Let's call the meeting order at 6.30 p.m. Public comments? So consent agenda. Motion, I want to pull a new teacher contract because I didn't see any materials in the package. Okay, can you mine? Can you post? Okay, I've got consent agenda approved. Okay. Board business extended board meetings and retreat planning. So I sent around finalized dates which if memory serves are May 1 and June 5 with the retreat on June 19. And I talked to the VSBA and Susan can come on June 5 to do some communication. She said she was going to get in contact with you as well to hear your thoughts on what it should be. Okay. And so June 5, she's good to go. And then you and I can... Talk about May 1. May 1. I just got some really good stuff today. Okay, perfect. And then we'll also put together a draft retreat schedule and send that around wall in advance so we can all be on the same page about what's on that. So, any other questions on that? Otherwise we'll turn 20 minutes into 20 seconds. Just keep going. Chris, Kaby, Michelle, show up at an empty school at 7.40. We just sat super quick. What was the theme for May 1? June 5 was going to be communication. What were we thinking for May 1? Diversity equity. Yeah. Okay. Can I just ask... Are you hiring someone to come on May 1 to do that? I'm very tired. That's what I was just going to say. You don't have time. Greater on the corner. Greater on the corner. Well, besides that, I'm not sure there's enough time there than anybody that would do training on equity would say you haven't got enough time. Right. I think we have enough materials that we can do a nice opening salva to conversation. Can I ask you a question? I don't think you can get someone internally into who's just had a lot of experience with it. You could? Yeah. Mm-hmm. For future reference, Kaby Johnson is in town and she did do the high school training. Yes. What is the timeframe for having the health curriculum and substance abuse discussion? So we have to plan that either fold into the retreat or make it like a major agenda item on a meeting like tonight when we don't have much else. Yeah. I'm just putting in a vote for it being urgent. Yes. No, it's definitely one of the things we want to... So maybe May 15th? Maybe. Yeah. I would have Mike McCrath there too. Yeah. So maybe May 15th, the reason we didn't extend it is because Libby and I have a BSBA thing. Yeah. But if we don't have anything urgent, I was thinking maybe we could take May 15th and do it or make it an item on the board retreat. Okay. Any other questions about the board meetings or retreat? Do we have times for the retreat? I block out all day for the 19th and we can... We have a meeting technically scheduled that night so we could either do like a noon start and go and do it like after lunch and maybe like have, you know, pizza or something for dinner. Or... Why don't you decide what your agenda is? Decide how much time you need and then send out the plan. I mean, I don't think we want to do more than like a $7 or $8 block regardless. So, yeah. So it's just do we do like an afternoon evening thing or do we like an all day thing and stop at, you know, $4.30 or $5. So we did have public comment but since we have a light agenda and you're here, I'll open it up again quickly if you came here to say something. Yeah. No particular comment. Just your answer. Okay. Thank you. Thanks. So thinking outside board meetings and retreat planning, let me now get more specific stuff together and circulate it after we meet next, which will be, I think after vacation, right? Yeah. I'll be in Florida next Wednesday. Fast. That'll be the first meeting. Maybe we can email somebody before Friday just so we aren't cold. So learning focus and hope and, I'm not here because suggestion on getting a Roxbury person who can certainly, who either could come to all meetings or maybe could just be the Roxbury representative at Roxbury. To be clear, I hope email that she's coaching a soccer team and this is her last time that interferes with the board meeting for the rest of this failure. So, I didn't just say she couldn't have. And before I have to fake that I read this, I'm going to admit that I did not. Super quick. Yes. Super quick board meeting. But I know others did. I just, I just know I've just got to read it on the plane and something came up, but I had to, I had to do something. Like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, it felt weird that we were going to put more readings in front of the board and this is one that has been on my counter in my office for a while with like, posted that said potential board reading. So we pulled this one up again. I went to a guy named Paol Gorski Gorski today. Who has done doing a lot of equity work in Vermont right now. And that was, that was a very good session today in uh, Roland so it was interesting to see him today But just like last time, we can open up to conversation around this article, what popped to us, what we questioned. I have some thoughts about it. One is that my experience with the kids is that it's really working, that this has been reinforced, at least in some. When you say it, what do you mean? I don't know how many years. Just basically teaching children that they don't have fixed potentials or fixed mindsets, that they actually are, that everybody fails before they succeed effectively. And I don't know how many years this has been part of what our teachers have been working with our kids on, but I feel like it has been. So I don't know how the adults are integrating into their own development, but they are teaching our children. And so my experience with the children is it's amazingly powerful. So I hope that our educators are also taking that to heart, too, or that they're feeling that same power for their own growth. Well, I guess that was going to be my question. How well do you think this point of view is being carried out by the faculty? Interesting you say that. Because one of the things Mr. Gorski said today was he was talking about a deficit mindset, and that often being a reason for inequitable systems and how that shows itself. So oftentimes, it shows itself when people say things like, when educators, with all good intentions behind them, and I'm not going to, but with all good intentions, we'll say things like, well, a child can reach, we can get to reach their own potential. So who's defining that, right? So right there, you're already in a deficit bucket, potentially deficit bucket. Or the idea of they don't do their homework, so they must be lazy. When you start giving excuses that blame kids or blame something about the kids' life rather than looking at it deeper into the system and structure around it. What would you need to get your homework done? So every one of our teachers, I bet money that every one of our teachers says, yes, I have a growth mindset, and I teach growth mindset to my kids, and I have my growth mindset myself. And we also have this mentality, not from all teachers, but we have a deficit mentality from some. And we actually, as a leadership team, I promise I won't come in here this entire conversation, we did a check, like we did an exit ticket one day, and the exit ticket was something along the lines of, respond to the statement, all kids will learn because of what we do. And so educators responded in many different ways, and the leadership team put their responses on in a continuum. So now we have this learning progression of where teachers' belief systems are along this mindset. With the end, one end being, all kids will learn because of what we do. We will not allow any child to fail. We will make the structure and system in place to work with every child to, every kid has a right to fail. Basically, the idea that I can't drag the horse, what's that saying about the horse and the trough? The water? You can't bring the horse to water, but you can't make him drink. Exactly, yeah. So we have this like, wide, and granted, we are more top heavy. That's where we want to be. We're more top heavy, but we still have some belief that I can't, if a kid doesn't want to do it, I can't make them, you know, like that mentality, which is that deficit mindset. So it's an interesting article. But outing anyone, I mean, is you did this with your whole staff, your whole team. Did you notice any trends in terms of grade levels? Yes.  The end size is too small. We analyzed it in multiple ways. We analyzed it by school. We analyzed it by grade level or content level. I was surprised by the results for a couple pieces. I mean, my kids are at the younger end of that spectrum. And I got to say, I don't hear it. I don't see that coming out of, I mean, I hear criticism of my children, but it's not based on that, right? It's other things. I can tell you traditionally, elementary and primary teachers will say, if they're not at the end of, yes, they will learn because of what we do. They are at the position of, all kids will achieve at their level. I will get them to wherever they will, you know, where we're going. Right, that's what an elementary teacher will say. If they're not here, that's where they are. A high school teacher, if they're not here, will say, every kid has an opportunity to fail, right? I can only do so much. So there's definitely themes there. And that's not just with our school district. No, no, no, of course not. That's like across school. That kind of seems to recognize that there's more maturity going on in high school. So assigning more responsibility to the students. For their own failure. I'm not agreeing with it. I'm just saying, that would be an odd thing to say. A really odd thing to say about a six-year-old. Right? Yes, that's true. I can see the words coming out of the map of a high school teacher. Yeah. Yeah, we sometimes forget in high school, they're older, you forget that they're still kids, right? They totally are, yeah. Especially some of our kids, they're pretty darn articulate kids. So it's interesting. I mean, how do you deal with failure? Because failure is, I mean, it's trite, but you learn a lot more from failure, oftentimes in success.  Somebody needs to help you. Do that learning. If you fail, it can be devastating. And you begin to think you can't do it. But sometimes if you fail, you can be devastating if you don't know how to fail. If you don't know how to mouse back from the failure and grow from the failure, as you can see. You're right. If you're kind of taught that success is the only result and maybe the only result you're used to, then how do you deal with failure? Well, so that's what this was about. It was a fixed mindset. If you encounter failure, you think that it's because of your inherent qualities that you've reached, you've been told you're smart and if you're not getting it, then maybe you're not really smart. Because you were never told that, oh, it's all right. Sometimes you need to work harder at this or you might need to ask for help in this area if you're not getting it the first time around and figuring out avenues to grow. And so I really felt like that's what this whole thing is about, is how do you approach those challenges and how do our teachers approach those challenges? Yeah, but from my very just quick read of this and from other times I've read her, I think there's another flip thing to it. Sometimes it's not, sometimes I think with a fixed mindset, it's not so much that you can't deal with failure. It's that you put a cap on your own limitations that you operate within a very defined set of expectations and you don't know how to push them because you kind of feel that you don't have the ability to fail and bounce back, that you just, I'm only gonna do so well, I'm only gonna do so much of this or I can only do so well at this. And you don't have, and it becomes reinforcing where you, therefore you just don't push yourself. It's not that you fail, it's just that you don't, you hit what you think is a wall and you stop before you get to it. Right. Well, getting twos kind of repeatedly over many years can also hit you that way too. It's the same, it's a message of not overcoming. It's a very interesting message that happens. So I have a question. So how, you know, when I talk with, so my wife's really, and Carol Dweck in this whole train of thinking and her friends who are teachers or administrators are also very, like she is like the go-to person in education right now, it seems, in terms of like this. In terms of mindsets. In terms of mindsets. But are there teachers who are like, yeah, this is kind of, so I'm not exposed to them, but I imagine there are some teachers who are like, yeah, I don't prescribe to this. I'm not sold on this. Are there, do you encounter that ever? To, no. To growth versus fixed mindset. No, no teacher will tell you. No. Okay, I haven't encountered that. They will, like it goes back to what we were saying before. It's masked in different ways, right? So I pulled up the proficiency skill that we made and these are absolute common, like we didn't make these up as a leadership team. We took them right off the paper from what teachers said. So on this end of the scale, we got some of the evidence we got. All kids learning at high levels is an impossible task. 100% is unrealistic. Outside factors are to blame for students not reaching high levels of learning. So as soon as you start blaming something else in a student's life, other than the structures and systems that we create in schools, then already you're at a fixed mindset in some way. Like if you connected to Dweck's work for students. The next level up was we can get many kids there, but not all. Students have to be ready to learn before we teach them. That's another elementary line. That's a big time. That's an elementary line. Labels are necessary to get students the help they need. The students can, so the next one up was students can learn to their level. There is no one definition of high levels of learning that could match every student. Subjective levels of achievement are reached through modifications and accommodations alone. Then the next one. Wait, what was that one? Say it again. Subjective levels of achievement are reached through modifications and accommodations alone. So that means students couldn't reach whatever bar we set. That's where the subjective comes in without modifications and accommodations. The next one up was together we can move more students to high levels of learning. A system of collective responsibility will work to get more students learning at high levels. The system is working for most students. And then at the end we had no challenges too big for our team. Labels are not needed to define students. We will do whatever it takes to make high levels of learning happen for all students. So we had a gamut of responses to this exit ticket. So that comment that says there's no single definition of a high level of learning is interesting. What is your reaction to that? So that was a big debate. Because that's like, so when you become an educational leader, you stand on pedestals, right? That is my pedestal that I stand on. That is the one that I want to get us, Montpelier-Roxbury, to all students learning at high levels of learning. But we had to talk about what does that mean, right? So it means, so in my mind you have to have some sort of drop. So it means that a kid has achieved proficiency in all of the requirements to get to some sort of secondary learning and above, right? So they've learned, they've gotten to that point. So it's usually algebra two. They have quality essay writing. They're speaking and listening is good. They know how to find information from it. You know, like all of those kind of things. But some teachers, right? Well, not everybody's gonna take AP classes. Well, no, yeah, you're right. Not everybody is gonna take it. Like that's not a definition of high level learning for all students. So we had lots of conversation around that.  What does that mean? There's a very small percentage of students who have significant needs that have a different plan, that have a different plan for them. And the percentage of those students that we should really be like, that kind of taken out of the all is about 2% of our population. Like it's five students in our entire school district, right? And so when you start thinking about that piece, that's where all the labeling comes in, right? And well, the kids on an IP, they're like, you can't possibly expect them to get to algebra too. It's like, yeah, I can. So we really have some work to do around this piece. That's why I've spent so much time, we've spent so much time this year talking about culture. And what is it? What are our practices and procedures and structures and systems in the school that are helping us get to where they are or hindering us from getting to where we need to be? Would you mind maybe flushing that out a little bit more? I think when I was reading this, I was thinking to myself, like you've talked about system changes and you're like, here's an idea that could be implemented within the district to accomplish something. Like how would that implementation come into action? I can tell you what happened just... We were talking about this continuum right now, like how do we get everybody to one side or the other. Oh, we're working on that, yeah. So I can tell you one piece of evidence that is already starting to shift that happened just last week at in-service at UES. So UES has a lot of curriculum work to do. That's not a secret to anybody. We've all talked about the level of curriculum work that needs to be done there. And they've gotten a lot done in math this year. So they're almost to a spot that's relatively good in math curriculum. And I'd add Roxbury on to that. But this is just a UES example. And at the staff meeting, they have their priority standard and what Ryan had them do was say, okay, so here are your priority standards. When we say it's a priority standard, what we're saying is we are guaranteeing all kids will reach proficiency in these standards. And the list per grade level is six to eight standards. So we've thrown some standards out as nice to know or they're learning targets within a bigger standard, but we're certainly not taking the entire third grade common core in math and saying we're gonna guarantee this entire document because that would take probably three years of schooling in order to get all kids math. It's just not possible, right? So they pick the priority standards for each grade level in math and then Ryan said, okay, so if you were gonna pace this out throughout a year, like how long would it take? Like here are your six priority standards in math, like pace that out, how long is it gonna take to teach kids place value in second grade for your standard, right? And so all the grade levels did that and they all did it in a separate chart paper and then they put it all up together, okay? And one particular grade level, and I'm not gonna single them out because that would be mean, one particular grade level looked at their chart and looked significantly different than the other charts because there were things like, well, we don't start any new learning for the first month and a half of school or we have multiple things coming into, multiple like outside art projects coming into our grade level. So we're not really sure, we'll give place value two weeks, but it was really different than the other grade levels, but they put it up and without anybody saying any word, the grade level said, hold on, took their chart down and then went and had another discussion around, oh, maybe we can't take a month and a half of note, like, wait, hold on, you don't do that? And they started talking to their other colleagues. And so right there, there's a shift in thinking already happening that like, oh yeah, we're required by law to ensure these standards. And so that's a big shift, that's a huge shift for UES. That curriculum work is the beginning. So we need to make sure that we have a K-12 articulated prioritize standards and everything else bumps off of that. So that was just the principal and the teachers. So Mike Berry was not involved in- He wasn't involved, he was involved in creating the curriculum document. He wasn't involved in that particular in-service. But he's been very integral in doing the curriculum work itself. So she used that as an example of a culture shift and more of an adoption, a cultural adoption of the principles you're trying to get across. I mean, I'm trying to understand, I think your question was, what are the tools you're using to make the transition? So I can talk about this at nauseam for a long time.  So when you have these prioritize standards, right, and we can say these are the ones we're guaranteeing, so now our shift of how we do tier two and tier three intervention, so that learning isn't the variable, but time is the variable. Right now, time is the constant, like I have two weeks to teach this or whatever, and learning is the variable. They may or may not get it in that two weeks. So we wanna flip that, and we wanna have systems and structures in place to do it. Right now, currently the way it is, Jim's a pretty loud teacher. He's got some kids with some reading struggles, so he goes to the interventionist and says, hey, take my kids for, and the interventionist says, sure, I'll take them for three times a week for 30 minutes a day, and we'll do this program. Well, we've been doing that for years. How is it working for us? Right, it's not changing what's happening. So now what we say is, I'm the interventionist, and Jim comes to me and he can say, show me your formative assessments around the prioritize standard, because that's how I'm using the limited resource, the limited human resource we have in intervention right now, to target that, because we're guaranteeing that, right? And so that kid might need more time, they might need more specialized skill instruction, they might need to break it down differently, and so we get our interventionist really skilled at teaching our priorities and our universal skills, and that provides more opportunities for kids, right? So we can actually guarantee things happening. That's just an example, right? PLC time, professional learning time, or professional learning communities that our teachers are currently in, and all four of our buildings, we have these, they are now gonna be focused on, here's our prioritize standard, what's our common formative assessment? How are we looking at our data? What's our instructional cycle look like? Hey, Bridget, what activity worked for you? Cause you got, your kids knocked it out of the park. Like, my kids didn't, so what did you do? Like, let me come watch you, or even let's swap kids, because I can do some enrichment with these kids, but you did really well with that, so why don't you take these kids for the second time around? So now we can start to have those conversations before without a curriculum with the prioritize standards, teachers teaching, like you'd walk into four different fourth grade classrooms and you'd see four different math units going on at one time. So the question becomes what's tight and what's loose? What's tight is you're teaching to the curriculum that we've all agreed upon, right? That's tight. You're giving formative assessments based on the prioritize standards. How you teach it, that's so loose for me, cause I want Ryan to teach it different than Tina, so that they can have a conversation about what really works, you know? Like, that's where like professional growth happens with teachers when they can start talking about that. But the timeframe in which they're teaching it, the what they're teaching in terms of content, that's the tight piece. So all of these things start to stem off of each other, and that's when we start to narrow that gap of learning. So one of the sentences I liked was those who had a growth mindset said that they knew that the student could do better, encouraged the student to try harder, and gave the student specific suggestions for studying and learning strategies. So I didn't get it.  So that issue of what do I need to do to learn better? Somebody's, kids are learning how to learn. So somebody needs to give you a clue along the way about how do I study for this if I don't know how? Or how do I read this so that I can get out of it what I need to know? And that's a biggie too, I think. Just pulling up one other doc that we're kind of working on, so this is like total draft. I can't remember where I put it. When your kid comes home with a two and your kid comes home with a three, we actually have a proficiency scale that's gonna be tied to it. So you know what that means, right? The kid knows what that means, and it means the same for you two, right? No matter what classroom you're in.  That's the thing. So all of these things are intricately tied together. And once we have this piece in place, like I, because we do, I already know we do, but we don't have the system in place yet, right? And I've talked about that before. I'm not gonna add people to a system that's broken. So now we can start transforming our system a bit more, and then we can really see where our holes are for that piece. Can you expound upon that behaved or not behaved piece?  It's so hard as a teacher, because you kind of also connected to not learning. Let's say you're chronically getting your stuff in late, or missing it occasionally, and you get, you see in the provisions these scores, you get docked, and kid knows everything they're supposed to know, but they just don't play by the rules. Yeah. Well, and that's kind of why I went back to the failing thing, because I think it's, because there's a lot of actually very high achieving people who have very fixed mindsets. Oh yeah. Oh yeah. And it actually kind of goes to, you know, kind of the male, female, and the workplace thing. I mean, a lot of men tend to, even though there's a couple of lower grades and worse academics, they get into certain work environments, and they feel they can do jobs that maybe they can't do, and therefore they get into them. And it's, you know, there's been some studies that that kind of plays into some of the imbalance in the workplace. So like a fixed mindset and not doing well or failing are not always synonymous. I mean, it sometimes comes into those later places where you get someone who appears to be very high achieving and then gets into a challenge situation and that's where the fixed mindset gets in the way. Oftentimes that's a challenge with proficiency based grading too. That a kid who's always played the game of school really well and got an A's has twos, right? Because they're not in proficiency yet. So this is the, this is like total draft. So I don't have it to give out yet. But these are like the stages. So what we're working on right now is what are our focus stages for an effective MTSS model. So the first one is formalized essential learning that gets into the standard work that I just talked about, right? And so what we're doing is we're like our goals and what are the bulleted things that need to happen along that? You know we can't see that. No, I know. I'm just like pointing here. And then the next thing is specialized learning for the faculty. What's the learning the faculty need to do in order to understand this formalized essential learning? Right, because that's on us. We have to give them the, we have to build their capacity to do that. So we need to provide that for them. We being the leadership team and then what are the potential needs of our system in order to make that happen? And then for each of these pieces of our focus stages we're gonna have our own efficiency scale attached to it. So we're building this right now. So when I keep saying to you, we're gonna bring something to you. We're building this right now. The second one is collaborative practices and collective responsibilities. That's where all the PLC work comes in. That's where the data management system comes in. All of that piece. Time. Could you like do an example like horizontally? Sure. Collaborative practices are collective responsibility. So one of the things that we is in here is instructional cycles occurring around our priority standards. So the priority standards that are there, right? And so if we move over to specialized learning for the faculty, these are just like predictions. They may need some work on collaborative goal setting based on data analysis. So they may not need to look at a whole bunch of data that their kids are getting from formative assessments and say, what is it that we can do to make really small, tangible goals for kids to take the next step? And then a potential need is that data management system so that they can pull up data really quickly and don't have to fumble through papers to do it, right? And that I can do sorts at the district level and Mike can do sorts and principals can do sorts really quickly. So that's just an example of like going across, right? The next one is timely system to remediate, intervene and enrich. Right there, we need faculty learning on what those three things are, right? So remediate is the tier three. They've got lots of gaps in learning and they're the universal skills whereas intervene is they're, they need more time with that priority standard and those things are very different. And then to like, we can't forget kids who need enrichment as well, right? Around the priority standards. So in there it's, we need clearly defined roles and tiered intervention and with that, we need to increase our instructional capacity of our intervention as big time and another, and then potential needs might be increased our human resources and core content intervention. So it's kind of working its way across in that way, does that make sense? And then the last one here is high quality first instruction. So in that is we need articulated instructional framework that we can say welcome to Montpelier Roxbury. This is what we believe is high quality instruction and this is how we're gonna train you to get there. And then we have the indicators with that is the connection to the supervision evaluation system and then we're gonna need a lot of intentional professional learning around that piece. So this is what we're building out and what this is not a one year thing. This is a five, six year thing and schools need to come in where they are, right? So again, it goes to tight loose. This isn't a choice, that's the tight part but Pam at Main Street might say we really need to dig into this collaborative practice piece. So that's gonna be our focus at Main Street. I don't know if that's what she would choose but that's like, let's just say she does that. So then at the district level, we can say, okay, what are we gonna do with our professional resources to ensure that we build the capacity at Main Street that they have the resources, the funding, the time and all that kind of thing to make that happen because it fits within our overall goals and we kind of control the money pop, right? So that's all tighter and more defined. So I have thought in the past that the Montpelier faculty, as good as they are and I believe they're very good, have not had quite so specific a curriculum. So how are they doing with that? They're good at developing. Oh, they haven't been pushed to do yet. So I'm talking from the elementary, middle school level. They're very good at developing and talking. We're starting to formalize on paper. However, they have not actually put it into practice, like put a tight curriculum into practice yet. They have curricular stuff that they're doing of course but it's just very different regardless or depending on which classroom you go into. So with all the essential work you're doing around the curriculum, getting your curriculum down for let's say math, is there ever time to go work on the curriculum for part or? Yeah, they're doing that work too. They are, or the curriculum for like social studies which is so hard sometimes. Social studies they haven't, we haven't touched at because the state adopted a year and a half ago, two years ago, C3, which is a new standards document and it's like the worst written, I mean, I don't think the standards are bad in it but it's like a very hard, that's gonna be the last work we do quite honestly. Art, PE, music, all of the, whenever Mike is in front of the whole staff doing an in-service, they're working on their curriculum as well. And we're working on how do we get it vertically articulated across, that's much harder than you think and that's not unique to us. It's hard in every district to get our teachers all sitting down and talking across K-12. Well I mean vertical and social studies is brutal. Social studies is one of the hardest curriculum areas to do this work in. It hands down because you get into debates of things like as an American what do you have to know, right? And it gets to content versus case study, it's hard. Social studies is hard. That's why their document is so bad. Yeah, it is because they couldn't make those decisions so they're like we'll just let the schools make those decisions, thank you very much. To be noted, to go back to Steve's point about the arts, there's some discussion in here about how the brain, the brain growing, the scientific basis for the growth lines have been brain growing new connections and I was thinking about how so much of that research involved music, yet in some ways music is one of those areas where there's so often that reaction of you're talented. Awesome. Yeah. You're not. Yeah. It's a very, right? It's a good language too. And for a long time. Yeah, it's a good language. Yeah. Whether you're enabled, whether you can do it or not. I was told by the third grade music teacher that I had no musical talent and she'd stop taking it. Oh, don't tell me that. And then I did. And that's a good point though because when we talk about growth and fixed mindset, every one of us, like I'll say, I have a pretty growth mindset, right? I make a whole lot of mistakes and I admit to it and then I learn from it, right? But I am so fixed in certain areas. Art, for me, I don't even know if a teacher is that, like I don't want to be better at art. Like I have a very fixed mindset. I'm fine with my stick figures. Thank you very much. You know, so we all have areas where they're growth and fixed, right? And it's not. Well, you don't have to put yourself that high. Yeah. And like. That helps our relationship. There's no competition for us. Yeah, and let's be honest. I mean, to some extent, the growth mindset thing is a bit of a fiction. That's a helpful tool. I mean, you just, yeah, there are, I see it was running all the time. I mean, there are just people who, without training much at all, can go out and effortlessly at a six minute pace. I'm sure. Huh? I think it's a little bit different though that you're talking about racism. But I think even, yeah, I mean, not everyone is going to be an Einstein, as it was pointed out in here. Oh, you're going on the low end of the low end. A deficit model. A deficit model. But, you know, people are going to excel in different areas and have different interests. And the reasons you talked about those guys excelling just before with the fixed mindset is an example of them. They have the growth mindset, right? No, no, no, no. I'm talking about the example you gave of people with the fixed mindset guys excelling, who didn't do well in school excelling. They're beneficiaries of societal power structures and gender dynamics that have advantaged men over women. Oh, I totally agree with that. I totally agree with that. I totally agree with that. That's not like, I don't view that as a very good example of how a fixed mindset can help you excel. Those are other societal elements that help them excel. No, there are definitely other excelling elements, but there are definitely some gender studies that, and I think this is part of kind of how we, and I think it plays into those societal things where oftentimes women are more likely to say things, if they don't do all the tests, that it's because they weren't smart enough or as the men will say, yeah, they didn't try hard. So the men are the ones with the fixed, the growth mindset you're saying generally. Well, I'm saying that fixed mindset, that learning how to fail, kind of going back to learning how to fail, is important to a growth mindset, that getting past that point, that you can be high achieving in an academic setting and have a fixed mindset, and you can be low or medium achieving and have a growth mindset or at least not have the impediments. And I think you're right, I think it's societal messages we send to men and women that I think it probably goes to some bigger issues about how our education system is set up and some gender-based disease there, too, because right now women are performing much better in school and they're going to college at much higher rates and that's not yet reflected in the workplace power structure. I was listening to a podcast today and the card down back from Rutland and the person on the podcast said something like, success and failure are the same coin. Like it's not, those two things go hand in hand with learning, which is really interesting. And I always think about this thing, these kind of ideas of how are we going about our own learning?  So my kid really, my oldest really struggles in math and had the I hate math, I can't do it kind of thing.  We sat him down with YouTube videos, showing him how synapses form across multiple tries. And you know, like, he could talk to you about brain synapses because that's where we went with him, but it changed his mentality about math. You know, like, okay, I get this, like things are far apart in my brain right now and they need to come closer together. And I think it's, I think that's really helpful for kids to know, especially, well, I'm not even gonna say that, kids who are really good at playing school need to know that because oftentimes the things that they're rewarded for their synapses being really close to might not be the things they need to be talked to, you know?  There's a beautiful TED talk that you probably know that some educational professional talking about using skateboarding as the explanation of this and he's showing the skateboarders in a park missing the trick, missing the trick, missing the trick, falling on their butts.  And he goes, and then one day they nail it. And then we give them an A. And he goes, that is, what is wrong with that picture, right, and that's how we reward children in a sense. And you know, you fail, you fail, but if you think of it like a skateboarder, it just clicks and you just have to keep trying. And I can't remember what it was, but it's just a beautiful thing. And skateboard culture doesn't have that sense if I can't do that trick, right? Right. I just want to say one thing about, to give props to the teachers in this district, I have a daughter who struggles a lot literacy and it's not in her vocabulary that she can't do it. And it's just not part of, you know, it's hard. It's hard, you know, it's discouraging. It's just, she does not say I can't do this, ever. It's great. And that means that she's never been getting that message. Right, right. So it's, you know, I think that it'll, she will overcome the fact that you said that time is the variable is really important. Yes. And when we think about the continuity of the curriculum through the grades, you know how important that's going to be as you keep your two up to the end, right? And then you move into the next grade and you still got that, you started at the deficit, right? So anyway, just, I mean, I think that there's a lot of great stuff going on. Yeah. You know, even if it's not fully permeated, right? Yeah. And we, and I agree with you, Steve. There was, it was during, I wish Michelle were here, because she's, she heard this, during the principal interview with our two students who were on the interview committee, they, without talking to each other or anything, it was one of the candidates said, what's great about your school? And both of them talked about the exact same teacher in a different context about how this teacher sat with them during that summative week, you know, where kids, there's a typical school and one guy said, I sat with that teacher every single day and she got me through it. Like she, she sat there with me for six hours a day for five straight days. And then the other students said this, yeah, that same teacher, I would have never taken this AP class, but she said I could do it. And so I tried it and I love it. And I'm thinking about going to school for it now.  To touch upon what these three were, we're saying, I feel like welcoming failure and teaching our students to welcome failure and learn from failure and put yourself out there and be okay with failing and understand that failing is part of making ourselves better and realizing a better version of ourselves is something that, I think we talk about regularly fostering even, helping students foster their interests and passions. It's really important, but really kind of looking at it head on as, failure is an important part of the learning process. I think it comes in with music and in foreign language especially because you really put yourself out there. Other people are hearing you. And so if you put yourself out there and you fail, you pronounce something incorrectly, you hit a wrong note, whatever, it's really apparent, but it's those opportunities that allow us to learn and allow us to grow and allow us to pronounce those words and string together those sentences and other languages and play those songs and hit those notes. And how are we modeling it as adults? How often do we admit to our shortcomings? It just takes myself on a regular basis right now. Or we can get out of your comfort zone. Yeah. The kids are like, let's dance or try the hulu if I'm right, I ain't trying the hulu. I think that's a wrong message. I think it's a hulu. Yeah. Anyway, good conversation. Although singing sometimes it might be okay to have that. I don't know. Yeah. I can grab that. It smells like my son. Yeah, I thought that you re-educated it. I could probably do the re-educating of you. Sat in the room with me for half an hour. You want to move on to policy? Yes. Do you want to jump in? Yeah, so I brought this to Jim's attention. This came from my principals, particularly Pam and Mike in the upper grades. So we have a high population of students who are identifying as transgender. And one of the things they're coming to, and this actually is happening a little bit at the elementary school as well, they're coming to the administration asking for a school to call them by different names. Which is absolute, and our school, our social workers have been working on a policy to ensure that that's, or a procedure to ensure that that's okay. And our school staff has jumped to the, I mean they do it regularly. And so, but one of the challenges that we were talking about in our leadership team was, is the parent, so where does it go for official school business, like progress reports, report cards, that kind of thing. So, and if both parents are married or divorced or they're not living together, or they're just not around and progress reports go to both entities and one parent doesn't know. And so then it's an opportunity for a conversation and that kind of thing. But when I was talking to Jim about it, I think we're doing the right thing right now with this and following student wishes and that kind of idea. However, I could foresee and the principals could foresee if we would like to request the board to write a policy around this. And there's a voluntary policy on the VSBA website. We'd like to request the board to dig into that and to perhaps have a policy because we have the right procedure in place, but we don't have the board backing from it right now. So we feel like it would put us in a stronger position for supporting all students and what they're doing if we had a board policy around this particular issue. And so this is an issue that strikes me as one that isn't necessarily specific to transgender students. Is that correct even though that might be where you're seeing the issues right now? Because if you have a student name, you know, if you have a student who's not transgender, let's just take an example of a student named Samantha who wants to go by the name Terry. Wouldn't that be a similar situation? Good, we're not experiencing that right now. I know we're not experiencing that, but I'm wondering if the policy should be broader. I think that's something for the board to discuss. I would say that's something the board to discuss. We're experiencing it with students who are working through their gender identity and that piece. That's what we're experiencing. We're going through this in my work and taking care of transgender people in the community and in our own employment, too. And it's a very different whole. It's actually even different from your policies on LGBT, your broader policies, you know, working with a transgender person is actually separate from recognizing and respecting there's definitely a more public identity change. Wait, can you go into that a little bit more? Well, the healthcare needs are different from people going. So in my work, that's what we're focused on, is the healthcare needs. But we have employees undergoing transition, too, and who would wish to go by a different pronoun. And we have other employees who struggle with that. So we're working on it real hard entirely. I don't know what that... A policy would also state it so, theoretically, everybody would know it if they read the policies. So if we say we're going to honor a child who says, I wanna be called X, and in honoring that, we send all official documents by that name, it's up front. So if you as a parent didn't know, well, we have the policy that said it's not our responsibility to tell you it, we've said we're going to send them in this way. You know what I mean? It's written down. Now there's nothing written down. It also helps us protect the kiddo, too, who may not recognize, in that moment, of all the different legal pieces that are connected to that as well. So I think it... And I did take a look today at the VSBA model policy on this issue, and it really did focus almost entirely on this name piece. The Title IX laws help things can be proactively and reactively changed with names, who has the authority, the child, the parent, et cetera. Who does have the authority? Well, Libby's right, and again, I'm not the lawyer or the expert on the front, but from what I read and from what I understand, the district should honor whatever the student chooses to be called by. And then let's see, I think it does... It's up to the parents, still, to come back with the legal documents, I think. Libby, I'm sure you know more about it than I do, but... I don't at this point. I mean, this is new for us. Well, it's legally, it's a process for changing. Yeah, yeah. Until that policy would apply to any age child? Yes, and... To the child's wishes, well, I think that's what this board would wanna discuss once everybody has something in front of them, yeah. And what if you have a situation where there is a tension between the desires of the child and the desires of the parents or the parent? That's gonna have to be addressed. Part of the policy. I said if you have a tension... Yeah, I can pick what you say. It's going out to be addressed directly. In my work situation, we haven't yet had a child that we had to take care of with this. It's always been an adult making the decision, but I can imagine. It's even more than name, even so much as Sam could be a boy or a girl. It's about the pronoun, in my experience, it's about the pronouns that people use. He or she is very important to the person undergoing transition. And getting that right is really important as well.  A challenge. It seems like this probably goes very smoothly until you have a question of trust between parents or trust between children and parents in terms of privacy. Yeah. And then all of a sudden, everything falls apart in terms of how you communicate. Yeah.  Okay, what are we going to do here? Okay, let's all use that term. And then it starts to fall apart when people are nervous about their own safety or privacy. That's true. Thus far, our amazing principals and social workers have helped families have the conversation, which is what we want them to do. Of course. So thus far, it's worked out. It's been a little anxiety producing in the beginning, but the conversations are generally supported by our amazing staff. It's as it is possible, a child would feel more comfortable having this discussion at school than they would at home because they know what the reaction's going to be. So they have it at school and then home. Yeah. Sometime they have to have it at home. They're minors, so at some point, they just have to go home. Yeah. Is there anything else besides the name as far as that the policy that would be good to address in the policy? I would want Pam and Mike here and maybe the social workers to engage in that question with you because they are closer to the front than I am. So I would want them to, or I would want to have a good in-depth conversation with them before I talked about it. And do we have, we already have, gender neutral bathrooms, gender neutral locker rooms, et cetera, right? Mm-hmm. Actually, because this was on the agenda, it did come up and I asked Mike, so I would...


What's up everybody of the mangoos? You are awesome at the day We're talking some over prime cherry temper to let me know in the comments of the August update video that sully will be Streaming the updated version of the game on August 28th That'll that'll be tomorrow if you're watching this the day I came out and that'll be at 4 p.m. Pacific time That's 7 p.m. Eastern and 11 p.m. GMT the game will be devs against mods It will be streamed by a Sarajog I'll put a link to their twitch in the video description below if you guys What I'm doing today though is taking a look at the last update video They released to point out a few things that I noticed I don't normally do these video breakdowns because there usually isn't enough information in them for any kind of content That isn't just wild speculation, but there really is some interesting shit going on in the over prime one Also don't really cover over prime nearly as much as fault or predecessor mainly because I'm Kind of lazy and can't really be bothered until I see a coming-to-steam announcement I do keep an eye on it though as they do have by far the biggest hero roster multiple maps to play on and multiple game modes The one lane 3v3 mode they had was a ton of fun The map featured in this video however is not one that I've seen from them There also seems to be some new abilities and mechanics for Kalari that I'll point out I'm not a Kalari made by any means though So please let me know what you think of her in the comments below Also, I'll have a link to the original video in the description so you can watch this at full 4k resolution If you want now, let's get to it. We start off with this bush that Kalari and several are both hiding in It looks like entering the bush puts you in the shadow plane and makes you invisible much like bushes do in most Isometric mobas the but this bush in particular reminds me of the bushes in the game hood where you're somehow able to hide your entire body And ankle length flowers these at least then extend over Kalari's head. So this one makes a little more sense The bush is situated on the outer edge of one of the side lanes I think it seems like there's more bushes around these side lanes Not sure if there's any in mid lane or anything And but speaking of mid lane, there's my girl the Fay holding it down Now we get a lock-on targeting reticle that goes red when Murdock is in range The e ability is activated and Kalari leaps straight to him And we should she does some damage There's no frames between the bush and the attack which leads me to believe that this is like a shadow slip type maneuver Kind of like countless's shadow slip and maybe there possibly will be some iframes allowing you some outplay mechanics might be pretty fun We see the old faithful right-click dagger throw here as Kalari is attacking we see a notification for a back attack from the looks of it attacking a hero's back adds five damage at level one Pretty cool mechanic that I think suits Kalari's roguishness quite well, and here's where shit gets real interesting There's a teleporter that takes you from one side of the map to the other It looks to be situated on the extreme ends of the river And I'm not sure if this is like a one-way portal or if it obeys Pac-Man physics And you can just shift back and forth between the two sides of the map Kind of neat, but I don't know how I feel about that much mobility the map does seem pretty wide though So maybe it's needed And here we see the first activation of Kalari's ultimate instead of a long-range global alt It's a very short range series of slashes that appear to lock both Kalari and her target in place an Ultimate like this really cements Kalari is a duelist like free damage in a 1v1 is awesome But take it from a Richter player locking yourself down during a team fight as a recipe for disaster Even if you're locking yourself and somebody else down and dealing damage to them Kalari just being static in a team fight She's just gonna get shit on it finally we get another look at the ultimate as well as seeing the shadow well in action Each slashes dealing 57 damage and none of the slashes crit So I'm guessing the ultimate allows you to deal several auto attacks at 40% damage that can't crit I personally think that a global ultimate is just always better, but is it better for Kalari? I don't know like I said, I don't play her a lot. So let me know what you guys think And That's it guys I mainly wanted to get the word out about the stream on the 28 so you guys can check that out if you want I hope you enjoyed today's video But for now, this is the man who's signing off for you guys. Have a good one man go


Well, afternoon everybody my name's Chilt East and we'll talk about selecting and managing the site where you strawberries will be planted. And that is an important step and sometimes we'll just use what we got and sometimes you know sometimes I work with pecans and different thing crops and somebody say well I got some land here that nothing will grow on what do you think about planting blueberries on it or strawberry you know pecans or something it's like well if you got a hard time growing bermudagrass we're going to have a hard time growing another crop so good land is good land and poor land is poor land, but here's a few things to keep in mind when selecting a site, our fruit crops strawberries grow best in full sun. Any shade is more shade than I want sun from daylight to dark is what I'm after. If we can increase the hours of daylight, I would internal drainage on the saw. So it's we got to have it where the water drains off but I'm talking about draining through the saw these heavy clay I work with a lot of heavy clays well I don't like them. A lot well in a drought I guess they're good but usually I don't I don't like that because they hold too much water. But we still use them and we'll talk about add an organic matter to them and those are things that can help low line areas not only could water flow to that area. But that's where the cold air sells. So if we could avoid the low line areas and you don't have to be the highest point in the county but if you were the highest point. If someone else was lower lower than you that's where the cold air would drain to just be higher than your neighbor. And so planting on the uphill side with the cold would settle to the low places that's important. Think about your irrigation source if you're using municipal water or a whale, but we obviously have to irrigate and that's what hurts us sometimes when we go to do our crop rotation is having a field that will have access to water in but obviously we got to have it. It's not always practical but if we had a windbreak on the north side that sometimes can help. It's we always want to say location location location but you it sometimes it's not as important with a pick your own or something strawberries is a good crop that people will come out for but if they can see you from a main road. And then a lot of times and we do it we make more production but we can put that parking lot in a field you know and we're giving up field space for parking, but we got to think about that before we plan as little things like that. I took this picture this person it wasn't strawberries but planting a garden here every year this is in my hometown. Well I can tell you that corner it plowed it up planted every single year. And that corner of the garden that's what I would consider a poor site and I should have some summertime pictures I could show it's always poor crops and that end of the garden. So anything we can do to fix it where that water would not stand there is worth doing. Things we can do to improve the site that we have would just mentioned raised beds for strawberry produce we put a lot of vegetables on raised beds. The higher the bed the better I like it it takes a house of a tractor to make a tall bed and you got to have the right equipment will get to that later but six or eight inches I've seen them taller. But but that would be a good thing. We want to saw test well in advance of planning. I mean a lot of times we're saw testing now for for this these the fall crop what we're planting this October, and we're going to line if we need it now so give it time to work. And it always stress planting cover crops at this time of year is wherever my strawberries will be planted this October I would be planting a cover crop. Well, this month, and we'll talk more about cover crops in the next few slides. Jesse mentioned crop rotation, if at all possible. I mean I wish I had three or four fields that I could rotate around to but again let's go back to the parking and distance you are from your water source and can you see it from the highway or you know that that sometimes interferes with our crop rotation. That's a big deal if at all possible to rotate, and we can grow other crops watermelons or pumpkins or something where the strawberries were. It seems crazy but even if we did not have a cash crop like the watermelons or pumpkins that cover crop is improving that soil do not let it just lay there until I'm ready to plant strawberries back again. When we're planting if at all possible you can run the rose north and south allows more light on the plant. I do not want rose running up and down a hill and I'll have more washing so sometimes I have to plant with the contour of the land so that depends. You can get strawberries in containerized or bear root and bear root is cheaper but I really like the containerized grow well. Here's some equipment on the left really we use that in high tunnels it doesn't make as tall of a bed the one on the right is a better that that is capable of making a tall bed. We have some of the lot of strawberry farmers by their own and that's probably not a bad idea. We have some of this equipment. And our experiment stations that you can can rent for from the experiment stations and some extension offices. They're in charge of loaning this out to farmers or you got to have a tractor and you got to pay for the plastic in the drip line you just get the equipment, but that could be a savings to someone just getting started in the business. And there are people that will come make the beds for you for a cost. But this is so expensive. We want to do everything we can do to make the best crop possible and plastic culture would be part of that process. It looks, it's hard to tell from a picture but that is a tall raised bed right there. You're looking at it at least six if not eight inch tall bed. And when we have a lot of rain, that's a good thing. The taller the bed the better but it takes a big piece of equipment to make a bed and you can do it with a smaller tractor I would say at least a 70 horse tractor for one row but 80 would be better and a larger one might possibly be be better. But it's important when making that bed to make it right. And if you're making the bed I encourage you to make the bed without the plastic or the drip line just practice making the bed and what I'm mainly interested in is the center of that bed. I don't want it to hold water it's going to be crowned in the center you can't tell it from this picture, but it's a little point or a crown in the center. So make these beds and because if you don't have a big enough tractor the ground's not plowed up enough the center you can tell it in the center that the and it's going to settle right there and water will stand but you can tell it in the center that the bed is not properly made so practice before he's put that expensive plastic on. We can't do a meeting without talking about soil testing. So testing is so important when I go to farms I mean or when people call they talk about weeds disease insects and nutrition. And that nutrition comes up an awful lot and I would want to be so testing now for what I'm doing this fall. This in the extension office can help you tell you what kind of fertilizer to put down at planning, we can help you with the information that goes through the drip lines, we can tell you how to apply that as well. If plants aren't going growing properly, we can take or the farmer will we can send you form I sent one to a farmer this week, some leaf analysis forms that we can you take a samples it tells you how to do that and we can send samples to our lab and check for nutrients in the leaf so we know what's in the ground we know what's in the leaf we got we know what the plants need so from those. Those are just tools we use to help our crop do better again, it is an expensive crop. So we need to do everything we can do to to get the best out of it we can get but it's a soil test is a good place to start. I love this publication cover crops for Alabama you can go to our website and type in cover crops for Alabama. And this will pop up I'm not going to read all that but I'm going forward just to this is just a little clip of some of a chart that was is in that publication. And this is not every cover crop in the world listed but it's several of them, and it, you can see some of them are winter cover cover crops and summer cover crops. What if you have strawberries planted in that area well I'll show you, we're not going to plow everything we can't do the winter cover crops unless we're doing between rows and I'll show you some pictures of that. But when the strawberries are done if strawberries are going back to that area and nothing's going to be planted there I would be planting a summer cover crop where those are so there's two times a year we're planting cover crops and this talks about the grow summer or winter. It talks about the seeds you need per acre at planting but it's all available online. This is a picture of a farmer. And he planted this cover crop is called Sun Hemp and that's his favorite cover crop and I really like it too. It adds really the most this is summer but it adds so that means it's we planted after the strawberries are done or we planted this time a year where strawberries might be go might go this October, but Bush hogging it down. And this is one way this particular crop will add several tons of organic matter per acre it actually adds one of the most tons per acre that cover crop will add more than any other. And it adds the most organic, I'm sorry, yes organic matter but also nitrogen per acre this fixes pulls nitrogen out of the air and it'll fix 150 pounds of nitrogen in the soil that's released as like a slow release. And that's it being Bush hog down and before long will plow that up and strawberries will be planted. This is a picture of a couple of fields that you can plant right or wheat oats, I like oats but something's you lay the plastic but before you punch holes and set the plants out they throw the seeds out the cool season or wintertime seeds, the cool season crops, and that's what it looks like in the spring, and then that grass that that cover between the rows and you can see there a picture on the right where that cover crop has been killed but there we go and organic matter to the to the soil, and maybe we're not walking in mud as we pick strawberries and hopefully it didn't wash over the winter now a lot of people don't like anything between the row Middles. I see it both ways but I really I do not want this to wash and I like having a cover in between. Jesse mentioned the row covers for the frost protection, a lot of people call them frost blankets but these, these covers. One if it's a blooming and we're going to know we're going to get frost that is one way to help protect that bloom so it is labor putting them out the wind is sometimes blowing it's aggravating. But I think every farmer should have a row cover just in case you need them sometimes with cover and uncover several times during the year and yes it takes labor to do that, but this can save this can add a few weeks to your picking. It takes 30 days from a strawberry to go from blooming to kind of fruiting to where we pick it. So if we get if something damages that bloom, that's just one berry you're not going to be picking 30 days from then. So think about that that can be money in your pocket have the row covers. If for some reason you got the plants later they didn't grow off well or we had an early early cold in the fall. Maybe we might add a row cover sometimes it might get cold one or two nights but then more for another two or three weeks. We might add a row cover that's rare, but my throw cover on just for that couple of nights keep those plants growing, especially if they're young plants and again you didn't get them sell out when you should that might can hit you in the fall. Here's a water wheel planner and this really speeds things up in planting the implant by hand. You can plant with this this piece of equipment goes behind a tractor to put poke holes in the plastic, put some water in the hole and then you someone comes behind putting the plan in the holes and setting these strawberry transplants out. This speeds things up considerably if you've got several acres to plant and here's some guys doing the same thing we usually plant these in a double row. They're planted around the first part of October, we we've got to order in advance a farmer I spoke with this week has already ordered his plants now for this fall. But they don't always have to be ordered this far in advance, but that is that's you can't wait till the fall to find some you've got to make that connection early on. The plants are sell out as you can see in a double row, they're about 12 to 15 inches apart in the row and in this double row they're about 12 inches apart from from one plant to another down the road. We'll have an average about 14,000 plants to the acre but it just depends on row spacing if you got us your middle of your rows are six feet apart and might be more than that. And the spacing down the rose if you're spacing is 16 inches apart down the row and your rows are seven feet on center, you might not get 14,000 plants to the acre. One thing to keep in mind this is so important I see this a lot it's so hard not to do it to, but don't plant the plants too deep. There's a crown on that strawberry there near the the saw line and if it gets buried it's either going to die or just not grow well and containerized plants. You can even move the ground as possible if they're lower than that so I can wash in and cover the crown, but it can stand in water to with a with a lot of rain. So I don't like them lower than the the soil in that bed. Beirut plants, look at where they were growing at that nursery, and wherever that saw line came to at the nursery where they were dug at that's how deep, I would want to set these plants out. Here's my contact information. You don't have to call me though you got an extension office in every county of the state, if you call them, tell them your question they will put you in touch with the right extension agent that can best answer your question.


When will you know you've made it? When I walk down the street and 9 out of 10 kids are wearing Rockets of Awesome. That's a high bar. I know. You might never make it. Rachel Blumenthal, founder and CEO of Rockets of Awesome.  I am. Give me your investor pitch. Rockets of Awesome is a vertical kids apparel brand. So we design and manufacture all of our own product under the Rockets of Awesome label. It's for boys and girls sizes 2 to 14. And we really design product that kids will fall in love with. That is super soft and stretchy, magical details, but also clothes that parents will think their kids look really polished and put together in. We are an omnichannel business, so we sell via e-commerce, subscription, select wholesalers. Do you target kids or moms? We target both. Ralph Laurence started with ties. What's your hit item that you're going to build off the rest? Our silver bomber jacket. Do you ever consider building a brand mark and putting it on every item like LV Gucci and Montclair? We've thought about it, and I think transparently we just haven't been able to spend enough time to get there. That said, we also know that people don't want to walk around with a brand mark everywhere, and so when we do it, it'll be pretty discreet. There are so, so, so many apparel brands out there. What white space did you see? We really focused on the customer, and I didn't believe that there was a kids apparel brand that was focusing on a modern consumer. So really understanding the dynamic between modern parents, modern kids, and delivering both a customer experience as well as a product offering that was aligned with that customer. Do you shop by gender? Do you start thinking about how to play into all these like, woky kind of ways to do stuff? We do shop by gender. We don't want to be educating the customer on different ways to do what is very familiar to them. That said, we do have products that we will put both in boys and girls' assortment because we've heard from customers that that's how they're buying them.  Do you focus group? We do focus groups to bring in kids who give us feedback on the items. We don't do a ton of focus grouping once a collection is designed. We do it more sort of retroactively because, you know, so much of what we've had success with is that we have a really strong point of view on design and want to make sure that that comes through. Where in the world did they come up with the name? Kids. Kids have the most magical confidence. They're gross. They pick their nose. They are weird. They fart. And they're so confident. So Rockets of Awesome has no space reference. It's actually all about the kids and their personality and their confidence. Who said Rockets of Awesome? Nobody said Rockets of Awesome. It was thousands and thousands of post-it notes and lots of bottles of wine for which we were able to sort of frankenstein it together. Is the name controversial? The name brings a smile to every single person's face. And it's the one thing that really stops people and they say, what is that? So it was one of the scary. I think controversial. It was controversial in making the decision. People said it was too long. They thought it was weird. You were never going to get the URL. No one wanted to type in the email address. But I think it was probably one of the best decisions we made. Were you ever afraid the name could be corny? I was nervous about that. But I think because it came from such an unexpected place, right? If you had, if the brand imagery had all been space references, it would have been horribly, you know, cheesy. And that's something that we are very, very diligent about that it never has sort of that predictable space reference to it. Do you ever consider if you need to mature in some sense to turn it into like ROA? No, we've toyed with the idea of ROA and that might be something that we use at some point over time. But no, I mean, I think the beauty of the brand is that it's incredibly sophisticated while also being incredibly playful. What are the best and worst things about being the founder of Warby Parker's wife? Well, when you fundraise, people ask you how much time you spend on your business because they're like, well, why do you have to work? And I think there's just a presumption that everything's been handed to you. The best has actually been that I've become very close with his team over time. My business actually worked out of his office in the very beginning. Warby has the most incredible team, and so we've really been able to leverage their expertise over time. And so that's an incredible resource for us. Are you at all professionally competitive with your spouse? No. I had two businesses before this, and our businesses have always been at different phases at different times. And so I think that we're really grateful and appreciative that we've been able to learn from each other at different points in time. Who's on your Mount Rushmore? Oprah. I mean, she's just amazing. My husband, Neil Blumenthal, RBG, founder of Spanx. She's the only person on my wife's Mount Rushmore. Really? It's just Sarah Blinkley, Sarah Blinkley, Sarah Blinkley. When will you know you've made it? When I walk down the street and 9 out of 10 kids are wearing pockets of awesome. That's a high bar. I know. You might never make it. By the way, by that definition. I'm getting close in my kids' school, which I feel like, you know, is a step in the right direction, but it's really more when it's the 9 out of 10 kids that I don't know. How's building a fashion brand different than any other category?  And then is it going to be over? And what I love about kids is that you have a lot of flexibility there. And, you know, if we can sort of always be ahead of what's going on in kids' fashion and be much more aligned, you know, our designers look at men's and women's fashion versus we never, ever look at what's happening in kids that really enables us to make sure that we're seeing ahead. What brands do you personally look up to? I really admire brands like Warby Parker, Beauty Counter, Glossier. And the reason that I admire them so much is because all those founders are incredibly passionate and have a very, very strong mission in the world, and they're very different. This term authenticity is thrown around all the time, but it comes from a really personal, natural place that you can touch and you can feel in those brands. What brand past or present are you hoping to be on par with? I think there are so many brands that we look at that we really admire. So for instance, we really admire Zara's supply chain. We really admire the aesthetic of some women's and men's brands. There isn't one kid's brand that we look at and we say we want to be like them. That's why we created this brand because we believe that there needed to be a new, modern brand in this kid's space that was cool and stylish and also had an accessible price point. Who's your competition? We believe that we have to be one of the two to three brands that mom is thinking about when she shops for her kids clothes. And in our category and our demographic, we're looking at Gap, LaNavy, Cat and Jack from Target, Zara, H&M. Have you seen copycats? Yes. I mean, Amazon has a brand right now called A is for Awesome. You raised $19.5 million series C. Why not 20? We tried. What part of the business surprised you the most? I think it was surprised by how much people would be impressed by our packaging. You know, we spent a lot of time thinking about the design and the function. We wanted to be really simple and easy for parents. We wanted to be really fun and engaging for kids. So none of it was accidental. It was very diligent. But, you know, I also think that there are a lot of great brands that really focus on their packaging now. And the level of how effusive our customers are about it has always impressed me. There seems to be a certain startup playbook that everyone uses. How have you deviated from it? The startup playbook makes me nauseous, right? It's like the same color palette, the same font, the same packaging. I'm of the belief that it's critically important to be different. And so when everyone goes here, I go as far over there as possible.  I just felt it. I really just felt it. I saw it. I could taste it. I knew exactly what I wanted this brand to feel like and to look like. And I think more than anything, the hardest part was learning how to articulate it. If you had to give a dictionary definition of your design aesthetic, what would it be? Polished but unexpectedly playful. What's the hardest lesson you've had to learn since launching? Learning how to manage people and learning how to build an organization, how it scales, you know, as it scales. So, you know, five people around a table, 10 people, all of a sudden it's 25 or 60. Those are very different types of management styles. What part of your brand still needs work? I think of our brand as a living human being. So, you know, our brand is still in its infancy and a brand isn't about a logo and packaging.  It's about the evolution of that brand over time and really peeling sort of the onion or peeling off the personality of that brand. So we're at sort of that tipping point where we have to start evolving it more. And that's really hard to do. And it's something that we're spending a lot of time on right now. Rachel Blumenthal, founder and CEO of Rockets of Awesome. Thank you so much for coming on here and answering some questions. Thanks for torturing me. I'm Ian Wishingrad and I'll see you next time on I'm With the Brand.


Connect with amazing people, dance on the beach, meditate, feel amazing, get joy in your life, create wealth, love, health, wealth, happiness. It's all coming March 22 and 23. I am hosting the James Swannick Alcohol-Free Weekend in Venice Beach, California. I would love to have you there. You may have seen me on Sports Center on ESPN or featured in Entrepreneur Magazine or Forbes or on the Doctor's TV show. I'm going to give you my blueprint for living the alcohol-free lifestyle. There's going to be amazing speakers. We're going to be doing workshops. We're going to have some rooftop drinks at Sunset over beautiful Venice Beach, just 200 yards from the ocean. We're going to be doing some morning meditation, morning yoga. There's going to be a hike, some running, great combination of exercise, as well as growth mindset and self-development. There's a button down below, grab your ticket, bring a friend, and I cannot wait to meet you there. If you're wanting to transform your life from feeling like a six out of ten, like there's something missing and you want to transform to like a nine out of ten, so you're really living with energy and passion and purpose, go ahead, grab your ticket. I want to see you there at the James Swannick Alcohol-Free Weekend, where we're going to take your life from where you are now to up here, meet amazing people, transform your life, and have a great time doing it. There's a limited number of tickets, so make sure you grab yours before they're all gone. There's also early bird pricing, so grab a ticket before the price goes up, all the tickets are all gone.


Johnny Dollar. Still there in Buffalo, huh? Yeah. Uh, get my report on a big robbery case out here. Yeah, included transportation back here to Hartford. I, uh, I'm afraid I got a little ahead of myself, Brad. Oh, I'm sorry. Yeah, something like that.  Well, let's see how you found out where it went. Well, can you get that money back? Not yet. Oh, but Johnny, but now look. No, no, no, don't come unglued, Brad. I know where the money is. At least I'm pretty sure I do. Johnny, so help me. It's a poor old man McNair's yacht in the lee of a point off the Canadian shore of Lake Erie. Now listen. Well, with a big storm that's raging up over Lake Erie, well, it's impossible to go out and get him. Who's them? An employee, an ex-employee of the Emporium, the guy who took the money and his pal who helped him get away with it.  By that time, they'll be 100 miles away. I'll be hidden away in some little cold there in the Canadian shore. Do you want? Nothing, Brad. Now listen, I'll keep on it. You'd better.  You failed to get that money back and I'll gladly attend your funeral. Yeah, okay, Brad. I'll stay with it. Believe me. The media's radio brings you Bob Bailey in the exciting adventures of a man with the action-taxed expense account. America's fabulous freelance insurance investigator. There's truly Johnny Deller. Expense accounts submitted by a special investigator, Johnny Deller. For the Universal Adjustment Bureau, Hartford, Connecticut. Attention, Mr. Pat McCracken. Following his account of expenses incurred during my investigation of the further and buffalo matter. What I hadn't told Brad over the phone was that the last minute the Coast Guard had stepped in forbidden me to go after those crooks and a redded sub-jaser after all. And you know something? Because of that storm, I'm afraid they were right in spite of the fact I'd already paid for that boat and could only get half of it back. I, uh, I'll put that down as a credit on this expense account. After all, it's on my American Express credit card. Anyhow, all I can do is sit around my hotel room and wait for the storm to quit. Yeah? Sit and wait. Come in. Come in. Well, Deller. Oh, hi, Mr. McCracken. So you couldn't go after those, uh, those criminals because of this storm? Well, sir, just as soon as they let that up... That's no reason for them to get away. Not with my $400,000. $421,216. Yeah, look, Mr. McCracken, I... Quite frankly, that amount of money doesn't mean very much to me. But the coin of praise, it's the principle of the thing. Yeah, sure. So how can you sit either here in this hotel and, well, have you gotten in touch with the Canadian authorities? Yes, sir. And they can't do any more than we can. Also, there's, uh, well, it's a kind of ticklish international situation. What international situation? Well, if by any chance I should be wrong... About what? Well, I mean, we'll look after all the only evidence against John Harker and his pals so far as the circumstantial count. I thought you were absolutely certain they took the money. I am, as sure as I can be until I get my hands on that money. I had all the faith in the world in John Harker. Then you came along and destroyed it. Destroyed it with your, your, your theory that he and some friend of his committed that robbery. Well, just let me tell you something, young man. You go out there to wherever he is on my yacht and you find him. But when you do, you'd better also find proof that he stole that money. I'll do everything I can. Because if you don't, if you or anybody else finds out that he is innocent, dollar, I'll ride you out of Buffalo on a rail. Yeah, at this point I was feeling real good. Real happy. Everybody was being so nice to me. I was just about to blow expense account item 7 on room service for a bottle of scotch and I got my coat of soda on the corner. Johnny Dollar. Murphy at the Coast Guard, Dollar. Yeah, Murph. All right, Murph. Nothing you can do about it. I guess so. Oh, you have any idea? Well, I'm in it. The storm is over. The boys in that yacht will start moving. After all, they got 400 grand. They've got to stay away somewhere. Oh, yeah, that's true. So by the time I could see it over to where they've been riding out the storm, Lord knows where they could get to. Yeah, but now, Dollar. Now, wait a minute. Yeah, Murph. I just got me a wild idea. Wild enough to work. Oh. The storm is breaking up now? Yeah, it's beginning to. Then, Mr., by the time that yacht is able to get underway, I'm going to be right on top of those guys. Huh? How, Dollar? Just remember what I said, right on top of them. Expense account item 7, 3 bucks and a quarter for a taxi out to the Municipal Airport. Along the way, I noticed the rain was letting up. The wind was dying down. At one side of the airport, I found exactly what I was looking for. Within a couple of minutes, I was in a little office talking with Tinker Barnum, owner of the Barnum Flying Service. Sure, Dollar. Complete equipment for it. Winch, line, slings, everything. Good. You see, we not only give a lot of demonstrations and instruction, that sort of thing, but now, none of the Coast Guard calls on us to help with an actual rescue at sea. What'd you say your price is? $300. That includes me at the control. Okay, then it's a deal. Okay, we'll take off just as soon as the wind goes down a few more knots. Oh, sorry, Tink. We got to take off right away. The wind starts blowing up again. It won't, and I got that straight from the Coast Guard. You're sure of that? I'm sure, so let's go. Well, I don't know if the tower will give me clearance. Then forget the tower. Well, now, wait a minute. $400. But I could lose my license, Dollar. Get in a lot of trouble. Well, there's nothing else taking off from the field right now. I know, but that flight that just came in had a pretty rough time of it. Tell the tower it's an emergency rescue operation if you have to, but please, let's get going. Now, listen, it could be very dangerous. All right, that's a chance we'll have to take. $500. $550. I keep talking. Well, after all, it's $400,000 this thing. What? $600. Take it or leave it. $10. Let's go out and warm up the old windmill. Attaboy. It was my first ride in a helicopter. Brother, what an introduction. I've been aboard regular planes in rough weather lots of time. But the way that wind tosses around, picks this up and let it down, and with nothing but a broad windchop surface of Lake Geary below it, it's always an experience to stay with these things. The first half hour, things was fighting the controls. I'm going to scuttle the clouds and raise my overhead. Then, all of a sudden, the clouds left. The sun came out in all its glory. The most welcome sight of season year, and the air calmed down. Then finally standing out clearly under us was the Canadian shoreline. Look ahead, dollar, over to the left a bit. Yeah, Tink. That neck of land, that peninsula, sticking out into the lake. Yeah, I see it. Long point. And the yacht was supposed to be riding out the storm and the lee of it. I don't see it. The lee side would be... And I do. Look, moving along the far side of the point. That's the cruiser, Johnny. But is it the right one? Come on, take us down to her. Right. I'll get the swing ready so you can drop me down in a second. Right. I still don't know how Tink figured he could pilot that helicopter and at the same time lower me to the deck of the yacht and he could handle a winch. But he swore he'd done it before in rescue operations and he could do it again. He made a couple of close passes and I was able to identify John Harker at the helm, a tough-looking character standing beside him. So it had to be McNair's yacht. Then I suddenly realized there were not only two of them, but they both knew who I was and were all about my interests in the robbery. I could be at a slight disadvantage. Sure, darling.  Tink, I can't remember when a lie has ever paid off before. I've got to try one this. Well, listen, we could definitely keep a line on them and find out where they go. Yeah. And what happens when a six-meter runs out again? Yeah. Well, I can radio the Canadian coast guard. By the time they get through the necessary red tick to hold those boards and get here from wherever their nearest station is. Yeah, I see what you mean. Okay then, Johnny, open the door. Use this megaphone. Thanks. I'll hang around over them. Right. Parker, this is $20. You'll hear me? You'll hear me all right? Wave with your right hand. It's okay. He can hear you. I still want you to know the police have found the man who did the robbery. They've got them down. He waves okay. Yeah. Parker, they haven't found the money yet.  Hey, what was that, Johnny? You get that, Parker? I said that, look, drop your engine and I'll drop down your tick on a line. You get that? Emotion's okay, Johnny, to come ahead. Send me down there, Tinker. And make it gentle. What is it? You got your gun real handy. Right. I still don't like this, but down you go. Around that copter, hoping I'd hit the deck and the purple one was no fun. It was a pretty small target and the yacht was still popping heavily. I think it was an expert. A couple of minutes later, I saw the deck slowly coming up to me. $20. Can't you spare me that boat a little? Let me give you a hand when I get down there. Good. Well, Billy here takes your gun away from you. Oh, no. You go back. Got it, baby. Now, just one funny move, darling, and I'll pull this trigger. You see what I mean? Oh, yes. I see. Yeah. Just one funny move. Okay, Harkinale, what? You know something, Billy? I think it might be a very good idea if we were to pull that trigger anyway. All right, Crystal, Billy, make sure, darling, I haven't got another gun on. That's just what I'm doing, baby. Just what I'm doing. And it's all right. He's clean now. What did you take me for, darling? A fool?  Well, as a matter of fact, Harkinale, most of it was double. And did you think I'd believe that old fool McNair sent you out here? Yeah. That's a laugh. That's not Mr. Old Coon.  So that story, the police had gunned down the man who stole the money from the importer. Don't make me laugh. You like to see that money for your gold, darling? Like to run your fingers over 400 Gs? Yeah, Billy. Why not? Well, it's all stashed away in that chain lock up for you. But you ain't never going to see it. Nothing any more.  No, no, wait. Huh? Stop the way that gun around that helicopter and get out of sight. OK, sure. Oh, what's the hang around for? Oh, darling, get the load. You stay here, Billy. But keep that gun on through the door where that fly boy can't see. The company closes. Sure. Go ahead, darling. Sure. Why not? Sit right there on that bunk and don't make a move, you understand? Because all I got to do is pull a trigger in here and neither you're fouled up in that chopper to nobody else is going to know it. How's it going away, Harkinale? I got to go in there and make a sound. Everything's OK. Go ahead, Harkinale. I'll set him away. Just keep the dollar under control. Now, don't you worry about him. You just go ahead and sit in that chopper. OK. I said I'm going to fill him with tonight. Not being up. You see what I mean? I'll be back again. But I'll shoot him down. I can hit him. Oh, no, you won't. Then get us underway. Give us the power and get us underway. Then that guy will know everything's OK. Maybe you're right. I'll try it. Billie's 30 years. Knowing these were desperate men with a lot at stake. But if I made one-third's move, he wouldn't hesitate to pull the trigger. Even if he took the gun off me for a couple of seconds, there was nothing in reach I could use for a weapon. I could even pick him and throw at him. We won't, Billy. The chopper's going away. Can I kill him? I better wait a couple of minutes before I make sure. When I'm well, I'll find some chains or something to tie around to make him sink. In the locker. OK, OK. All right, now, darling.  Go ahead. Those will get out. Got those burn-offs. The copter was going back to shore. Time was running out. A duplicate set of controls there at the front of the cabin. Steering wheel, throttle, everything. Go ahead, darling.  Up high. Rising off the bunk to my hands over my head, I have stumbled as though from the motion from the boat. I lurched against the wheel and grabbed it and swung it hard aboard it. Hey! The boat swung around crazy. Hey! What do you think you did? Hey, let go of that wheel. I'll be shot, buddy. Honey, Harker. And if you want some of the same. Strong, darling. Dead wrong. Because I have a gun till not another step. I see what you mean. Too bad you didn't take Billy, didn't you? Billy? Billy. OK. OK, Harker. I'm OK.  You crazy? OK, Billy.  You don't get away with it. No, no, look. Look up. What? What's coming right out of this mansion? Oh, stop him. Kill him. You better or we'll know. You're the pilot of the cop to the fly, boy. Show him. My last chance. They turned the fire at Tinker up in the cop where I lunged against Billy, shoved him over the side. Billy! By the time Harker turned the fire at me, I was on top of him swinging with everything I had. Oh, I killed you. You want to pick up what's left of Billy out there in the water? See you back in Buffalo! Like Billy had said, the stolen money, all of it, was stashed away in the Ford chain locker. So after tying up Harker with all the line I could find, I started the engine of that beautiful yacht. But then suddenly realized, well, put it this way, if Tinker and his copter hadn't stayed with me, so help me, I'd never have found my way back to Buffalo. So, expense account total, including an even thousand bucks for Tinker Barnum, and please don't argue about it. Plus the trip back to Hartford, plus the previous charges you haven't yet paid me for, $1,800 even. And believe me, it's a bargain. Yours truly, shiny dollar. Or to tell you about next week's story. Next week, two beautiful girls. One of them a sweetheart. One of them a killer. Sureness, won't you? Yours truly, shiny dollar. It originates in Hollywood and is written, produced and directed by Jack Johnstone. Heard in our cast were Laurence Dobkin, Bartlett Robinson, James McCallion, Dick Krenner, Junius Matthews, and Gil Stratton. This is Jim Matthews speaking.


aka smashed Nelly's face against the wall, banged her head against the floor, and threw her, big trouble for the rapper. Days leading to mysterious death were toxic. Videos and WhatsApp messages show violence with accusations of drug abuse. It was built as one of the most highly anticipated weddings in socialite circles. A beautiful Durbanite girl from a well-being family tying the knot with one of South Africa's premier artists. But the late Neil Tempe and aka's whirlwind romance was nothing as pictures on social media suggested, as claims of drug abuse, violence, and physical abuse start to emerge. The publication has learned that accusations of drugs and physical abuse characterized the relationship between aka, real name Kiernan Forbes, and the late Tempe, who died on April 11 after falling off the balcony of a Cape Town hotel. According to the publication, there was a violent commotion in their hotel room just before Tempe's alleged suicide, something which has triggered a police investigation. The police have thus far taken three statements from aka, who performed at the Netbank Cup final yesterday in Free State. Even last Thursday, the police took another statement from aka after they took the first statement from him on the Sunday of Tempe's death and the Monday following her death. In one of the disturbing videos, which has been seen by the publication, the museo is breaking down at door with a terrified Tempe heard pleading with him to calm down. However, aka would have none of it as he is seen and heard hurling expletives at Tempe. According to Tempe, what started the fight was her calling out aka for smelling like fish. She also accused aka of being high on drugs. The incident happened in one of their hair-raising domestic violence incidents that occurred at the rapper's house in Bryanston, Yoburg on March 13. A few weeks before their much-vaunted lobal and negotiation in Tempe's home province, KwaZulu Natal. In another video on a separate occasion, Tempe could be seen hurling objects at aka and vandalizing furniture and aka's awards, including his SA Music Awards. In the video, aka, who dated Bonang Mathaba and DJ Zinnel, with whom he has a child, could be heard saying Tempe is under the influence of drugs. I got somebody here under the influence, trying to jump off the balcony, meanwhile, Tempe is curled on the floor crying. The relationship, which lasted less than two years until Tempe's tragic death last month at a Cape Town hotel, was interjected by numerous abuse episodes, with both parties pointing the finger at each other. The publication has also seen a long WhatsApp message she wrote to aka's mother, Lin Forbes in which she was seeking guidance about the alleged physical abuse. It is not known whether Lin responded to Tempe. aka had also in early March sent a WhatsApp message to Tempe's father. In the WhatsApp message, Anil's father pleads with aka to stick it out. When the dust has settled, find something you could do with her in this business area, to which aka replied, thank you Baba. I will ride the storm out and quietly hope she calms down and engages me properly.  Some media reports have suggested Tempe was suicidal and probably committed suicide, an allegation her father, Moses Tempe refuted at her funeral. As Anil's father, I categorically state that Anil was neither suicidal nor did she commit suicide. We must as a matter of priority deal with the scourge that Bedevils are used. Alcohol, which is overused. And drugs. Fellow South Africans we better wake up and smell the coffee, we have a serious problem with substance abuse. The police, who are investigating an inquest following Tempe's death, are also investigating these incidents. A source with intimate knowledge of the relationship, who did not want to be identified for fear of victimization, said Tempe was abused by aka. In my effort to fight GBV, I, today, release a video, taken by Anil, of Kiernan aka. attacking her. The video demonstrates the vicious attacks that she was the subject of. On this occasion, as recent as March 13, 2021, Kiernan smashed Anil's face against the wall, banged her head against the floor, and threw her against the wall. Anil reported the incident to me. She then sent me the video of the attack, said the source. Anil Tempe, who was dating and later engaged to Kiernan aka Forbes, was a victim of severe violence at the hands of aka. My beloved friend, a daughter, and sister to many was a victim of gender-based violence, an act that has become a scourge in our country. The source said Anil had sought protection on many nights whenever aka, whom she said became extra violent whenever he had allegedly taken drugs, attacked her. Yeah