randy would you want to start on that question. Yeah, I look I think it's actually worse than the retirements and worse than the, you know, the, the issues in terms of co cove it I think that the, I think the budget issues are also really terrible here. I think we can get and again the, the, the president just said that they're not going to be any more negotiations but I think let's assume for a second very quickly. There are a type stimulus and part of it has to go for staffing and the kind of things, for example that New York City is now doing in terms of having, you know, basically two or three teachers who are dealing with both remote and in person for a particular class, and they're using a lot of substitutes but this could actually be, and I hasten I'm a little reluctant to say this, I think if we created a residency program and a pipeline and really kind of went to the HBC use and went to some of the state colleges and said, and gave people commitment over two or three year period of time about really kind of teaching them how to teach, having like master teachers who are helping in terms of both remote and in person, because I think that this is going to last in the next semester, probably another year in, in, in a different way than this year but, but, but really kind of front end and investment in teachers, then I think we can both deal with some pipeline issues and diversity issues, but we're going to have to be able to not just throw the keys at substitutes and say, you know, you, you fit in somewhere, we're really going to have to figure out how to create mentorship and training programs. But the shortage right now, it's the regular, I hate to say, it's the regular shortage Linda that you've been talking about for so long, like when we talk about we have three million teachers and always over 100,000 in shortage, but we now have the pipeline shortages, we really need to diversify. And we also have the shortages because of COVID related reasonable accommodation of the states that didn't do those reasonable accommodations and people retiring too early, and creating that kind of brain drain, and then also the lack of money to hire. So that would be something to start for this January, but also something very much to think about with the schools of education and the HBCUs for, you know, for starting in September. Yeah, yeah, very important. And you know, a mentioned ARRA, which was the recovery bill at the beginning of the Obama administration, $125 billion was put into stabilizing the educator workforce. So we wouldn't have these huge layoffs. Thus far, we've had $13 billion for all of the needs of K-12 education in the Recovery Act thus far. We have estimates that we probably need two to 300 billion to meet the needs of schools for all of the PPE and physical distancing, etc., and to stabilize the educator workforce in terms of where we're going. I mentioned residencies as one strategy, and residencies we've seen, you know, bring more teachers of color in, get them paid while they're training to teach, put them under the wing of expert mentors, and connect their teacher and coursework to that in a way that they can get a credential in a year, without being in debt and go on to get mentoring. Richard, you had started such a residency program in San Francisco when you were there. I had the pleasure of working with you on that, and have some of that going on in New York as well. And I wonder whether you think that is part of the long-term strategy and how else you might want to deal with the workforce issues. Yes, to Randy's comment, that is the way forward, I think. I think job-invented residencies not only provide an effective way of recruiting talent, if you will, but it also provides them a very grounded way. And I've seen this first hand of introducing individuals to our profession in a very grounded way, almost in the apprenticeship model where you have the master's teacher imparting the strategy and the approach to students that want to be teachers. In the New York City Department of Education, we are very, very committed to diversifying our teaching workforce. 82% of our 1.1 million students are Black, Latino, or Asian. They're children of color. So we need to have a workforce that looks like them, that can relate to them, that can also give them those role models for what we want them to be able to do. So one of our highly effective approaches has been the NYC teaching academy, where high-need, high-performing schools that serve as host sites for preparing both traditional teacher candidates from local schools of education. But they also provide alternate routes, like our New York, our NYC teaching fellows, and our NYC teaching collaborative. There are different pathways for individuals to enter the teaching profession. In 2015, we also in New York City began an academy model with, get the six schools. And since then, it's scaled up to more than 100 schools preparing over 600 candidates. Now, when you think about the fact that we hire in a traditional year, 6,000 teachers a year, 600 may not seem like a lot. But if you have 600 teachers that are committed, that are teachers of color, then we want to keep adding to that and how we go forward. We've also recruited and selected and trained teachers to be teacher development facilitators. So we're capitalizing on the expertise of our own teachers here in New York City. We've also worked to really build a robust partnership with local schools of education and collaborating on pipeline development. It includes the New York City Coalition for Teacher Preparation, which is a Gates funded initiative, but also St. John's University, Long Island University, Hunter College, and of course CUNY. I'll give you just one example of how that's beneficial to us in this blended environment.  That's just crazy. How does a student get any kind of feedback or tangible assistance. But we know at the secondary level where you have a real need for subject matter expertise in our CUNY system, the City University of New York, we have adjunct faculty that because of the cutbacks there aren't working. Well, if you can have a trained mathematician who can also teach a few classes for us or a trained physicist who can teach some physics classes for you, then it's the city itself helping to support each other. I think in this age, this is the kind of collaboration that we need to really be investing in as leaders of our systems to build a robust pipeline. It's no longer my lane, your lane, here's our lane, it's our lane. Yeah, that's a great point. The floor has flown by and we are almost at the end of it. John, I'm going to give you the last question here. You were both a State Commissioner and US Secretary of Education. What do you think of as the key policy levers that we need to be pushing on to move forward both the reinvention of schools and greater equity that is so important to us and I'm going to ask you to do that in two minutes. That's tough because there are no silver bullets, but I'll say look, this is a moment and maybe this is a history teacher in me, but this is a new deal moment for the country where we ought to have ambitious federal response to this moment. We ought to triple title one and the investment in our highest needs schools. We ought to make a massive investment in diversifying the teaching profession. As Randy said, HBC use and minority serving institutions are huge providers of teachers of color. Many of our students of color beginning in community college, we should be investing there so that those students can become future teachers. We ought to make a massive investment in saving the early childhood sector, which is at risk of complete collapse if there isn't substantial federal investment. We ought to approach access to bandwidth the way the new deal approach to access to electricity, and we ought to make a massive federal investment that says every family needs to have internet access so that their kids can access, not like K 12, but higher ed so that folks can look for jobs and benefits so that they can participate in civic life and the internet is that vital today, the way electricity was in the mid 20th century. And then I think we need as you and I have often talked about Linda we have to go back and look at why have we yet to fulfill the vision of Brown, more than 60 years later schools are more segregated by race and class today than they were 2030 years That is that is a national family but we could correct that if we were willing to see this as a new deal moment and we're committed that we should emerge from this period. A more just resilient more equitable society in the long run that will also make us a more prosperous society and strengthen our democracy. That's a great point on which to close you take us back to the effects of the 60s where in fact we did cut poverty in half in the 1960s we cut the black white achievement gap and by more than half in that period of time we desegregated schools and expanded resource equity and we undid all of those policies in the 1980s so the agenda, you know, ahead of us is a new deal and a, you know, capitalization on this invention moment that we can use to propel us into the next century. And as folks did 100 years ago, Randy, Richard, John, thank you so much some of the most important thinkers on education in the country we're just thrilled that you could make time Randy, especially from whatever tour bus you are on we appreciate we're we're actually going to be we're actually going into Topeka Kansas. All right. And I'm going to ask my colleague to close this out with just some information about how people can get follow up information. Abby. Thanks Linda. So, we have a resources here we just launched a new interactive website for the restarting and reinventing school reports that makes it even easier to navigate the different priorities and access the resources that are most relevant to you and your context. And that link is here on the slide it's also in the chat. And then our panelists also have some wonderful resources that were referenced that are available on their website shown on this slide. And then all the resources that were shared in the chat will also be available on the event page, and the recording will also be available and sent out to everybody by email. And the last thing I'll just say is that a survey will appear in your window when you leave this webinar and we really appreciate your feedback, and we hope you all have a wonderful day. Thank you. Thank you all. Thanks so much. Take care. Thank you.


How excited are you really to be at the largest real estate event in the history of remix of Brazil? An incredible experience. And I'll tell you this, this is my first time to Brazil and it will not be my last time to Brazil. You guys are all my new friends and I'll do anything. You guys will learn this as you get to know me. I'll do anything to help you. Anything in the world. You have an amazing country and I'll tell you something else that I've found really amazing is the history of remix in Brazil. When I first agreed to come here and speak at R4 in Vegas with Pachudo, we talked for five minutes and he did a video and all of a sudden I'm on my way to Brazil in a couple months. But I had no idea the history of remix in Brazil. I had no idea that you are only 10 years old as a company in Brazil and it's astonishing to me that you are where you are right now with over 200 offices, 2,500 agents. Give it up. You guys are amazing. It's really incredible. I am truly impressed and proud of each and every person in this room for the accomplishments that you guys have made. And the way I see it after coming here and learning a little bit about the differences in the US and the Brazilian real estate industry, I see nothing but huge opportunity and potential for remix in Brazil to continue to continue because you already are the market leader but to continue to be the market leader and continue growing. You have to continue listening to your leaders. Pachudo had a baby boy last night. Can you guys believe that? Give it up for Pachudo real quick. It couldn't be with us. What an amazing person. I've got to know him very well. Incredible leader for you guys. Renato, where is Renato? Give Renato a big hand. These two gentlemen have sacrificed so much for you to be here. And they've put their heart and soul into building what is a monster company in Brazil. And I'll tell you this and I promise you this, there's good things coming for you. And the best is yet to come for Remax of Brazil. A little bit about me. I started real estate 17 years ago. I've always operated as a single agent. Me and my father, we are classified as a team in the Remax system, but we operate as single agents. Okay. I've been the number one team leader in the state of Alabama for Remax three times. I've won the Diamond Award three times. And for the last two years, I've grossed over a million dollars a year as a single agent in commissions. Now I get all the claps and all that sounds amazing and incredible. But the truth is, it hasn't always been that glamorous. I grew up roofing houses for years and years and years in the hot sun. One of the most grueling jobs out there. My father did it. He roofed houses for 30 years. He was the oldest man on the roof, still out working everybody. And that's really what gave me my work ethic is watching him work so hard. But I knew I didn't want to do that forever. So when I was 20, I got my real estate license. By 23, I'm a self made millionaire only to book. I'm completely bankrupt, lose everything, everything. I'm sleeping on friends' couches. I'm sleeping in my car. I went back to roofing houses. I worked on an oil rig for a while. And I even battled with drugs and alcohol. I had a battle with drugs and alcohol. But you know what? Through all that, winners, winners just find a way. They just figure it out. They find a way to win. They don't make excuses. They find solutions five years ago, 2014. I completely won my battle with drugs and alcohol. Not a single sip. Coincidentally, that happens to be the same year that I sell 100 properties as a single agent. And since 2014, I've sold 100 properties, over 100 properties every single year since. That's 2014, 15, 16, 17, 18, going on 19, 21, 22, 23. I wrote two books and I started coaching real estate agents. And I've become known as the first completely free real estate coach in the world. We have over 14,000 agents in the program worldwide. I just hit over a million views on YouTube and I have a podcast that gets over 50,000 downloads a month and growing like crazy. All this while I'm continuing to sell 100 properties a year, year over year over year. So you see, winners find a way. And what I want for everybody in here, if you don't get anything out of my talk today, I want you to get this one thing. I want all of you to find your way to win. I want you to figure it out. Because winners, sometimes you look at somebody who's really winning and you say, how did that happen? And nobody can really tell you. Sometimes there's an it factor. You don't know what it is, but they got it. And I want you to find your it, your way to win. So the biggest two questions that I get from real estate agents are Ricky, why? Why are you coaching for free? And how? How do you continue to sell 100 properties a year as a single agent? So that's what I want to do today. I want to take this opportunity to answer these questions for you. I want to share a little bit about my journey and everything I've learned along the way. Does that sound good? Your success in real estate and in business and in life is going to come down to just one thing. Making people feel comfortable with you. Making people feel comfortable with you, with who you are. Now I could have said all kinds of things right there and you probably thought I was going to say several different things. The cliche things, right? It comes down to I could have said working hard, being a hard worker. I could have said your success will come down to being professional. I could have said it comes down to being honest. But let's be real. If you're in this room right now and you want to be, you're here because you want to be a top producer. How many people here want to be a top producer?  I shouldn't have to tell you that you need to be honest or professional. That should be automatic. I should never have to tell you that that's what you need to do. You need to automatically be doing those things. What I want to do is share something with you that maybe you haven't thought of. Why? Because I want to help you. I want to bring value to you and I want to open up your mind to maybe a different skill that people don't necessarily talk about all the time that could really help you. And that is making people feel comfortable with you. If your client or your prospect feels comfortable with you, there's a good chance you're going to do business. On the other hand, if they do not feel comfortable with you, there's a good chance that you're not going to do business. So how do we make people feel comfortable with us? The most simple way that I can explain it, to make someone feel comfortable with you, all you have to do is be comfortable with them. If you're comfortable with them, they will feel that and they will in turn be comfortable with you. If you're nervous, if you're scared, if you're trembling, if you're not relaxed, if you're tight, they feel that energy. They feel that nervousness. And if you're nervous, now they're going to be nervous. And they're going to say, I don't know if I want to do business with this agent. Something's going on here. However, if you are calm, cool, collected, tone of your voice, speed of your voice, body language, if everything is lining up that you are comfortable with them, that's the first step to making this person your new client. So at my workshop Wednesday, we did an exercise. I want to explain the exercise to you right here so that you can start to try to apply this in your day-to-day. I made up this exercise a couple months ago when I started thinking about this and how can I help people get into the right mind frame to be comfortable with strangers? Because not everybody has that. And so what I eventually came up with, and I kind of created a term, it's called FE. And it stands for friend or family effect. And the idea is that we want them to feel like they're a friend or family. We want our clients to feel like they are our friends and family. Okay? So how do we translate this? Next time that you're talking to your mom, your dad, your brother, your best friend, somebody that you feel really, really comfortable with, I want you to just pay attention to that conversation. I want you to really think when you're talking to this person that you feel so comfortable with. You can tell them anything, they can tell you anything. They're comfortable with you, you're comfortable with them, everything's great. That's what you need to emulate with your clients. That's how your clients need to feel.  I want you to take that moment in time and just think about the tone of your voice, the speed of your voice, your body language, are you tight, are you loose?  I want you to start trying to emulate that when you talk to your clients, and it won't happen overnight. It will not happen the first time, maybe not the second time, maybe not for a week, two weeks, a month, but maybe in a week, two, three, four, a couple months later, maybe you start to feel a little more comfortable with people and you see their reaction of how they're comfortable with you because of it, and then you start doing it more, and you do it with more clients and more clients and more clients and before you know it, you have a huge army of clients who all see you as friend or family. So I want you guys to start thinking about this and paying attention to how to make people feel comfortable with you because this is what's going to determine your success because you all want to be top producers. So you should already be working hard, being honest and professional. I want you to add this to your arsenal. So it all started for me in Orange Beach, Alabama. I brought a couple pictures for you guys to see. It's right on the beach, right on the Florida, Alabama line. I'm literally two miles, I live two miles from this beach, and I live two miles from the Florida state line. I have my Florida license, so I sell in Florida and Alabama. I do mostly in Alabama. Taxes are much cheaper there, so most people buy there, but I still do a lot in Florida as well. 20,000 population. Think about it for just a second because I think Sao Paulo is 12 million. This is 20,000. However, 6 million visitors, 6 million people a year visit our beaches. White powder sands. It is a beautiful place. I'm very blessed to have grown up there. Actually, I didn't realize how good I had it until I left and tried to travel around and go to college and stuff before I realized I grew up in the middle of paradise. You know, as a kid, you take things for granted. You know, I grew up at the beach and so I just thought every little kid had a beach. It's not true. I've sold condos in all the buildings. So I started in 2002. I was 20 years old. I knew I didn't run a roof houses forever, but I didn't know exactly what I wanted to do. So I tried college. College was not for me. I went to four different schools, colleges in two years. I failed a history class and decided I was not going to move forward with college. I realized that to get a license where I am, it's one class and I saw that as my opportunity. I jumped on it. I barely passed the class. I barely passed the test and now I'm a real estate agent. I was still roofing houses. So I told my father, I said, I'm done roofing houses, man. I got my real estate license done. See ya. I went in the office, worked every day full time. 30 days goes by zero sales, not even close. I have to go back to roofing houses. Now I'm roofing houses and trying to sell real estate and trying to figure out real estate at the same time. It took me eight long months to make my first sale. And actually it was my grandmother condo. I can't even lie. I did sell another condo right there kind of back to back. Then I started selling two a month. Selling two, two deals a month for a little while. This is getting into 2003. About midway through 2003 the market starts to explode. Prices doubled, nearly doubled, in a span of about two years. Men 2003 to about men 2005 prices nearly doubled. I believe they did if we go back and look in my area. And so here I am. I'm a 21 year old, 22 year old and the market explodes and I was literally in the right place at the right time. And I started to make some serious money. But the problem was I didn't know what to do with it. I was buying hummers and Cadillacs and houses. But I also tried to invest. And this is what eventually took me out. I bought lots of properties. I was flipping them. I was not thinking long term. I was thinking short term. The market started to crash. 2005 prices started to come down where I was. I'm sitting here trying to hang on, hang on, hang on because everybody was saying just give it two years the market will come back. Two years ago I gave it two more years the market will come back. It was the longest crash we've ever seen in my lifetime. Any money that I had in reserves I spent it all trying to survive. Trying to keep these properties. It ended up losing everything. All the cash, all the properties, nothing. Totally broke, totally bankrupt. I was down to zero. Didn't even have a car. Somebody gave me their car because I felt bad. So here I am. Just a couple years ago I'm on top of the world and now I'm completely at minus. I'm not even at zero. I'm less than zero. I'm in the hole. So I immediately go back to roofing. Now I'm roofing again. I just can't get away from it. So I'm roofing houses and basically I'm starting over because here's what, here's how I think about it and how my life has went. Wherever I am it's fine. I can't really control where I am necessarily but I'm always going to be moving up from there. So if I make it to a certain point get knocked down that's fine with me. Wherever I'm at at that point I'm just going to keep moving up and keep getting better every day. So when I lost everything I literally, I was, I was not sad. I'll tell you I was more sad in 2015 the year after I made 600,000 that I wasn't going to make a million. I was more sad then than I was when I had nothing. I was happy because I was 23 and there were, there were gentlemen who were in their 40s and 50s and 60s right next to me that lost everything. And I was thinking, God that I wasn't in their shoes and I was 23 and I was able to rebuild and learn from my mistakes. And I knew that's what I was going to do. I knew that I was going to learn and rebuild and make it better than it was and that's what happened. So during that time I was so curious. I wanted to know so badly why I failed. Sure I bought the properties but I wasn't able to continue selling real estate either. You know what's going on? I can't do anything. There are people successful out there. Why not me? I'm the hardest working person I know. I'm the most honest person that I know. I want it more than anyone. Why am I failing and why can't I create momentum? So through my thirst and curiosity of wanting to know, I started reading. Over a two year period I read over 100 books and I was on the oil rig too by the way. And somewhere along the line there, 2007, January 2007, I landed a job on the oil rig working every other week. I said great, I can work one week on the oil rig and come home and work on real estate. Back on the oil rig, back to real estate. This could be my way back into the real estate game because I have time a whole week to do nothing but focus on real estate. It didn't work that way because the oil rig is hard work and you're so tired it takes you a couple days to recover and then you work from six in the evening to six in the morning one week and then when you go back you work from six in the morning to six in the evening and they switch it up every other week. You can't concentrate long enough to sit down and try to. It wasn't like I thought it was going to be in other words. But I was able to read and learn. I was paying attention to the market. I was watching the market. I was watching the closed sales. I was watching the prices. I was watching everything from afar. I still have my license. I was still active. I still that was one thing that I maintained. The only two things that I maintained through this was my license and my cell phone. I still have the same cell phone number that I had when I was 18. Those are the only two things that I kept current. I had nothing else. I had no other bills. Couldn't afford it. When I started working the whole rig I was making five thousand a month and I was just saving it. I didn't want to spend anything. I just want to save up. But something clicked at some point and one of those books that made me realize where I had went wrong realized that up to that point in my career it was all about the money. It was all about the transaction. The closing. When I first got a real estate my thought was literally I want to help people. I want to help first time home buyers. I want to help people. I just want to help. But somewhere in the mix with the market exploding and all this money coming in I lost sight of that. And it turned into how much money I can make. And it's literally the reason why I lost everything. It wasn't because I bought so many properties and had a million and a half in debt that I couldn't pay. I could have paid it if I valued relationships over transactions because I would have continued selling properties through that downturn enough to pay the note to then figure out how I wanted to handle the situation. So you see at that point something clicked and I realized it's not the money. It's about the people. Now this was just a thought at this point. This wasn't anything that I have tested yet. This was just something that I realized that this could be the missing piece of the puzzle for me. So 2008 January I worked in the O-Rig for one year. I got laid off because gas prices went down. They started laying off people. I eventually got laid off. I was the hardest working guy out there. They kept me out of 57 people. I was the last guy. They tried to hang on to me as long as they could. I got laid off and luckily enough I was already dabbling in real estate just a little bit. I was already trying to talk to people about buying and selling just a little bit. And when I got laid off I had a couple deals happening. And within 45 days after I got laid off from the O-Rig I had a closing. So this was 2008. The last sale that I had before that was 2005. I sold nothing between 2005 and 2008. Not a single closing. I was roofing houses reading books and working on the O-Rig. That was my job. So when I made this next sale in 2008 I was like thank you God. Because I didn't know if I would ever sell real estate again. And when I made that next sale and I knew that the relationships over transactions philosophy was real because I could see it my clients. I was already seeing that people were feeling more comfortable with me long term. I was thinking so short term in the beginning. Short term gets you nowhere. Not even in the short term. When you think long term you make short term money right now. So 2008 what I did is I devised this plan. I wanted to be the best. I wanted to be number one. I'm going to put this relationships over transactions philosophy to work. So when I got back in real estate there's lots of foreclosures. 2008 times of foreclosures. In my in my little small area there was maybe 50 at a time for buyers to choose from. Bank owned properties, foreclosures. And everybody was so jealous of the foreclosure agents that were getting the listings from the banks. Super jealous. And I kind of was one of them for a second. And I looked into it and I found out how much work those agents had to actually do to to get their name on the list with the bank to get those listings. And I said I'm not interested in that. Okay. Another key point is the fact that every time I called one of those agents who had a foreclosure listings didn't answer the phone. Wouldn't call you back. Wouldn't email you back. Wouldn't do anything. Why? Because they were taking orders from the bank getting all these listings. They didn't have to worry about customer service. They didn't have to worry about answering phones or or helping you. They weren't worried about it because they knew the properties were going to sell. So it hit me. I knew exactly what I was going to do. I was going to take advantage of this opportunity. What I was going to do this was the plan I created to become number one in my area. I visualized this. I saw a whole thing happening. I knew it would take some years, but I saw this whole thing unfolding right before my eyes. I said to myself what I'm going to do is I'm going to represent the buyers buying these properties. I'm going to treat them like family. And in three years when the market rebounds and these these properties are worth more, those my clients are going to sell the foreclosure property and buy another property and refer all their friends and family to me. And what's going to happen to the foreclosure agents that are sitting right here not answering their phones. They're not going to be in the business anymore. And that's exactly what happened. All the foreclosure agents from back in the day 2008, 2009, 2010, they're not around anymore. Because they can't operate like a real estate professional who handles clients needs operates. They're just taking orders from the banks. They made a lot of money when the market crash, but who's laughing now? So that was my theory. And then I just completely committed to it. I want to sell as many foreclosures as I can. Also I want to go after listings. So 2008, I make $80,000. Twice as much as I made on the oil rig the year before. I was ecstatic. 2009, I make $100,000. I'm ecstatic. 2010, 2010 was one of the most interesting years in my career. It was the year of the BP oil spill. Do we know the BP oil spill? There was an explosion of an oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico. Millions and millions of gallons of oil was spilt in the Gulf of Mexico. They pumped a lot of solution down there to try to dilute the oil. And it was chemicals. So the media blew that situation up. Everybody was scared to come to the beach. I'm on the beach and there's oil washing up on the beach. Not really. There was no oil that washed up on the beach, but we didn't know what was going to happen. Maybe oil might have washed up on the beach. We didn't know. Nobody knew. It was a lot of uncertainty. Everybody was scared. So we had zero visitors in my area that year. They didn't want to come down with their families scared of the poisons in the water. Nobody knew anything. The market, we had what we call a mini recession. A mini recession. And everybody was scared. And I looked at it as an opportunity. An opportunity to take everything that I learned in the big crash. The huge crash that we just had. I lost everything and now I'm back in the business. This is my opportunity to test everything that I learned there in this little mini crash. We didn't know it was a mini crash. It could have been a big crash. I mean, there could have been oil. We didn't know. But I took it as an opportunity to remember being in my office. I was with a different company at the time. And I told all the agents in the office, I said, look guys, stay calm. This is okay. You need to call all your clients right now and start keeping them informed every step of the way. Everything we know, every time we hear something about the oil spill, every time we get any kind of news, let's be the bearer of new. Let's tell people what's going on. Let's make sure that they're informed and we're the ones keeping them informed. And then let's see if there's anything we can do to help them. Are they looking to dump their properties? Because they're scared of the oil. Did they want to buy property? Because other people are dumping properties. So people, sellers sold their properties for cheap. It was about a six month window where everybody was really scared. And I listed those properties. They wanted to dump their properties. I wanted to list their properties. Somebody wanted to buy the properties really cheap. I wanted to sell them the properties for really cheap. This is what happens in a market crash. Prices go down. Buyers come in. Transactions continue to happen. So here I was. In 2009, I made 100,000. 2010, we have the BP oil spill mini recession. I make $150,000. An increase of 50% in a down year, a scary year. And that, ladies and gentlemen, was my aha moment. That was when I realized that I didn't necessarily have it all figured out. But I was on to something really good. And my goal with real estate and my goal for everybody here is to create a business that produces consistent closings every month. Your bills come in every month. You need closings every month. And that was something that it took me a while to get a handle on how to make the closings consistent. But when I realized relationships over transactions, that changed the game. And when I realized my aha moment and that I could make it regardless of what the market does, that's when I decided I wanted to move to the company that I had always wanted to be with the number one company for real estate in the world, remax. I was excited. Because I'd always wanted to be a remax. All the best agents are remax, right? Not just rah rah, it's the facts. The best agents are at remix. We're the we're the number one office in my area. We sell more property than anybody. Our market share is ridiculous. We're at 30 something percent. The next closest person is under 10% the next closest office. Nobody sells more than remax. That's where I wanted to be. So now here I am with the best company. I've reached I've reached my goal to get to the best company in the area and now I want to be the best agent at the best company in the area. So I combined everything I was doing with the number one brand in the world. And I started getting that this is this was what I really started crushing it. So I'm doing well. I'm making money. I hire an assistant. By the way, when I when I hired my assistant, I had 30 listings. 30 listings for me was the point where I needed an assistant because I had so many showing requests coming in from other agents. I couldn't handle it all. So I hired my assistant. She took that over. I'm able to get back to my clients helping them, talking to them, figuring out what I can do to help them. She processes everything. Now we got a good thing going 2014 was the year that I sold 100 properties for the first time. Me and my father were the number one team in the state. And I personally made $600,000 that year 2015. I wanted to make a million dollars because my income had went up each year pretty substantially. And my goal for all my life has always been to make a million dollars. I grew up in a blue collar family with no money. Okay, we didn't know what a million dollars felt like when I made a million dollars when I was 23. The reason I lost this because nobody we didn't know what to do with that money. Never had that much money. So my goal was always to make a million dollars in a year. And I was not going to stop till I got there. So I put this plan together, just like I put the plan together about the foreclosures. I put the plan together to make a million dollars. I need to make this many calls talk to this many people go to this many appointments do this many listings. And I'll have this many closings and I'll make a million dollars. So January rolls around. I start my mission. I started executing my plan. February rolls around March. And I'm looking at the numbers and I'm realizing I'm going to make 600,000 again. That's when I became I wouldn't say depressed because that just is not even in my vocabulary. But I was frustrated. I was upset with myself. Why can't I do this? I know what I need to do. Why can't I do it? And I was frustrated. So I started another curious curiosity mission. I went back to reading. What am I doing wrong? I'm reading. I'm watching. I'm watching YouTube videos. I'm listening to podcast. I'm studying I'm googling stuff about agents that are selling like 500 million in a year and reading their stories and stuff and trying to figure out there's something they're doing that I'm not. What are they doing that I can implement? What's the secret sauce? And through that somehow I landed a coach. It was kind of like a lavish resort. I was like, man, I can't figure this out. I just need to hire somebody and let them tell me how to do it. And then I'll just do it. So I hired the coach. And I said, Coach, I want 100 listings. Forget 100 listings. And that means I'll probably make a million dollars. He said, Okay, so we got to work. And we did the same all song and dance expires for cellbounders. Same old broken scripts, high pressure, handle objections. All that stuff. All those scripts are designed to figure out what the client can do for the agent. Hey, Mr. Seller, we sell your property so I can make a commission. And if not, if you can't help me by selling your property so I can make money, who do you know? Can we give me all your friends and families information? You don't know me. I could be a scammer.  Right? And if you say no, I'm going to throw some rejection handlers at you to try to get you to do it even though you don't want to. That's trying to figure out what the client can do for the agent. What I'm doing with my coaching program is I'm trying to teach agents how to figure out what the agent can do for the client. So I hired the coach and I'm working hard, I had him for four months and people need to coach for one or three reasons. They either don't know what to do. They need to learn the fundamentals. They know what to do. They just need somebody to hold them accountable. Right? They know what to do. They're just not doing it. Or they have some kind of mental block going on that they need to get past. So when I hired the coach, I thought I needed fundamentals because I was dang sure accountable. I just didn't think I was doing the right things. So I hired him and through the process, I realized that I did know what to do. I was accountable to myself. I had mental problems. If you make $600,000 and you are upset, you have mental issues. So what I realized through all that, and I talked about in the interview this morning, you got to believe, you got to work hard, you got to adapt. But the part that I was missing was patience. I was doing all the right things. I just wasn't being patient enough. Then I started to implement being patient and just putting the work in and not focusing on the results. When you create a goal, a yearly goal, I want you to think of that goal as a source of motivation. If you I want you to work as hard as you can to accomplish that goal, but I do not want you to be down on yourself if you don't hit the goal because you can't control the results. The only thing that you can truly control your daily actions. The only reason you should be down on yourself if you don't hit your goals is because you know in your in your heart that you didn't put the actions into achieve the goal. But if you put the actions into achieve the goal and didn't hit it, that's fine. We're going to try again next year. We're going to try again the year after 2015. I didn't hit a million 2016. I didn't hit a million 2017. I had a million. So and I was happy the next year didn't hit it. Because I wasn't worried about the end result anymore. I understood patience. So at that point, the rest is really history. I started writing speaking coaching. And I just love real estate. I love helping. I love helping my clients. I love helping agents. It's all the same thing to me. Everybody's family. And when you do things without expecting anything in return. That's the best. So let's talk about the three things that I learned through all of this. Okay, because when I hit when I learned about relationships over transactions, that was just a piece. I didn't know there was more. But but through my journey, I learned that there were more elements to it. Okay, another big one that I realized. Closings happen every day. Is that what it says? Closings happen every day regardless of market conditions. I want you to think about this for a second. Closings are happening every single day. They're happening all around you. Every what? Three seconds, 30 seconds. Closings are happening every single day. That's probably across the whole world or something in your market. Closings are happening every day. And what we're doing is is we're spending too much time on each client. We don't realize that closings are happening every day and we're trying to convert every single last lead. It's okay to spend a lot of time on each client but no, we don't need we need to we need to pay attention to how much time we're spending on each client and make sure that we're leaving room to go after new clients. Because that's going to be the key to you unlocking these closings that are happening every single day. When the market crashed on me, and I was watching the market like a hawk, I was watching it every day. And sure enough, there were closings happening every day. The prices were coming down, but the closings are still happening. This was big eye opener for me. And I was watching it and I was watching it, I was watching it. And then I realized that some of my clients that I was representing when the market was going up, they were buying at the bottom, they were buying and selling, they were selling their bad assets and buying new ones at cheaper prices. They were still doing deals. But because I didn't value the relationship with that person, I didn't I just lost touch and just let it go and went back to roofing houses and see later. Because I didn't value the relationship and staying in touch with them and see what I could do to help them through the crash. Then I was I didn't get involved in those deals. When the market crashes, do not be scared of the market crashing. People buy on the way up, they buy on the way down. When the market crashes, people do one of three things. They buy because it's cheap. And they want to buy right now before it goes up. They sell because they're in trouble. They got to sell right now, they're in trouble. Or they hold, they're just going to hang on and ride it out. But they're going to do one of these three things. Buy now sell now or hold. A crash creates so much urgency in the market. And you know what? Most of the agents leave the business. And it leaves so much business for the ones that understand this. And I think remax of Brazil is going to understand this when the market crashes and all the other companies will go away and will be the only ones left standing when the market crashes. By the way, I'm going to start making videos around my content translated into Portuguese, just for you guys. Do you know why I'm going to do that? Because I love you. Closings happen every day. Do not think about business as a scarcity. Think about it as an abundance. Which brings me to my next point. Business is unlimited. Is that what it says? Good. Business is unlimited for each and every single agent. Yeah, you cannot do all the business that is available to you. There's so much business out there. You can't do all the business of this available to you. The amount of people, the amount of loyal clients in the market, just for you. There's an unlimited amount of loyal clients just for you, just for you.  Unlimited. Okay? The problem is, you haven't put the work in to talk to enough people to find the loyal clients. You're hung up on this open listing that won't convert to it, to a exclusive. You're hung up on trying to figure out how to convert him. When there's all these other people, there's 12 million people out there waiting to hear from you to see how you can help them. So I want you to understand that business is unlimited and competition is non existent. It doesn't exist. And I've touched on this the entire time. Always, in every situation, value relationships over transactions. I've spent some time with Carlos, Moses, Pechetto, all of them. There's a common theme. I watched them speak. There's a common theme with the way that they conduct business. And it revolves around relationships, not the money. If you listen to them, they say the same thing. It's the same thing I'm saying. And there's agents, there's people in this room right now that think, I don't want to spend time with this client because they're just going to use me. They're going to use me for this and use me for that. I don't want to spend time with this person. Wrong attitude.  Because what happens is magical. When you show them that you care about enough to spend time with them and not expect anything in return, all of a sudden, they turn from somebody that was going to use you. So now they open up and now they want to do business with you. This is real. But you have to make this mind change. You have to make this mind switch. It all starts up here. It all starts in the mind. Everything. Even the hard work behind being super successful. It's your mind telling you to do it. Everything comes from up here. Even the physical part. So when you're talking to your clients, to your prospects, I want you to have a different tone. I want you to have a different mindset going into these conversations. And I don't want you to necessarily ask them if they want to buy or sell. I want you to tell them you're with Remax of Brazil. A house around the corner sold. You didn't know if there's anything in the world that you could do for them. They know you're in real estate. They know what you're there to do. Let's open up the conversation of is there anything I can do for you as opposed to do you want to buy, do you want to sell? Because they hear that from every agent out there and it's making prospects run for the hills. They don't want an agent that's just trying to do a deal with them. They want an agent that cares about what's going on with them. So my number one way to go deeper with the relationship is once I do encounter a prospect that wants to buy or sell something. My main objective at that point is to find out why they're buying or selling. What's going on in their life? They didn't just wake up one day and say, I want to buy I want to sell property for no reason. No. Their mom died. Their kids went to college. They got a new job. They're relocating something's going on bigger in their life. The selling or buying of the property is like small potatoes compared to the bigger reason of what's making them causing them to make this decision. And if we can find out the reason why they're buying or selling and then focus on that and relate ourself to that, then it's over. We have went deep with the relationship and now we're there to help them accomplish their bigger life goals, not just buying or selling real estate. The buying or selling real estate is just extra credit. It's just a cherry on top.  And I want you to connect first and then convert connect with your clients first. And that may take some time. But once you feel that connection, now we're going to start the conversion process. Does this make sense? Let's get loud one good time. Let's get loud one good time. I want you to be 95% low pressure and 5% high pressure. Just don't use that 5% until you know it's the right time. And treat your clients like family. I got a bonus one for you. Ricky's Law 5. Yeah. How many people here have lost a deal ever and it hurt? Never have? You get every deal? Okay. Okay, how many people if they lost a deal today, right now, it would hurt. If you lost a deal today, would it hurt? Would it hurt your heart? Would it sting? Would it make you mad? Listen to me. When you lose a deal, if you go to a listing appointment and the seller is interviewing several agents and they didn't pick you. Oh, right?  Hurts, right? Let me tell you why these situations are the greatest thing that could happen to you. Again, I want I want to change your mindset here. I want to put you in a position to multiply your business. I want you to do more deals. Here's the facts. You can't control if that's which agent that seller is going to choose. You can't control it. You can't control what that buyer is going to do. He's going to do whatever he does. You can't control those things. So you can't worry about it. But here's what happens. That's magical. When you lose a deal, number one, you learn something. That's cliche. Everybody knows that. Learn from mistakes, right? But when you replay whatever happened during that during that communication with that person, buyer or seller in your mind, and you realize maybe what you could have done differently, that makes you a better agent. But let me tell you the most interesting part of losing a deal. The future time that you get back that you don't have to deal. You don't have to work on that deal anymore. If you get the listing, you have to sign the listing, you have to take it to them, you got to take pictures, you got to put a sign up, you got to put it on ml or y'all have MLS. You got to market it however you guys market your listings. You have to deal with people wanting to show the listings, you got to do it with buyers. We get a contract. Now we got to negotiate it. Now we're under contract. Now we're dealing with the closing. We got the title company or whatever you guys have to close the inspectors, the lenders. It's a lot of stuff. Hours and hours and hours go into each deal. We don't realize when you lose the deal is you just got all those hours of your life back that you can use because it's in the future. It's an amazing opportunity if you think about the future time you get back from lost deals that you can now take this knowledge that you learn from losing the deal and the future time and go get five more deals. Right?  Next time that you lose a deal, I want you to set the stopwatch on your phone for five minutes. I want to give yourself, I want you to give yourself five minutes to think about it and to talk about it and to be sad about it and think about what you could have done differently. And as soon as the timer goes off on that five minutes, I want you to completely forget about that deal and move on to more deals. Why? Because business is unlimited. Closings are happening every day. Competition doesn't exist. So that's the law of five. Take five minutes after every lost deal. Realize the future time you just got back and whatever the lesson was that you learned from that lost deal and go get five more deals in the same time that it would have taken you to do that deal. So I'm on social media. If you guys want to follow me there, if you can reach out anytime, I answer every single message, every single DM, I'm here to help you in any way that I can. My time here in Brazil, let me tell you guys, this has been unforgettable. This has been amazing. I really, to be honest with you, didn't know what to expect going into it, but you guys have definitely over delivered. Okay? And like I said from the beginning, all of you are my friends now. And I'm going to do anything and everything that I can do to help you moving forward to help Remax of Brazil continue to be the market leader and get better and better and better. So with that, I want to leave you with a couple of things. The main thing is this. Now that I've been out of the country, now that I've experienced a completely different market halfway around the world, I realize one really, really important thing. And that is that relationships are universal. Relationships are universal. People just want to know that you care about them.  I don't care where you are. People just want to know that you care. They don't care what you know. They just want to know that you care. Relationships are 100% universal. And you guys have showed that to me. And talking to Carlos, talking to Moses, these guys have the whole entire game figured out. And I encourage you to reach out to these guys. And the rest of the Platinum Top 10 award winners, because you'd be surprised how willing they are to help you and to share with you what they're doing. Because you know why? They understand what I'm saying when I say business is unlimited and competition doesn't exist. Back home, I'm coaching for free. And I put my entire county worth of agents. I just put them in the program. I just put them in there. I didn't ask them. I just put them in there and they started getting emails from me every day with my YouTube videos and my podcasts and everything else. With my entire coaching program, everything that I'm doing, I sold more property than anybody in our county last year out of all the companies. They have the number one agent in their county giving them their playbook every day. And I've been doing it for two years. Why? Because I understand that it doesn't matter if I tell my competition what I'm doing. It's unlimited. You can't do it all. I haven't lost a single client.  Nothing. All that has done is create more respect and business. People want to do business with me because I'm giving back so much. When I first started doing it, agents in my office thought I was crazy. Crazy. Some of them were even mad, but I didn't listen to them because I knew what I knew. And that was that this business is 100% unlimited. I'm going to leave you with this. Real estate is a people business. Real estate is a people business. And if you quit chasing deals, then the people in your market that you want to do business with will love you. Thank you guys so much.