Teach to Work: How a Mentor, a Mentee, and a Project Can Close the Skills Gap in America.

Patty Alper shares her insights on how mentorship can significantly bridge the skills gap in education and empower students to achieve their first successes. With over 20 years of mentoring experience, she emphasizes the transformative power of project-based learning, where students take the lead in defining their projects and learning through real-world applications. Patty's highlights the importance of mentors who can share their own journeys, including failures and fears, to inspire students and help them build confidence. She discusses her book, "Teach to Work," which serves as a training program for mentors, providing them with the tools needed to effectively guide students in various fields, including STEM and entrepreneurship. Through collaborative efforts with businesses, Patty envisions a future where mentorship becomes integral to education, fostering a community of support that benefits students, mentors, and companies alike.

Takeaways:

• Patty Alper emphasizes the importance of mentorship in helping students achieve their first successes.
• Mentorship not only empowers students but also enhances confidence and practical skills through project-based learning.
• The connection between mentors and students is crucial for bridging the skills gap in education.
• Real-life experiences shared by mentors can inspire students to pursue their goals confidently.
• Companies are eager to participate in mentorship programs, benefiting both students and their own workforce development.
• Project-based mentoring allows students to take ownership of their learning while applying classroom knowledge.

Website

https://teachtowork.com/

Discover more about Education on Fire

🔥 https://www.educationonfire.com/

🔥 Support the show with a One-Off Tip

https://educationonfire.com/support

🔥 Ecamm Free Trial – How I record and produce this show.

https://educationonfire.com/ecamm

🔥 Captivate.FM – My podcast host

https://educationonfire.com/captivate

🔥 London School of Public Relations – https://educationonfire.com/lspr

A comprehensive 1-day CPD-accredited certificated Podcasting course, prepares you in conceptualising, producing, and distributing engaging audio and video podcasts tailored to your target audience. Explore techniques for vocal delivery, microphone usage, and audio editing to achieve professional-quality recordings.

Some of the above are affiliate links, I may receive a small commission if you purchase via these but there is no cost increase to you. These links help support the channel so any clicks are greatly appreciated.

Show Sponsor – National Association for Primary Education (NAPE)

https://nape.org.uk/

I feel like ultimately my job as a mentor is to bring a student to their first success. Their first, yes I did. And then they earned their confidence.

I had 14 year old students turn profits by the end of their senior year in high school, like make good money.

When you talk about missteps and fear and failure and your strategy to overcome and the steps that you took, all of a sudden you begin to create a bridge for those students who hear your journey and your pain and then they begin to think, gosh, if she can, if he can, maybe I can. The book is a training program for mentors to prepare them to work with students on projects.

And it is a step by step sort of path to teach a mentor how best to work with students. I want to help schools do this. Take this and run with it and make it your own. And here's some materials to support you in doing that.

One of my schools has built an entire cyber mentor program with 20 cyber companies stepping up to mentor and the cyber companies actually help design projects for the students. It's different than the classroom and there's a need for the classroom. Don't get me wrong, I love what teachers do, but it's different than theory.

It's really applying what you're doing and getting somebody who's done it and who's more exciting to learn from. Someone who's done it.

Hello. That was Patty alper and her 20 years experience as a mentor and her work in her book Teach to Work.

How a mentor, a mentee and a project can close the scheme skills gap in America is inspirational in terms of bringing together all aspects which are going to be important for the next generation, using people within businesses, the local community, how they can be a great mentor and support these mentees through the educational establishments and in a way which is going to make our future a much better place. I really hope you enjoy this. My conversation with Patti Alper. Hello, my name is Mark Taylor and welcome to the Education on Fire podcast.

The place for creative and inspiring learning from around the world.

Listen to teachers, parents and mentors share how they are supporting children to live their best authentic life and are proving to be a guiding light to us all. Hi Patty, thank you so much for joining us here on the Education on Fire podcast.

It's great to chat to people from the other side of the pond, so to speak.

And it's also great to chat to people who have been involved in, created, are part of something which I think thinks outside the box but in a kind of a very logical, understanding way. Of what children and young people need to learn. So, yeah. Thank you so much for being here today.

Thank you for having me, Mark. I'm excited and I love what we're doing.

Oh, thank you. I appreciate that. So let's dive straight into Teach to Work. How long has it been around and sort of. How has it sort of grown over the years?

I became a mentor through a nonprofit where I sat on the board. The nonprofit was called the Network for Teaching Entrepreneurship. And I have an entrepreneurial background.

I was a business person, built a company from the ground up. And so when I was thinking philanthropically, I thought, what, what most changed my life and it was building a company. It was starting from scratch.

And so I wanted to see how this organization taught youth how to build a business.

And so beyond seeing the best kids that they would prance out in front of you as a potential donor, I wanted to go into the classroom and see how it's taught. And I was hugely impressed with this nonprofit. But I also offered them to begin a mentor program.

Like, maybe I have something to offer for having done it or having, you know, the blood, sweat and tears to build something from nothing. Maybe my perspective as a woman in a very male dominated industry, I may have all kinds of out of the box experiences.

Maybe I could have something of value to offer that's different from a teacher. And so what role could that be? And I became a guinea pig mentor.

And while I was with students in classroom visiting about every month, I wrote a template on what was my role. So I was living it and writing about it along the way to define the role. And what happened was the program grew. It first grew in the Washington D.C.

market, and then it grew to be in 14 cities for NFT, the network for Teaching Entrepreneurship throughout America. So the mentor model grew and grew and grew. And I had to write the book because I saw how much everybody was getting from it. It was a win, win, win.

And I can go into, like, more depth than you probably ever want to hear because it's been my passion. Like, why do mentors love this? Why do corporations like it? Why? What? How is it a benefit for the school and the teacher?

And then most most importantly, how is it a benefit to the student? Too long an answer. I'm sorry.

No, it's absolutely brilliant.

And I think that kind of win, win, win, like you said is such an obvious thing when it's working, but it's such a hard thing to begin with or at least to be able to kind of articulate for people when you're trying to sort of set these things up.

So I'm sort of, I'm curious, was that something that sort of, you were obviously aware of when you started or was it something that sort of grew as you did more and more of it?

Oh, no, I had no idea. That's the beauty of it is like, that's actually something I'd like to talk to you about. This has been my project.

I call it project based mentoring because what we did with our students is help them write a business plan. So there was a project at the center of the relationship. It's not social and emotional mentoring. It is very skills oriented.

And I just learned so much as I grew this one of my skill sets. I come from a marketing development background, so I was packaging how mentors can work with students and make it fit within the business community.

Like I see it could be very helpful for educators and very helpful for students. But how do you package it so that a business person can come in and make it make sense? But through project based mentoring?

And I'm now not talking just entrepreneurship. The book can be in stem, it can be in AI, it can be in sciences, it can be in arts. It can be like the Voice, the TV show.

The Voice is music, where you have mentors doing projects with students on learning how to be a vocalist. So there's no field that it couldn't apply to, but it's in the realm and in the wheelhouse of the mentor.

So it's not intimidating, it's not trying to have them be a social worker. It's trying to have them share a skill around a student's project.

So the point of the book and the point of my whole experience in this that has grown, I've learned and learned and I'm still learning, is that it is the student's project is the student is the leader, the implementer. It's very much based on project based learning, but it's adding a mentor to the mix.

And as long as the student has a passion about what they're working on and that they pick it, they define it, they're the responsible party. The book outlines the role of the mentor. What are we supposed to bring to this relationship and how is it project based, how is it skills based?

And it marries the bringing the business world together into education. So it's not daunting you come, it's not ambiguous, it's not come support a stadium.

You know, it says come share your knowledge, come to a classroom for X amount of time that you can commit and you're going to be working in this area that is your field and you're going to be working with students who are working on these kinds of projects. So for me, I have an entrepreneurial background. I came in and I could help students and I have a zillion stories I could share.

But I was there to help students write a business plan and I actually helped them launch companies.

I had 14 year old students turn profits in by the end of their senior year in high school, like make good money and no cost of goods and no market strategy and know how to write a contract. I mean they got it and they did it. So it was a lot more than theory, it was doing. So I'm very passionate about what I see kids gain from it.

And I think for me there's a couple of key points there.

One is the creativity that comes from that because like you say, if the pupil is enthusiastic about it, if they're passionate about what they're doing already, that's a completely different feel than I'm just going to this class because I have to. It's a completely different world from that point of view. And also you just, you love being surrounded by people who love what they're doing.

And I would imagine anyone who's going to come on and be a mentor is passionate about what they're doing as well.

And like I say, because it's in their wheelhouse, in their comfort zone and they know what they're all about, you can very quickly turn that into a fantastic relationship which like I say, benefits both sides. And it just reminded me of the sorts of things that almost sort of family from that point of view. You know, it's like I'm interested in woodwork.

My father or my grandfather is a woodwork person. And you just spend time and enjoying it because it's something that you do.

And I think to sort of, to sort of be able to articulate that feel like say within the education setting, which is so different than most people people's understanding of what school or learning often is, I think immediately that that's got to open so many doors.

Bingo. I mean that's perfectly, perfectly said.

Mentors who have been in a field bring so much to the table, they even they have no clue the sort of ripple effect that they can have. They bring passion, they bring experience.

One of the reasons I wrote the book, I mean, I brought so many mentors to class with me, and then they took on this role with their own classes. But what I saw sometimes was a miss. I saw, you know, what happens to us sometimes as we get older.

We go into our cocktail party mode and we talk about how great we are, Right? Oh, yeah, I'm doing this deal and I'm doing that deal, and that's kind of adult to adult conversation and what I observed.

And, you know, I worked with youth as a younger person before I got into business, so I'm kind of aware of their response. And I saw a miss. I saw executives coming into class talking, and the kids were like, huh? Like it went over their head.

So one of the whole book is about how to be a mentor. That's the whole purpose of the book. That actually the full title is How a Mentor, A Mentee in a Project, Can Close the Skills Gap in America.

I should have titled it Teach to Mentor, but I think the mentors are teaching the kids how to work.

Yeah.

Which is a whole other subject. But some of the mentors in the training, I say in here, you are not their authority.

You are not grading them, you are not paying them, you are not telling them what to do. And students, particularly the ones I work with, were often inner city. They didn't have a wonderful network of role models.

So when they hear that you're the successful business person, they can't really relate.

But when you talk about missteps and fear and failure and your strategy to overcome and the steps that you took, all of a sudden you begin to create a bridge for those students who hear your journey and your pain. And then they begin to think, gosh, if she can, if he can, maybe I can. I mean, I'll share with you. I mean, I. I have this as a short little story.

I was pulled into the field of construction. I was one of the first women in that field in this market. And it was commercial. And I. I really did not have a clue.

I had come from the hotel industry and I. Somebody pleaded with me to come start a company with them and bring my marketing and business development skills. And I had to learn.

And this was sort of what my story was to the kids. I was scared to death. How am I going to do this? And I took three months to learn an industry.

I mean, I called on people and interviewed people and read industry journals, and I wrote a plan, which is another big piece of project orientation. I wrote a plan, and that plan outlined who's My primary target, who's my secondary target? What are their fears? What are their interests?

How did they make decisions? I learned.

And it was that education that equipped me to be able to call on people and talk to them and understand how our company would fill a need differently than another, who my competitors were. I learned the language of the industry and that story. I mean, I have letters from students. That's how I know I was effective as a mentor.

And the mentoring worked. Every student had to write letters of what they learned and what they gained. So I have. I probably have 3,000 letters. I'm doing this for 23 years now.

So I have letters of students that said, I had no interest in business. I didn't even want to go into this class. But I heard your story and it said, maybe if she can, I can. Because I shared my fear.

So I'm writing from firsthand knowledge that I think that's what makes us a little different than a teacher. And I think that's what creates access and motivation for the students to try.

I really love that. And I think seeing those stepping stones is so important.

And it reminds me, when I was still at school, my sort of journey from, you know, like you say, being scared stiff of doing something new. I remember secondary school, we had to learn an instrument and had a few lessons. And then you had.

You get asked to join the wind band and you do a bit of this and then you gradually get better. But it was. I was so lucky because not only did we have fantastic teachers, but there was always someone, just that next step, who.

I could see what they were doing. It wasn't kind of like, I'm going to be a professional music, a professional musician. Look at that person on the stage or that person on telly.

It was the fact that the person three or four years older than me was already not only playing in the school orchestras and the school bands, they were then playing in the county bands or the National Youth Orchestra. And then they were going to music college, and then all of a sudden they were doing a gig, and then you might see them on the telly doing a concert.

So you sort of. You sort of understood that there was a path there that they'd taken, which you were kind of following on in some way or another.

There was those sort of tangible ideas and also, like, say, support and mentorship in many ways of how to actually get there. And I think as soon as it becomes abstract, like you say that there's. It's just a pipe dream in many ways.

You don't know how you're doing it, but not only were you able to see, or from my experience, to be able to see where you were going to go, you also had, let's say, those conversations of like, the first time you sit in a rehearsal, you're going to be really nervous. The first time you do something which is being recorded is a different skill and it might feel like this.

And the first time you have to be part of a section and you're working as a team and you've got people playing different things, it's going to work in a different way. But it all becomes a little bit more knowing. And I think the knowing is the thing which kind of takes away some of that fear factor as well.

And I think having a safe environment like, say, within that kind of relationship of a mentor and a student mentor and a pupil just changes that whole way. So I can really sort of understand how that worked for you. And I think it helps everybody to understand that.

And the other thing that reminds me of is when I do sort of whole class teaching cpd, sometimes I say, right, by the end of this lesson, you're going to be able to run a music workshop. And they're like, I've got no idea how to do music at all. And I say, but you're going to be teaching this to sort of 7 year olds.

So if they can get it within an hour, I'm pretty sure that you can. With your understanding of the children that you're going to be teaching, the fact you are a teacher, you've already got those relationships.

And because it was so far removed from what they were doing, it felt like it was out of reach.

But when you just took them through step by step, very simple rhythms, the idea of how it got put together, they're like, oh, yeah, I can get that now. And I just think, like I say, those stepping stones are so important.

But I also like the fact that teachers are really scared about it to begin with because it's like, well, that's how a lot of pupils feel at the beginning of a journey or a project or a new idea, because it's the unknown factor. And then all of a sudden when you start to feel helped and sort of supported by the people around you, it suddenly becomes fun.

And then all of a sudden it just takes off. And so I think it's such a fascinating story and such a great way of being able to explain it to people.

You know, I've seen the students and I'll share this one day. The business writer from the Washington Post came to our class.

I had him come at the start of a semester and at the end, and I'll share this story, there was a young man who was so painfully shy. His name was Dexter and he wouldn't even speak in class. But he had this idea for a business.

He wanted to go on the government liquidator website and he found Gore Tex jackets that sold for $25 a jacket. And he shared with me as his mentor that he thought it would be a good idea get his parents to give him a PayPal account and lend him some money.

And he sold the jackets at $125 her jacket. Now this is a kid. This was his idea. He was nowhere at the start of this class. I mean, his head was on his desk.

At the end of the semester, he had to stand up and give an oral presentation about his business plan. What were his mission? What was his objective? What was his implementation plan? What were his takeaways? What was the result? Oh, my God.

I mean, the kid had made thousands of dollars. And the Washington Post wrote this up. He said, he says his name is Steve Pearlstein. He says, why isn't this in every classroom in America?

He says, this kid, the mother came up to us crying, like, what have you done? My kid is confident. My kid is like proud. He's done it all on his own. Has the feeling he's done it on his own. So that getting over fear.

I feel like some of the takeaways from this for the student. I actually just gave a presentation on this. Or what are the leadership skills gained?

Like, wouldn't you want to hire a kid that took that kind of risk, that had ownership of the path, that wrote a plan how to get from point A to point B and then did it, I mean, and then could orate about it. That's what companies are looking for. They want kids. So I happen to believe from the company perspective, part of the book is closing the skills gap.

How does mentoring help close the skills gap? How are educators preparing students best for their future jobs?

And I feel that some of this project based orientation, if you take away some of the skill sets that students are gaining, like this kid Dexter, by the way, he called his company Gore Dex brilliant. So if you look at Dexter, like, what did he take away from this? And how does that relate to the skills gap.

He wrote a business plan, he developed his own hypothesis, he built out how he was going to do this step by step that met a deadline.

He created an oral presentation, you know, a 12 minute business plan that he could define that included his objectives, his implementation, his results and his takeaway. And so he could communicate, he could meet a deadline, he could have ownership, he took responsibility, he took risks.

I mean, to me, all of those things, he had an accomplishment under his belt. And he's 15. All of those things are what companies are looking for.

If they could hire Dexter over a kid who got an A, you know, Dexter's done something and he can speak to it with passion and he owns it. So he won't go into an interview with fear. So I think that there's a piece missing.

Like my dream, if you asked me, my dream, I would love for mentorship to become a part of education. That there are community businesses that are dying for students to come into their field and sometimes the students are not equipped to.

So who better to help equip the students than some of the companies themselves?

And if educators would open just a little, you know, it's an hour every two weeks, you know, 90 minutes a little, and have it be project based, you know, a community project, a science project, a research project. I have all kinds of lists of projects in my materials. How it crosses over industries, I hope I'm making.

Yeah, absolutely. Because I think it's a bit of a double edged sword, isn't it?

Because in some respects schools are closing themselves off more than more physically as well as practically, you know, big gates, you know, it's kind of the safeguarding in the amount of red tape just to visit a school is incredible these days compared to certainly in my sort of lifetime experience. And at the same time there's a lot of talk about, you know, sharing, being part of the community, being involved.

And so to have it both ways is really tricky.

And I think the ability to kind of get out and start these conversations, like saying have the mentors from the person that's down the road, or like, say in a field that's related to something or one or two relationships from the pupil to, you know, an organization or whatever, whatever it happens to be or how you get there makes perfect sense because then you're sort of back to that, those sort of stepping stones. But one thing I just want to go back to and pick up on Dexter. Where did that come from?

Like say the, the child that sort of wasn't that kind of assertive and new to.

To have that understanding, that one that he could ask for the money, but then also to understand that this particular group of people would pay $125 for something because they were the sorts of people who would have the money and would want to be like that. I mean that, that's, that's incredible. What's the, what was the sort of the journey within that?

Was it something that he knew about, understood, or was it something that sor grew from, from what you were working with?

Like any entrepreneur, I mean you, you take a chance. It's like your podcast. I mean you don't know when you start what kind of audience you're going to have.

You, you begin and you target it and you know who your passion and it blossoms.

I think his father was maybe a fisherman and he saw the value in Gore Tex and maybe he was a sportsman and saw the similar material and found a sort of good online access to at a cheaper price. I mean, I have, I have other stories. I mean I have a kid, 14 years old that started making cookies. Cookies.

He wanted to differentiate himself with lower calorie cookies. He made a delicious, like, shame on me, they were too good. They were as big as your hand.

And he called them New York Honey Baked Delicious black and white cookies. It was like seven names. And he rented a commercial kitchen. He used no sugar. He put all the nutrition ingredients on the back of the cookie.

I think he had maybe a dollar into each cookie and sold them for maybe $4 each. He packaged them and got them sold in Target and in Harris Teeter in the Washington market. He was 14 years old and they were delicious.

And by the time he was 15, he had sold 32,000 cookies. And he just kept trying, kept trying. He tested recipes. He only sold this one kind. He didn't vary.

It had the, you know what I'm talking about, the black chocolate icing and the vanilla icing. Anyway, they were sort of cake like they were a little puffy, like maybe a madeleine in London. So how did he know?

I mean you don't you take it and test it. He raised money to rent the kitchen.

You know, he took a chance and he worked hard and he ended up being a business major, like going on to Babson College. I mean this, the stories are phenomenal. So I think it's a one answer. And you mentioned, you know, there are obstacles to this.

It's not always easy for schools to make this happen through the nifty model. They have staff that do background checks that is required to come into a middle school or a high school.

So every school does this a little differently.

I now currently am working with community colleges and I'd like to just share this if I may, of course, that I now am either a consultant or a grantor to schools to help them build mentor programs. I believe in this and I'm trying to put my effort and my materials behind it.

So the book is a training program for mentors to prepare them to work with students on projects. And it is a step by step sort of path to teach a mentor how best to work with students. And then I'm excited to share that with Nifty.

We have partnered collaboratively to develop a new video training program that is offered to my grantee schools. And I have a paid for different training that's on video. So one is a grant and one is. Can be purchased.

So that if a school wanted to develop a mentor program, there's all this material to prepare the mentors before they ever set foot in your school or with your students so they know what's expected of them. And then the school marries the subject matter and the project orientation to the field of the mentor, if that makes sense.

So that requires coordination.

And the other thing I'll say is on my website, teach to work.com I have a free downloadable mentor coordination guidebook like how to implement a mentor program. I want to help schools do this. Take this and run with it and make it your own. And here's some materials to support you in doing that.

I mean, that's amazing.

And that was kind of where I was already starting to think was that, you know, like I say, you want it to be in every school, you want it to be in every state, but how do you go about doing that?

And you do it like you said, you have the material, but then you take it and you morph it in a way that works for you as your school, as the people you're working with, with your students. And then it's got the power to grow. And then the say it's about the ownership, isn't it, from each one of those stakeholders that's involved.

And then it just gets more and more powerful because there's. There's sort of no, there's no ceiling to what you can do.

And, and I think the way you were speaking about those projects, I think is so powerful as well. Because like I say, you have to work hard, you have to take a risk, you have to give it a go.

But so many of the building blocks you could hear from what you were saying were in place already.

You know, you know what your target audience is, you know what you're trying to do, you know what your costs are, you know what money maybe you need to raise. You know how you're going to go about it. So while it's a shot in the dark, you kind of know where you're heading towards it.

It's not just I've got a dream and I'm just going to give it a go and see where it happens. And I think so many people miss that kind of. It's subtle, but it's the. It's such a massive thing. Isn't it true?

You know, the other thing I'll add to this is like I've tried to address this because this was the biggest sort of news for me in writing this material and in growing the program. I think educators aren't certain that companies want to do this. Like, why would a company want to come to my school and help these kids?

I think there's a fear in calling on corporations. And so my one of my biggest learnings in developing this, my opening chapter, I interview five companies.

Ernst & Young, Comcast, 3M Pfizer and one more. It'll come to me. And even on my website, I have other companies I have interviewed.

Companies want this for lots of reasons that are would be new news to educators. Number one, they want to build a pipeline. Number one, they want to introduce students to their field. You know, particularly let's say with AI.

Like I have a school that just started a whole cyber program because cyber is a huge, there's a huge need of jobs to be filled and students don't know much about it and they have interests but they have no experience. So one of my schools has built an entire cyber mentor program with 20 cyber companies stepping up to mentor.

And the cyber companies actually helped design projects for the students and they also provided mentors in cyber. So I'm just trying to apply this so it sort of makes sense. But the companies get sort of build a pipeline.

But what's more, they view this as management training the same way that you were describing business people coming in to your in teachers learning to teach music, people become different when they become teachers. They become a little softer and a little kinder and they speak with a more gentle manner and their language might change.

And what happens is employees see how far they've come from when they were in school and a they're excited to be an ambassador for their company representing their company. Let's say 3m in a high school. So they're proud to be asked to do this.

The employee begins to gain confidence as they are looked up to by all of these students. They take a responsibility for educating the students and they learn a new language skill and to help motivate the students.

So that all translates back to the company as management training that they can help the next generation move up. Also, it creates a different culture. Pfizer described this.

It makes the company look like they care about their community, that they are not just a for profit company, that they're lending their employees to go help teach science in high school. And then Pfizer looks good to their employees and to the community because the students are learning sciences.

And then the pharmacist knows because the kids are coming in to get drugs. So that goodwill then translates into a company culture. At ey, it is baked into their entire cultural system from the CEO down. Same with Pfizer.

The head of Pfizer wanted their employees, he couldn't get over the change it made in their company culture. So they wanted to institute this to the tune of almost 100 million a year. They were doing spending on mentoring in the cities they were in.

So there's like a myriad benefits to the company. And so I wanted the schools to understand that the companies have a reason to be there too. It's a benefit for everybody. That's part of that.

Win, win, win.

And I think that's the, that's probably my biggest takeaway today is the fact that when you can see everything in the 360, then it gives you a very different starting point about the relationships that you have. But you also feel like you said, it's win, win, win, win, but everyone's helping each other on their journey.

Like say the company is going to be different because of it. The students are getting it in a different way, the schools are getting it in a different way.

They're getting it direct from the people that they're educating to go in that way. I always think of stem and there's always talk about how do we get more, more women into stem, how do we get people interested at a younger age?

And it's that kind of. Because when you talk about STEM when you're at school, it's a little bit kind of noisy. You know, I hear it a lot, but what does it actually mean?

But to have people from a company coming in and talking to everybody about how they work, why they work, what it looks like day to day, how we're going to build A project to help you do this sort of thing.

Then like I say, you have those stepping stones and you're then going to be able to say, well, of course I want to spend some time doing that, because actually this is my passion now. It floats my boat. I'm really happy that I want to do more and more of it.

And it's not rocket science in that way, but it's so far removed, like you're saying, from what a lot of people's experience is.

And it's different than the classroom. It's different than the classroom, and there's a need for the classroom. Don't get me wrong, I love what teachers do, but it's different than theory.

It's really applying what you're doing and getting somebody who's done it and who's more exciting to learn from someone who's done it.

You know, one lady I met, I went to her PhD defense because she studied our program and she said students, particularly inner city students, reside in Place A.

And they can see Obama or Beyonce on the news and in the papers or on social media, and they can fantasize how they got where they are, but they don't know the journey.

But when they see regular people that aren't rock stars come in and describe their failures and their pains and their pathway out of that, all of a sudden, I said this before, they create that bridge to Place B and it becomes then possible because in sometimes in school, you, you know, you can read about history and you can understand math, but you don't know how you're going to use it. But to hear how somebody has created a life in a field and why they love it day in and day out, you know, it's where a student can begin to relate.

And I think for me as well, it's a sense of. And this is a very school thing as well. It's all about being correct, being right, knowing the answers and it just happening.

And what you've just said, which I think is the most important thing is this is. It's about all the failures. It's about the giving it a go and then dusting yourself off and doing the next thing and understanding.

That's how we all learn. It's how we all progress. It's how the world works.

And not only does that give you the pathway and like say the human relationships and then the nurturing, almost a mentor and that learning environment can do, but it also takes away from the fact that all the sort of wellbeing, mental health issues, those sorts of things. So much of that's driven from the fact that I've always got straight A's. I've always got 100. As soon as I get 99, I'm going to be a failure.

And it seems obvious when you sort of stand far enough back, but I think it's so hard for young people these days to do that and to hear people who are successful and loving their life and doing what they want to do based on all of those failures and all of that learning that just completely changes people's perspective of what learning is and also like, say how they're going to achieve whatever it happens to be that they're going to thrive for.

You know, I remember I often go to the Aspen Institute for programs and I attended one where they had SpaceX. And he talked about how they bring together people from all different walks on teams.

I mean, he talked about scientists and people that sew, you know, people that put together clothes and chemists, and they bring together people from all walks. And before they do anything, they take play a game that takes them out of their element completely.

And then they go through this iteration of how they're all trying to find a solution to a world problem. It has to be a huge problem, like creating Internet availability in foreign, remote, rural parts of the world. How do they do that?

And like one of their methods, they created balloons, which takes fabric and takes tech. I mean, it takes all these skill sets. Right. But they have failure parties. I wrote about this.

I love this because you are so right that everybody starts from not knowing. Everybody, no matter who you are, you start from a journey of not knowing.

And it's all trial and error and we all have to go ask and learn and how wonderful to have others available to you. But they celebrated failure because it didn't.

It meant they didn't have to spend millions and millions more money in researching something that wasn't going to work. So let's nip it in the bud now, like, what's our questionnaire of why we're not this isn't going to work and make a decision.

So I love the fact that failure is part of the journey and how we grow.

Yeah. So, so incredibly important. And obviously the acronym fire, from an education on fire point of view, is incredibly important for us.

And by that we mean feedback, inspiration, resilience, and empowerment. Is there one of those words? The words collectively, what is it that sort of hits you or strikes you when you hear that?

Empowerment? I feel like that's our. That's our job. As mentors, I feel like ultimately my job as a mentor is to bring a student to their first success. Their first.

Yes, I did. And then they earned their confidence. And I. I don't think there's a better empowerment way to educate than that, is to give someone themselves.

Yeah, right, Absolutely. I love that. And I think that's going to be slightly different for every person, which is brilliant because it.

It makes it that personal journey, like we say, for everybody involved. And also it, like, say it's about what. What that is when you achieve it and the journey that gets there, not the. It's all about the grade.

Like I said, that's not what it's all about. It's not the way it works. And I think to experience that, and that's almost kind of like the launch pad, isn't it?

You can then just let everyone just fly off and follow their.

Their dreams or their passions from that point of view, knowing not only if they got the skills that they need or the understanding that they need, but like I say, they've got the confidence and. And an inner sense of what it takes to be able to do that.

Even if ABCD version of a project doesn't work, there's always the next one that may well do it. So, yeah, I think it's fantastic. Really? Really.

I mean, that's always the hardest part. Risk.

Yeah. Yeah. Incredible. Well, Patty, thank you so much. It's been a wonderful conversation, and I'm so enthused by that.

Not only the fact that we've been talking about it, but the fact, as always with the podcast, there are people out there doing it, and hopefully people will be listening, going, I can read that book. I can share this idea. We can bring it into our community, into our school, someone listening from a company. How do I.

How do we bring that idea of mentorship into. Into it for more of what we can do and what we can offer into our community. So thank you so much indeed.

Just remind everybody again of where you want them to go to find out more about you, and then we'll say goodbye.

Perfect. Teachtowork.com I'll spell it out.

T E A C H T O W o R K teachtowork.com I have all kinds of information on there, so please peruse and browse at your leisure, and lots of materials also. And, Mark, I thank you. I think what you're doing is phenomenal, and you get it in a big, huge way.

So you're, like, in the perfect place to share your passion and your knowledge. I appreciate your questions and everything you. You got.

Thank you so much. It's. It's great to chat to you. It's great to be able to feel like we're making a difference.

And for me, like I say, I'm just here to share it with people who hopefully have that light bulb moment as well and can make a difference. Well, so that ripple effect is really what we're here to try and do.

So.

Yeah. Keep up the great work. I look forward to finding out more about what you do and reading the book and having more and more stories.

I think it's an absolutely wonderful thing. So.

Yeah.

Thank you so much. Indeed. Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire.