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Michael Macaluso: Alright, so I think we'll we'll get started here so for anyone who's watching this thanks so much for joining us I'm Mike Macaluso i'm a professor at the University of Notre Dame.

 

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Francesca Ciaramitaro: My name is Francesca my middle school English language arts teacher in New York City.

 

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Michael Macaluso: And we are just so thrilled to have with us Victoria Jamieson and Omar Mohammed authors of When Stars are Scattered.

 

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Michael Macaluso: Let me be the first to say, congratulations on receiving the inaugural Alexandria award.

 

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Michael Macaluso: You know so many people behind this University of Notre Dame the Institute for educational initiatives, the Alliance for Catholic education and.

 

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Michael Macaluso: The Center for literacy education so congratulations we're just so honored and so thrilled to be to be awarding this book to you both and we're just so happy to have you here so here is the award metal will be getting this to you guys.

 

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Michael Macaluso: St. Catherine of Alexandria is kind of the inspiration behind this award and you know she was someone who was just a tenacious teen and a tenacious.

 

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Michael Macaluso: adolescent and someone who you know sort of spoke up and and fought against unfairness and injustice, so I mean do do either of you just sort of want to speak to that.

 

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Michael Macaluso: You know the just sort of how how popular this this book is right now and just sort of the the resonance that it has with so many people.

 

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Victoria Jamieson: um well it's been great seeing the feedback i'm one of the nicest parts of you know, following this books publication has just been the outreach, especially from kids.

 

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Victoria Jamieson: Omar has his nonprofit organization refugee strong which she can talk more about.

 

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Victoria Jamieson: But it's one of the volunteers with refugees strong it's been so nice to see the reaction from kids and kids sending in their birthday money or lemonade sale money just the support that the book has garnered has been really wonderful to see.

 

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Omar Mohamed: Yes, it's an honor to say what would even be considered for it, so no wonder, one, one thing is from a juice, to share my story was not my story, because my story is like a similar story about savages.

 

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Omar Mohamed: I just wanted to share for the sake of those who can share their their voice to be a voice for the voiceless and and that's why I was had the ios help us to to reach where I reached out to be where.

 

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Omar Mohamed: or even in Barcelona, the.

 

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Omar Mohamed: Different organizations evolve of a windows in adult industry verticals now for me this nonprofit organization, we stand by all volunteers.

 

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Omar Mohamed: are what we do is we just use our methodology is no child should actually stay home because or national law.

 

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Omar Mohamed: school because they can't afford school supplies books very good info a symbol that we just we want how we want to connect in the kitchen available for most for both children around the world, wherever they are, you know vacation unsafe conditions or less.

 

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Omar Mohamed: After this movie came out it really helped us glass organization and vicki said, most of our donors, I children it's just Julian has to be another children, now that we use children healthy healthy another to build the whole goal.

 

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Francesca Ciaramitaro: that's fantastic that's fantastic, and I think that mission resonates with so many children and so many educators and that's kind of where I want to go with this next question.

 

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Francesca Ciaramitaro: I as soon as I read this book wanted to get it in the hands of every student that I had for a lot of different reasons and in the hands of a lot of different educators i'm wondering, in terms of.

 

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Francesca Ciaramitaro: The decision to make it a graphic novel what the thought process was there and what advice you might have for teachers who don't typically teach graphic novels or might not have them on their shelves as often as Chapter books.

 

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Victoria Jamieson: Well, I think the graphic novel is mostly my doing to kind of convince somewhere in some ways, or you know discuss what it might look like it's a graphic novel.

 

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Victoria Jamieson: For me, I think graphic novels just have so much opportunity to reach all kinds of readers I hear from a lot of educators that it's great for reluctant readers it's great for students learning English.

 

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Victoria Jamieson: it's great for all readers I love graphic novels and as a story about.

 

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Victoria Jamieson: An environment I didn't know much about I thought, a graphic novel would be a great way to.

 

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Victoria Jamieson: kind of show what life is like as a American who's never been to a refugee camp I don't know what one looks like I didn't know what omar's home look like or school so graphic novel was a way to show.

 

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Victoria Jamieson: Things that I couldn't really imagine because i've never experienced it myself, so I get to all the educators out there.

 

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Victoria Jamieson: I love graphic novels and I think they're a great tool for reaching and teaching things like visual literacy, along with traditional written literacy so there's a great many things graphic novels can offer.

 

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Omar Mohamed: You and i'm glad we met the I agree with that decision for making this book.

 

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Omar Mohamed: Because I grew up in the industry becomes the only books that are available to us to our picture books and graphic can also grab English because.

 

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Omar Mohamed: English was not our first language so we just follow, along with the pictures and I really can say imagine in this is my story Colombian told.

 

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Omar Mohamed: Another former Governor of I don't think it could get the actual or or even club understanding, because we talked about schools.

 

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Omar Mohamed: People may assume the schools there, she will talk about houses linear student houses that they have, but surely this there's a picture of it really helped me to really open.

 

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Omar Mohamed: their eyes are really, really understand what it really means to address this refugee considering is a lot of people just really miserable really means like they have been there before the cannabis identify one or two 600.

 

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Michael Macaluso: it's a great point, I think that you know the the graphics help.

 

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Michael Macaluso: You know any any reader adult or child to just sort of step out of what home means for them, and just sort of see what what this What this really look like and what your experiences really were.

 

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Michael Macaluso: sort of to this point, you know just like Francesca as soon as I finished reading it, you know, I was just kind of speech list, and I just knew that I needed to pass it on to people and.

 

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Michael Macaluso: You know, for the first person I pass it on to was my 11 year old son, he was in fifth grade at the time, you know that the same age that you are Omar when the book started and and.

 

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Michael Macaluso: When he finishes he just came to me and he's like you know data I just I had no idea, and he couldn't even like articulate.

 

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Michael Macaluso: What it was that that he had no idea about and so.

 

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Michael Macaluso: When I think about this book getting into schools, I mean you know what what what is it you mentioned this a little bit you know you, you say this at the end, but you know.

 

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Michael Macaluso: i'd ask this to both of you, I mean what do you hope people take away from this book and.

 

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Michael Macaluso: You know it's it's one thing to think about books in schools as generating you know themes and plots and character, but you know, this is a little different what you know so So what is that for you, if someone is just sort of speechless about I had no idea what you hope that that is.

 

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Omar Mohamed: One or two things that people can take away from the book The book is one thing is.

 

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Omar Mohamed: That how I didn't choose to be a DVD, for example, no human being, wants to be a refugee was notice add or a political forum, a lot of people.

 

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Omar Mohamed: Immigrant became a talking point or refugees or so forth, so I really want people to understand that no human being, wants to be a refugee know, in the last thing that I wanted.

 

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Omar Mohamed: or any refugee wants to flee from the Hong Kong and live in another country or city, for example, I was born and my my family is what you guys called here in America middle class family.

 

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Omar Mohamed: My father own one of the largest from my mom was assuming so they were able to provide every entity that there that we need.

 

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Omar Mohamed: So we need to leave our home account so one thing that really bothers people is like.

 

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Omar Mohamed: A lot of people may think, being a religious or just like liberal fleeing their home country looking for bluejeans know a 99.9% of those religious.

 

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Omar Mohamed: Is between better life, using you die then usually, you have the budget of five and one very unfortunate thing is, we forget those who lost their lives, university Kansas.

 

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Omar Mohamed: You know, realistic about religious coming to live in Kansas, but we forget those who lost their lives when they were sick every.

 

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Omar Mohamed: will never get it from there, we will never have leverage their stores, because they lost their lives 100 million of them lost their lives when.

 

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Omar Mohamed: They receive one thing the model has to take from this book is my story I didn't use to to grow up the way I grew up energies.

 

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Omar Mohamed: ages to come to college it's all my by circumstances I had no other option, so that is one thing, the second thing that Google also highlight is.

 

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Omar Mohamed: How we always every person in this world, will the struggle of a fumble it, you know, we are all created yet as someone who only supply our patients will be tested a fumble it up.

 

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Omar Mohamed: In one way or another, so we always have to be patient alone is the grid full of what we have we don't want to you don't have the.

 

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Michael Macaluso: that's wonderful and I think that again everything you said that just resonates so much, I think, with what this award is all about, and what the you know what this award wants to draw attention to so thanks that's great.

 

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Francesca Ciaramitaro: yeah another.

 

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Victoria Jamieson: Question OK.

 

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Francesca Ciaramitaro: Now go ahead.

 

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Victoria Jamieson: um well in terms of what I was hoping readers would take away from it it's funny because I never really entered into stories with a goal in mind, or a theme.

 

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Victoria Jamieson: I think, in this case writing our story was my goal was to just be as honest and as truth like as stay as close to home our story as possible and it's really up to the readers with what kind of message they want to take away.

 

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Victoria Jamieson: And the message that we've heard from readers over and over again it's just empathy and increased understanding, so I think that's really the best I could have hoped for.

 

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Victoria Jamieson: With the book is just getting to know Omar and his family and friends and just having a better understanding of what other kids around the world are experiencing.

 

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Francesca Ciaramitaro: Absolutely, along with that honesty and that empathy I think there are a lot of opportunities for students who might not be growing up in refugee camps to still connect.

 

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Francesca Ciaramitaro: To Omar story with his resistance to attend school and his relationship with his brother and how he cares for him.

 

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Francesca Ciaramitaro: And so I just was wondering your thoughts on that reliability factor and how students can still really connect with Omar and His story, even though they might be very living very different lives.

 

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Victoria Jamieson: Through an answer that Omar.

 

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Omar Mohamed: knew.

 

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Omar Mohamed: I wasn't sure.

 

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Victoria Jamieson: yeah.

 

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Victoria Jamieson: I think your life when kids are relating to.

 

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Omar Mohamed: yeah I see.

 

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Omar Mohamed: You know, when I was, I was child and.

 

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Omar Mohamed: Most of.

 

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Omar Mohamed: my brother first our souls check I was doing everything I was a student of the time to be a better person for not.

 

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Omar Mohamed: For me, for for for for my brother and I always wanted to be honest and also be kind to him, first, before I knew to a tool for for for other people, as I said before.

 

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Omar Mohamed: kids here in the US, or even the other parts of the world that they have access to a terrible I bought books or notebooks on textbooks.

 

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Omar Mohamed: may not realize the challenges those other children may be made a decision because they didn't see the have never encountered.

 

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Omar Mohamed: You know, when I was in school will use one pain for maybe three four months or one notebook for five subjects and I just wanted.

 

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Omar Mohamed: I wanted to highlight like the those the struggle those children around the world affairs, and I, and I want those children who read the book good no issues to to to try like if I was.

 

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Omar Mohamed: If I was a child or qualified them so when you for it encourages them by just reading my story help them.

 

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Omar Mohamed: To overcome the small challenges that they may have here here in the US, I was able to see the former or jewelry or this other character for both overcome this, and this, and this.

 

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Omar Mohamed: For me, to overcome this and this one should be nothing I want them to come there my my story with with their children, they are faced with challenges in the present moment and also want them to see the support that I had understood.

 

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Omar Mohamed: Or the resources that we have access to, so I hope you can help them to overcome the challenges difficulties that they have.

 

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Michael Macaluso: And so the next question is, I say even that to write this this idea of.

 

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Michael Macaluso: You know thinking sort of about what you had and and you know the the moment in the book where you know you are so grateful and you sort of give thanks and you recognize sort of how how.

 

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Michael Macaluso: blessed you are by family and friends and there's there's so much more that's around you, I think, maybe, along with this note, you know i'm assuming that that we maybe come from and have different faith traditions.

 

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Michael Macaluso: So I mean one thing that i'm wondering here is, you know, despite the the faith tradition, the different faith potentially different faith traditions.

 

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Michael Macaluso: there's so much that that sort of resonates with how we as Catholics, think about faith about prayer about God.

 

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Michael Macaluso: You know, one of the beneficiaries of this award is Catholic schools, so I mean what would you say to maybe this this potential here for this connection across across faith across across religious difference.

 

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Omar Mohamed: I think we are all created by God, so it is interesting, it is really unfortunate that you know the Assembly, I say I am the way I look at I look because God created.

 

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Omar Mohamed: I was morning so Monday I didn't choose to be born somebody that you didn't choose to be wherever you are born, it was all justin for us by God, and we always have to be grateful to him, no matter what order to do.

 

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Omar Mohamed: This while we are we have been tested, you know we're here to be here to be tested and that's part of our our our.

 

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Omar Mohamed: Our challenges, this is also part of our life, we will be challenged all the time, you know it's all up to how our mission will also be tested, so it is good to see like a Muslim and in the beverage because.

 

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Omar Mohamed: They were different faith, you know the marketing mix newer Muslim is going on in.

 

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Omar Mohamed: The other stages in that industry verticals and they you know face.

 

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Omar Mohamed: We also it's not as we have we don't have to change people looking based on their race, this of nationality, based on that especially based the way they talk the way this.

 

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Omar Mohamed: sort of sort of talks to us it's up to the one who created it and that's got there, but now, when we put in the shoes of the creators, a lot of problem.

 

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Omar Mohamed: When we start charging people why, why is this like this way of ladies what you look like this, so it is like, why are you why are you black when you grow then there's none of this is not up to us to change.

 

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Omar Mohamed: Those evil, they will be reporting to God, whatever they do, and however they did it for us as a human being it's all for all our job is just tell them.

 

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Omar Mohamed: If you have a good advice to other human beings tell them do you see this yes so tell them you think this is a restaurant it's up to he.

 

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Omar Mohamed: And it's activity on the gap between the one who created it so repeat again will be tested will be challenged in this world and that's all all all bone bone bone.

 

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Michael Macaluso: I think it's so beautiful and I think that it makes me think about there's this prayer attributed to Mother Teresa who says, you know it was never between us and that it's always been between us and God and.

 

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Michael Macaluso: And this message.

 

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Michael Macaluso: You know, we are tested and and it's not up to us to judge, I think that just resonates so much with with us and what we believe and just sort of how we can live our lives, so thank you for that I think it's a beautiful.

 

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Omar Mohamed: Beautiful testament.

 

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Francesca Ciaramitaro: And one final question i'll jump in with here and we've touched on in at different points where you've talked about the message that you hope young readers take away from it.

 

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Francesca Ciaramitaro: In particular there's a lot of different types of adversity, that these characters face.

 

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Francesca Ciaramitaro: Especially with gender dynamics some of the young girls and opportunities that they have or don't have based on.

 

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Francesca Ciaramitaro: decisions that they don't get to make and so i'm wondering what advice you might have for students or young readers that faced similar types of adversity when they might not have a choice or.

 

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Francesca Ciaramitaro: They might be denied a certain opportunity, what should they do and how can they look to Omar and his friends and his siblings for inspiration.

 

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Omar Mohamed: We had to the medicine, we added other characters, which is, in my study was to tell our stories within my story, so that is what is there to be added and one day that was really that has been my eyes dollar syndication, for example.

 

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Omar Mohamed: Students with disabilities have no access to education, of any type of form, so that is really just wanted to highlight and also that also.

 

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Omar Mohamed: Teaching I wasn't the only struggle with the others within the come within label that struggle, especially other other students.

 

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Omar Mohamed: who have disabilities goddess who wanted to go to school, and they were not allowed because of that conditional because of their culture Gala second season I don't know if relation was MGM was also a huge factor in those in those.

 

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Omar Mohamed: indices, as you can so for the movie I realized in school, when I was growing up at school, there were a few girls in the village, there are many girls.

 

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Omar Mohamed: So is the oldest one that are in our classroom is $35 if it was over at 90 boys and then at home, you see how it goes and all doing how's your way.

 

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Omar Mohamed: And then there were some girls who really started advocating for themselves, they wanted to do.

 

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Omar Mohamed: To go to school, so I still it comes back is all up to you it's all up to the individual, the effort and the time and and the work you put in.

 

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Omar Mohamed: Overcoming whatever circumstances and whatever challenges, you may encounter or the mysteries and only thing you really have to know is it's not it's not you're not alone has been challenged.

 

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Omar Mohamed: In one way or another you're not the only one, because when we when you take Barcelona when you always say why me why me it's never only you.

 

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Omar Mohamed: know people who are was circumstance was jealous jealous, then you then the one you don't hear your fishing, you always talk to the team bus.

 

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Omar Mohamed: Normal is for bonus aspartame must always have to say I can do this I don't want other people to tell me I can't because it's your life, and you can do whatever you want to you want to do, or you can be whatever you want to be in school.

 

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Omar Mohamed: To school utterance could ever tell them if you become a president or do you become a leader or a manager become a millionaire people like money now there's so much if you can hear a.

 

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Omar Mohamed: song for you you're not gonna remember you are a kindergarten teacher or the facilities are known for his teacher that tell you.

 

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Omar Mohamed: or encourage you only want you to succeed in life, he only wants you to be a better person it's all for you, so if you want to fail it's all going to be.

 

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Omar Mohamed: You if you if you do when your life is going to be so I hope that I hope they never give up hope and deliverer lose hope because we have.

 

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Omar Mohamed: Always you know scheduling I have scheduled million, but God always has a blonde for me and it's always he always have a better block so people need to understand that we have not gotten this as a better balance for each and every one of us.

 

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Victoria Jamieson: And something we talked a lot about I think when we were writing the story was.

 

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Victoria Jamieson: How because it's a book for children's we had to kind of always toe the line of being really honest and not sugarcoating the truth.

 

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Victoria Jamieson: But then, making it appropriate for children, so I think part of the reason we wanted to put in several girl characterised was to show the truth that some kids do have more obstacles and others girls face special obstacles when going to school.

 

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Victoria Jamieson: So I hope what kids will see is that they may have more obstacles than their peers, you know from whatever their background or whatever special obstacles they face, I think it's important to face those obstacles and be honest about.

 

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Victoria Jamieson: The stumbling blocks kids might have around the world, but then with that honesty and facing those problems your battle April to tackle it so that was our hope, or at least my hope and adding some some female characters in the story.

 

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Michael Macaluso: And it's so great and I just appreciate so much that it's that that it is honesty right as one of the drivers here.

 

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Michael Macaluso: You know, regardless of of a child or if being a children's book or whatever I just appreciate that so much before we sign off, you know, I just want to say again.

 

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Michael Macaluso: As a result of this award we're going to do our part to make sure that it gets into elementary schools middle schools high schools.

 

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Michael Macaluso: You know, some people may be watching this and classrooms us down the down the road even so.

 

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Michael Macaluso: I don't know if either of you just kind of you know, want to respond to that, how does it make you feel that that that this book is being part of a formal curriculum in a classroom or.

 

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Michael Macaluso: If there's any updates you want to give maybe and Omar on your story, but I mean anything that you can have like to say here as we sign off.

 

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Michael Macaluso: Victoria or.

 

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Omar Mohamed: No, no, they don't say this it's an honor to receive this award and it's also not only for me, but mostly children.

 

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Omar Mohamed: Around the world, to the story the.

 

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Omar Mohamed: More students will be able to be able to read and understand and get to learn from it and one or two things that my organization our organization run by all volunteers, what we do is we really want to eradicate.

 

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Omar Mohamed: Things that we highlighted about Dallas education, you want me to go that that wants to go to school, needs to be.

 

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Omar Mohamed: Specifically in that part of the Walter, specifically in those energy comes and one thing to indicate that we have qualitative our images, if you follow us on Facebook, you may see the different updates a budget that we did this year we did.

 

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Omar Mohamed: cemetery box for high school does, because there is a model that we have seen sanitary been forgotten high schools, we give a gun is good for the cemetery but.

 

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Omar Mohamed: You also built more more popular with the pilot for godless because what I realized was when I was in school, we used to share the pilot.

 

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Omar Mohamed: One entirely will be both voice and data, so you can see the equity of the show, and they may face this girl is a boy standing at the door.

 

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Omar Mohamed: When she she's using the bus this thing was this guarantee them to go to school, everyone to come to school, you want to you want to indicate that.

 

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Omar Mohamed: We have also provide transportation organization also provide transportation.

 

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Omar Mohamed: for students with disabilities visually blind students that want to go to school, but he can talk a minute, which will help.

 

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Omar Mohamed: You as kingdom their mother smoking in every day from home to school and then, when when this came out then she has to walk all the way from village to school and then walking back you want them to read the.

 

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Omar Mohamed: Data students to the physical disabilities this year were ever to take to school about 17 disabilities, we have for me or transportation.

 

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Omar Mohamed: taxi that will take them from other tutors nothing really to school from school to relate, and we want to reach more is also the beginning and wanting a totally different.

 

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Omar Mohamed: from other organizations that you may encounter is, I know I lived there for 20 years, so I go behind I will identify the most affordable among different books.

 

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Omar Mohamed: And if someone donates $100 the whole hundred dollars will go to the broker, because for me, I will be based on volunteers, that they are not, they are not they know.

 

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Omar Mohamed: How to do will go to the to to to to that project and the religious religion out there, I hope, a lot of people, a lot of children, a lot of people will help also organization, so we can also help those children who are, where I was.

 

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Michael Macaluso: and your information about that is in the back of the book right it's that's great perfect Victoria go ahead and respond to i'd love to hear your thoughts.

 

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Victoria Jamieson: No i'm happy to have the last word, but just wanted to add my thanks and echo what Omar said that we're really honored and so pleased and thrilled that the book will be in reaching a wider audience, so thank you once again for the honor.

 

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Francesca Ciaramitaro: I told Mike as we were in this process, what, no matter what wins this book is going to be taught in my classroom it's just happening so i'm.

 

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Francesca Ciaramitaro: it's such an honor to meet and talk with you both and I can't wait to continue to share the story with my students and more teachers and beyond.

 

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Michael Macaluso: I just want to show you about two so something fun when I picked up this book ages ago in in our campus bookstore it's a signed copy.

 

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Omar Mohamed: I don't know how but you guys are in.

 

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Michael Macaluso: there.

 

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Michael Macaluso: Signed copy so.

 

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Victoria Jamieson: If we do that.

 

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Michael Macaluso: Well, thank you again both so much and will hopefully be in touch as we move forward and and hopefully have some more opportunities with you both we.

 

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Michael Macaluso: love and appreciate that if it's at all possible, but thank you again for your story for your work and we just we just look forward to being in touch, so thank you.

 

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Omar Mohamed: Thank you.

 

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Omar Mohamed: Thank you.

 

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Francesca Ciaramitaro: Thank you, both so much.

0:00:09.7 Audrey Scott: Welcome to this modern education podcast that explores learning. From the everyday exchange of thoughts and ideas to the theories and practices behind entire systems. Think education is cool? So do we. So we pair two conversations, learn about our guests, then learn from our guests, share your takeaways and come back for more. You're listening to Think. Pair. Share, with me, Audrey Scott.
 
0:00:42.5 AS: I'm glad to welcome Dr. Chloe Gibbs to Think. Pair. Share. Chloe is an assistant professor of economics and the newly selected Director of Notre Dame's Program for Interdisciplinary Educational Research, or ND PIER. Chloe studies the Economics of Education, how investments we make in children's lives generate short and long-term outcomes. She's interested in measuring the effects both intended and unintended of education policies and interventions on disadvantaged children and families. Chloe's commitment and vision sheds a whole new light on how cool it is to be an economist.
 
0:01:18.8 AS: Thank you so much for being here, Chloe.
 
0:01:20.7 Dr. Chloe Gibbs: Thank you for having me.
 
0:01:22.0 AS: So excited for our conversation. And I also just want to start by congratulating you on your new post as the director for ND PIER.
 
0:01:31.3 Chloe Gibbs: Thank you. I'm very excited to be taking on that role and looking forward to how it unfolds and working with the students.
 
0:01:37.2 AS: And I will ask you more about that, of course, but first we'll jump into those fun questions and we'll start with the rapid fire ones. Spring or Fall?
 
0:01:43.2 CG: Fall.
 
0:01:43.5 AS: Orange or black?
 
0:01:44.7 CG: Orange.
 
0:01:45.9 AS: Ghosts or goblins?
 
0:01:47.5 CG: Ghosts.
 
0:01:48.5 AS: Pumpkin patch or haunted house?
 
0:01:50.8 CG: Pumpkin patch.
 
0:01:52.2 AS: Picking apples or bobbing for apples?
 
0:01:54.4 CG: Picking apples.
 
[chuckle]
 
0:01:57.5 AS: I don't know who bobs for apples these days.
 
0:01:58.0 CG: Yes. That does not sound appealing.
 
0:02:01.3 AS: It's not my cup of tea either. Never was, I guess. Apple cider or apple pie?
 
0:02:08.8 CG: Apple cider.
 
0:02:08.9 AS: Black cats or spiders?
 
0:02:11.1 CG: Black cats.
 
0:02:12.1 AS: Excellent. Okay, so that was the fun little rapid fire once, and then we're gonna ask some other ones and you may see a continuing theme.
 
0:02:19.6 CG: Okay.
 
0:02:20.5 AS: What are you dressing up for Halloween like this year?
 
0:02:22.5 CG: I haven't really thought about it. I have four kids, so I've spent more time discussing with them what they are dressing up as, and usually what both my husband and I just kind of fill in with a theme, if we can, alongside what they're doing. So we're still working on it.
 
0:02:36.8 AS: Do you have a favorite theme you guys have dressed up for in the past?
 
0:02:39.9 CG: We did superheroes one year, and that was pretty fun. Everybody... We had a Supergirl, and we had a Wonder Woman and I was Cat Woman, and my husband was Batman. So that was pretty fun.
 
0:02:50.3 AS: Do you guys go around your neighborhood and everything?
 
0:02:53.0 CG: We do, and our neighborhood is great, we have a lot of kids, a lot of kids my children's age. And so it's really fun.
 
0:03:00.6 AS: That's awesome. Can I ask the age range for your kids?
 
0:03:02.2 CG: Yes. They are two, six, 10 and 11.
 
0:03:07.2 AS: Oh my gosh. Great range. A two-year-old, I didn't realize you have a two-year-old, that's so sweet.
 
0:03:10.6 CG: Yes. Pandemic guy. Because he's been home for so long, so he's just now kind of venturing out into the world.
 
0:03:16.4 AS: How has that been different for you to watch that? That's interesting.
 
0:03:20.0 CG: It's been interesting, he had a bit of a speech delay during the pandemic, perhaps not surprisingly, but then he started getting some services for that, and now that he's back out interacting with more people, and he goes to preschool, no delays anymore. And he's certainly caught up, he's gone the direction of being a social butterfly in response to having just been with his family for so long.
 
0:03:46.9 AS: That's wonderful. That's encouraging.
 
0:03:49.1 CG: Yes, I think you can imagine it going one of two ways, and the way he has gone is that people outside of our house are much more interesting than the ones he spent 18 months cooped up with.
 
0:04:00.1 AS: He'll come back around, I'm sure.
 
0:04:01.3 CG: Yes, hopefully.
 
0:04:02.9 AS: Do you like scary movies?
 
0:04:05.4 CG: I do not. It is not my thing. The only time I have is usually the night time, and so I can't watch a scary movie before I go to sleep, doesn't mesh well with sleeping well.
 
0:04:17.8 AS: I hear you. Do you have a favorite Halloween candy?
 
0:04:21.1 CG: Halloween candy. Well, I'm a sort of a... I think I'm an outlier here. I really like coconut, so I'm a big fan of Almond Joy and Mounds, and my kids always are like, "Oh, those are for mom, and those over." So those are my favorites.
 
0:04:38.3 AS: It seems fair too that you get certain ones or just the mom tax.
 
0:04:42.1 CG: Exactly, exactly.
 
0:04:43.0 AS: And my sister always took all the Reese's peanut butter cups, she somehow tricked us into trading all of ours, "That's only three of those, and I'll give you all of these."
 
0:04:53.4 CG: It sounds like an economist in the making there.
 
0:04:56.7 AS: I'll have to compliment her in that way next time.
 
0:05:00.9 CG: Yeah.
 
0:05:01.0 AS: So just feeling like I was had. What is your favorite holiday?
 
0:05:03.2 CG: My favorite holiday is actually probably Thanksgiving. I like the holidays where there's not a whole lot of build-up preparation, but you spend time with family and it's relaxing and that sort of thing, so I like Thanksgiving, I like the fourth of July, things like that, where there's just kind of a gathering, but especially as a parent, there's not a whole lot of preparation that I have to do for the day.
 
0:05:25.5 AS: I agree, family time is really when you can sit back and relax and just enjoy each other.
 
0:05:29.3 CG: Exactly.
 
0:05:31.2 AS: Wonderful. And I think I know, well, I don't know, maybe I don't know the answer to this. Are you superstitious?
 
0:05:36.3 CG: I'm not particularly superstitious. When I was a kid, I had some strange little superstitions, but...
 
0:05:43.4 AS: Dare I ask what one of the strange little superstitions was?
 
0:05:49.0 CG: I'm trying to remember. I can remember my parents always sort of like trying to talk me out of them.
 
0:05:54.1 AS: I don't even know if they'd be considered superstitions, but when you went over a railroad tracks, you had to raise your feet or hold your breath past the cemetery or...
 
0:06:01.5 CG: My kids still do that one, the holding the breath, unless you're wearing red or something... There's like...
 
0:06:06.9 AS: A new twist.
 
0:06:09.0 CG: Yes. There is one way you can get out of it. That one... So those were the kinds of things I did a lot as a kid. Also, things that I thought were lucky, so when something good happen, I was wearing this particular shirt, so now I've gotta wear this particular shirt, those kinds of things. I was pretty committed to.
 
0:06:25.7 AS: Yeah, I could see that. I think a lot of athletes are still committed to those kinds of things, like the cubs not shaving their beards. It finally worked.
 
[chuckle]
 
0:06:33.4 CG: Yeah.
 
0:06:37.3 AS: Alright, thank you so much. I think that's great. And then maybe just like a little bit of a transition. Do you have any Autumn traditions? Are you from the Midwest? Do you like the seasons?
 
0:06:44.2 CG: I grew up in Kentucky, which some people consider Midwest, some people consider South, has a little bit of both. Exactly. But I just like all of the kind of cozy fall things, we like going apple picking and going to a pumpkin patch, and then love watching football and making chilli and all of the things that come along with the change in seasons. That's a fun transition.
 
0:07:14.1 AS: I do too. I look forward to all those, I think you're in the right place with most of those things at Notre Dame.
 
0:07:16.9 CG: Exactly. [chuckle]
 
0:07:20.1 AS: What was your path to Notre Dame from Kentucky?
 
0:07:21.4 CG: I actually went to Notre Dame as an undergraduate, and so this was now 20 some years ago. I grew up Catholic in Kentucky, where I grew up in the center of the state, not particularly Catholic in nature. And so when I was looking at colleges, I was interested in potentially going to a place that was Catholic and had a Catholic identity and mission associated with it. And my dad, who was a Boston college grad, said, "Well, if you're gonna go to a Catholic institution, you have to go to Notre Dame. It's the best institution in the country." Don't tell his uncles that, who's also BC grad, uncles that, but he sort of steered me here, I had visited as an eighth grade or when my sister was looking at colleges, and I just loved the campus and I really fell in love with the environment.
 
0:08:17.8 CG: It just felt like the college experience to me, and so that's how I initially was here, and then my career took many twists and turns from there, and I went to graduate school and actually my first job out of my PhD program was at the University of Virginia, and then this opportunity to come back to join as an Assistant Professor in the Economics Department came up, and of course, I was interested, and it also aligned well with where our family is; and we have, as I said, four kids, and so it just worked out well for us on a number of dimensions, professionally and personally. And so that's how my path first started at Notre Dame and then came back to Notre Dame.
 
0:09:06.7 AS: Oh, nice. I have to laugh, kudos to your dad for being able to be confident in his advice.
 
0:09:11.5 CG: I know.
 
0:09:13.0 AS: That's funny. I went here undergrad as well, and afterwards I worked in Boston for a while, and so beautiful area and lots of friends went to BC. So it's a fun rivalry, I think so.
 
0:09:24.8 CG: It is, it definitely is.
 
0:09:27.5 AS: Of course, we're on the right side of that.
 
0:09:30.1 CG: Right, exactly.
 
0:09:31.4 AS: What piqued your initial interest in economics?
 
0:09:32.4 CG: So economics is, to me, a set of tools and a lens for looking at the world and understanding a variety of problems and potential solutions to those problems, and so for me, it was more of a perspective of how we approach puzzles that we see in the world. And so I think economists bring a neat set of both theoretical tools for understanding how people, institutions behave under particular constraints, and really all policy problems are of that flavor, and I, actually, my training was in policy, I did a master's in Public Policy, and then I worked for a while on education policy issues, and so it was really that kind of set of both theoretical tools and then empirical tools to take the theory to data and actually test these questions that we were interested in.
 
0:10:35.2 CG: That was really appealing to me as a social science perspective, and so that's kind of how I arrived here, and it's always a bit confusing to people that I study education, but I'm an economist. "And how do those work? Don't you study the stock market?" And I always say to that that if economics was only about the stock market and inflation and monetary policy, those kinds of questions, it really would not be the right place for me. It was really the economist toolkit for understanding social problems, for understanding the kinds of policies that we leverage to address those problems and whether or not they're working, that really drew me in.
 
0:11:19.8 AS: That's a really great perspective actually. And thank you for clearing that up. I think that's a natural question.
 
0:11:24.2 CG: Yes.
 
0:11:26.2 AS: Correct me if I'm wrong, are you more sort of a... It's not Arts and Letters, but it's not a business degree, right?
 
0:11:31.1 CG: Yeah. So economics is in the College of Arts and Letters. At different institutions, it can be with the Arts and Sciences, group with the social sciences, or it can be in a business school. I think when it is housed in a business school, it does have a slightly different focus. Certainly, the teaching looks different when you're in a business school versus when you're in a more liberal arts kind of environment. And so here, in most places where I think I would feel most comfortable, it sits alongside the other Social Sciences, so sociology, psychology, and I mean that both literally and that we're all in the very close proximity on campus, but also figuratively that we are very much sort of aligned and the kinds of questions that we ask, the kinds of... Even some of the tools, the underlying tools that we use are very similar. And so sociologist studying education and a psychologist studying education and an economist studying education would have much more in common, and actually, I think much more aligned in the types of questions and their interests than even you might find between a macro economist study monetary policy and a laborer economist, like I am studying education.
 
0:12:45.9 AS: In the classroom, what do you want that distinction to mean for the students?
 
0:12:50.7 CG: So in the classroom, I have three main aims when I teach an Economics of Education course. I want students to understand the theoretical lens and underlying conceptual framework that economists bring to these questions. And so that's everything from understanding why does a person decide to go to college and what in that decision is influenced by policies that we leverage, by the prices that they face for college, by their experiences to date, their upbringing, that kind of thing. And so we bring some theoretical tools to understanding that problem, then we sort of build those out to think about other questions, about what leads a family to decide to send their child to preschool and what type of preschool, how do families make decisions about whether or not to send their children to private school or to public school, or what does that range of options look like.
 
0:13:49.5 CG: So economics is really about making decisions given the constraints in the context you're working in, and so the first and foremost angle in my class is to give them the tools to think through those kinds of decisions, and then how policy might influence those decisions in better ideally or worse ways. So we do that, we do the conceptual foundation from economics, and then we move into thinking about, "Okay, how do we actually test how this works in the real world?" To really get answers to some of the big questions, for example, why is there differential college going for kids from low income families and kids from high income families? And is there a policy lever that could potentially address that, such that the kinds of students who would benefit from going to college, who are from low income families, go to college at the same rates that those same students from high income families go.
 
0:14:46.9 CG: And so then we use empirical tools to turn to data and think about how best we answer those questions. And there's a lot of challenges in doing that, so we work through how we best study these questions and what are the qualities of a good study and what are the qualities of a potentially flawed study that doesn't help us get to a good answer. And so it's really about the sort of interaction of theory and data. And then the final piece is that I would like them to be able to use what we learn about in class to think about the real policy ramification, so to really think about when, for example, the Biden administration is floating an idea to forgive student loan debt or is thinking about a universal pre-K program for four-year-olds, that they have a foundation to be able to assess those kinds of policies, so what's the best evidence say about whether this will work and for whom it will work.
 
0:15:49.4 CG: So it's really, those are the three goals I have in class, is really to build up the theory so that they're thinking and approaching these kinds of questions like an economist, to help them with some data skills, such that they can understand how we turn to data to answer questions and then to them really be able to use it to inform policy making and thinking about real policy implications.
 
0:16:14.6 AS: It sounds very interesting. I think I need to sit in on your class.
 
[chuckle]
 
0:16:19.0 CG: It's a fine one. We do a whirlwind tour through from early childhood all the way through college, and then we do some international education topics, so it's a whirlwind.
 
0:16:30.8 AS: Wow, that's great. It sounds extremely interesting though. What kind of questions or feedback do you get from students?
 
0:16:36.3 CG: So I think students come to my class with... My understanding is broadly two goals, one is that they care deeply about education questions, and so they're really interested in knowing, how best do we address inequitable access to education resources or to college-going or to high quality pre-K. So they're really motivated by those of questions, and then I think the second piece is much more practical, they want skills that are then useful as they move into either careers or to go to graduate school, or if they're gonna go and eventually work in education policy space or run education programs, or work in a school district or for a state government, they want the kinds of skills that will make them equipped for those kinds of jobs.
 
0:17:34.2 CG: So that's really why I've structured the class in the way that I have, because I want them to get traction on both of those aims, I want them to leave the class with an understanding of some of the very difficult and deep problems in our education systems, and what we have learned about what works in the context of that inequitable system that does not function perfectly, so what have we learned about how we improve outcomes in that space, and then I also want them to leave being able to work on those problems to go into jobs or graduate school where they are now building the skills and they have a foundation in those skills to actually be able to help us learn more and address these problems in new and different ways.
 
0:18:25.1 AS: Ultimately, I know when people are an ACE, that if they don't wanna stay say in the classroom, that one of the options is, "Hey, but you can have the economics background, and you can work on policy." Is that something that you talk about in the classroom? Does that make sense?
 
0:18:41.9 CG: Yeah. That makes a lot of sense.
 
0:18:42.7 AS: Okay, okay.
 
0:18:44.2 CG: Yeah, so in the context of my Economics of Education class and other classes that I've taught in the Economics Department, I always have some students who are interested in going either into ACE, there's always a... I would say a large group of students interested in ACE and then other potential ways of working in schools and some other types of service roles that are working with children or families in ways that might sort of surround their educational experiences, so tutoring, various AmeriCorps types of efforts. And so I always have students that are interested in that track, and they're always kind of thinking where then do I go from there? If it turns out that I'm not necessarily gonna stay in the classroom or in direct service? Are there ways that I can still use my talents and my skills that I've developed in service of others and in pursuit of better outcomes for kids, for families? Particularly those coming from disadvantaged backgrounds.
 
0:19:45.8 CG: And I always say that I think that direct experience gives you really important context to be able to think about the 30,000 feet questions at the policy level, whether that's a school's policy, a school district's policy, a state's policy, or even the federal government that having those real life experiences, I think both can motivate you to really wanna zero in on important questions and can provide important context to thinking about those kinds of policy questions. And also you can then move into a round where you're using additionally, some of these skills about assessing policy implications about analyzing the costs and benefits of different investments that we might make. And so there is a role for people who are thinking about these very real challenges in both spaces, both directly working with the individuals that are experiencing these challenges and in shaping policy that tackles these challenges.
 
0:20:49.2 AS: Thank you. That's extremely helpful, and I'm glad that they're hearing about other ways that they can still continue to use their skills for good.
 
0:20:58.1 CG: Right, exactly.
 
0:21:00.6 AS: If you can tell me a little bit about ND PIER and as the new director, as you look ahead, what does that role look like for you?
 
0:21:05.9 CG: ND PIER is an interdisciplinary graduate training program. And so the idea behind it is that there are graduate students pursuing interesting education questions in their different disciplines, be that sociology or economics, or in psychology, political science. So students are rated across the university who are studying these important questions, and the idea of behind ND PIER is to support them in that pursuit and to bring them together in ways that might be productive and beneficial for their individual work. So if they were the only students, say in a cohort over in political science that was thinking about questions related to education systems and policies and practices, then they might not get the exposure to what other questions, what other data people are exploring, what other opportunities exist for them to expand on their work.
 
0:22:04.7 CG: And so what we hope is in bringing them together with students who are also studying education who may have very different questions, but may be able to bounce ideas off of and contribute to their work that we get some benefits from this collaboration and this group sort of orientation. And so the way that we think about the program is that there are these big, very important, very challenging questions that face schools, how schools are run, how students have access to schools, and then of course, the outcomes that schools produce.
 
0:22:42.9 CG: And so our hope is that we can provide students with the kinds of opportunities and exposure to make them better researchers and to improve the quality of education research more broadly, to contribute to their development in ways that then sort of set them off into the world to do the kinds of education research that we think can have big policy impact. And so that's really our goal with the program is to support them in their pursuit of a PhD, to bring in speakers to get them exposure to established scholars who are studying similar questions to also bring them together as a group so that they can brainstorm and work together and learn from one another, and that hopefully that then trains a generation of scholars who will be tackling the very questions that those of us who care about education are wrestling with all the time.
 
0:23:40.6 AS: Is there an effort to de-silo, I know it's wonderful to be focused, but maybe not so siloed.
 
0:23:47.6 CG: This is an ongoing challenge for programs like this, but also generally for academia and how universities think about research and about the work that we do. The incentives that people face are all still within their discipline, they have to finish dissertation in whatever discipline they're in, and they have to meet the standards and the expectations of the people that are reviewing them within that discipline. And then eventually they wanna get that work published, and so they have to get that work published within their disciplinary journals with reviewers who are gonna have the expectations of that specific discipline. So we don't want to impose any more separate expectations or an additional bar that you have to meet that your work has to in and of itself, be somewhat interdisciplinary. We want students to be doing excellent work within their disciplines.
 
0:24:42.3 CG: But we hope that the de-siloing is more of the nature that there is this communication across the scholars that are studying different things and that someone can always have a point or a data set they know of, or a context that they know of where you might be able to further push your research questions and the topics on your agenda. So what we're hoping for is to maximize the benefits of that interaction, and I do think that when you are, for example, the only person studying education questions or one of a few people studying education questions in your particular department, it can be harder to get access to those kinds of tips and insights and other scholars working on similar questions. So it's more like de-siloing for the purposes of helping everyone get access to the full range of opportunities available to them.
 
0:25:40.7 AS: It sounds like it maybe gives their area of focus a little bit more of a nuance, they might not have realized had a connection.
 
0:25:47.5 CG: Right, and I think that's often the case that if you are exclusively reading work and education that is in sociology journals and you're only interacting with a sub-set of people in sociology, you might just miss that there is this new relevant paper or there is this new interesting data set, or there's this new policy that Indiana is considering and that would be a context in which you could test and examine your question. So I think the hope is that they get this kind of additional input into the process of thinking about their own questions.
 
0:26:27.0 AS: Clearly there are already lots of really great things going on for ND PIER. But I'm wondering, as the new director, is there anything else you'd like to focus on or maybe put your personal stamp on?
 
0:26:36.6 CG: I think the main thing is through building of community, the structure, I think is there and it's working well, I think the components of the fellowship as we've designed them, I've been involved even before I was Director in designing the program. I think we are generally very happy with where it is in terms of the structure. And so my focus going forward will really be about the community of scholars, and we're at 19 fellows now across the disciplines studying education questions, there are varying points and there are trajectories, so some are finishing up, some are just starting their PhD careers. And so my hope is really that we can, especially in this kind of post-COVID time where some students spent their first year of graduate studies almost fully online and not interacting with each other much, especially not in person. And so going forward, I really want to build up the community in ways that all of the fellows feel like they have this group that they can turn to with questions that they can rely on.
 
0:27:47.3 CG: I was trained in a similar kind of program at the University of Chicago, and one really neat thing for me as I've moved out of the PhD and into my career is to see the successes of my fellow fellows who were also in the program with me and they're in different disciplines. I will see at an education conference that someone wins an early career award, or I will see a new publication from one of my co-fellows in the program at U Chicago and that is a really neat experience because we all moved through together, all pursuing our own questions and our own research, but in a way that really supported one another, and so it's really neat to see their successes now. And that's one thing that I hope our students get from this program too, is that you go through your PhD program, not only with your cohort of fellow political scientists or fellow Economist, but that you also move through with this group of... And a community of education researchers that are all very interested in similar questions. And so I think the community building will be my focus, and it's a great community of students, and so that's not hard work, but that's just... I think one of the primary aims of the program is to bring them together and allow them to collaborate and support one another.
 
0:29:14.1 AS: When you're working with them, does that lift your spirits? Give you more energy.
 
0:29:18.5 CG: Yes, it's always neat to see students at the different stages of a research project, and all of those stages can be exciting in different ways when you first have an idea or when you're first able to actually run something with data and actually take a look at the data and see what's there or when you're wrapping something up and now the findings can actually be out in the world. It's always fun to be with a group of individuals who are at these different stages so it's certainly energizing. And then we have launched our first few students who have finished their PhDs and are now out in the world, and that is as a director of the program, Mark Berends was in this role before, I know quite a moment of pride to actually see them go out into the world with these tools, these skills that we hope we've helped to contribute to and help them build, and now they're gonna go and continue to do great research and to provide scholarship that actually affects the world around them. One of the things that we've done with the program is we've brought in scholars who are really good at getting their research out into the policy conversation or into the world, and so we have brought in those kinds of scholars to talk to the students about how do you build that into your process of conducting research.
 
0:30:39.2 AS: Oh my gosh. That's critical these days. Another dimension that I guess, is sort of developing, continuing to develop and take on even greater importance.
 
0:30:47.0 CG: That's right, and I think to circle back to why students pursue a PhD in one of these disciplines to study education questions, it's probably not to simply have it published in a journal and read by fellow academics, it probably is in fact motivated by a desire to change things to inform policy to really affect people's lives. And so that final piece that we honestly are never really trained in in graduate school of connecting your research up to the real world and to practitioners and to policy makers, I think is really key for the kind of scholar who has come to this entire pursuit for that reason to provide that final feedback into the system.
 
0:31:36.8 AS: Close the loop.
 
0:31:38.6 CG: Exactly.
 
0:31:40.4 AS: Excellent, very critical. I'm so glad that that's another element that they'll be learning about, thanks for all your hard work and bringing all that together, and I can tell you're excited and we're excited for the future of ND PIER too. Just when you thought maybe you were starting to get a handle on some of this stuff, the pandemic happens. Has that redirected some of your work, is it too early to know how people are being affected to then study the funding of, I don't know, say in-person, smaller classes and all those kinds of things. Do you have a thought there?
 
0:32:13.6 CG: So the pandemic was hugely impactful for, I'd say a couple of different reasons. One is just that all ongoing education research that you were doing with any education provider/partner stopped and understandably so. They were all consumed with addressing the challenges right before them, and so there was this big hiatus in any work that was in partnership with school districts or schools or even state governments, because everybody was redirected to focus on the pandemic. And then, of course, it brought up a whole set of new questions for me around the impact of the pandemic, particularly on young children who sort of early introduction to schooling was being disrupted, so either if they were supposed to start kindergarten and it was now online or if they were in a pre-K program that could no longer operate, and we have a fair amount of data that points to the fact that parents made very different decisions about whether or not to send a kindergarten age eligible kid on into kindergarten, and a lot of parents just elected not to do that during these disrupted years. And so you also have these effects on sort of when you're starting school, and the format you're starting school and that kind of thing.
 
0:33:35.3 CG: So it brought up a whole bunch of questions about what will these disruptions mean, and in particular, the disparate effects of these disruptions on children from different family backgrounds, because certainly families with more means were able to buffer the shock of this in different ways. And there are some nice evidence that some economists have produced the shows that higher income families immediately sought out tutoring services and online kinds of programming and that kind of thing to ensure that the disruption to their kids learning was less severe. And so we know that there are going to be these effects on the gap between the learning gap and the achievement gap between kids from advantaged and disadvantaged families. And so what I wish the policy makers and practitioners had focused on was heading into this school year and will continue to focus on is precisely that is remediating what we think were some pretty negative shocks for kids from precisely the families that were affected in all ways by the pandemic, more dramatically, right. The low income families were more likely to have experienced a health shock, that these are exactly the families that might have experienced employment losses, and they're the same families then, where we think the schooling disruptions are particularly costly for the kids.
 
0:35:02.9 CG: And so I think education policy and education practitioners and education researchers should really be focused on what are the kinds of things we can do now that can help to sort of right this ship, so to speak, that can help to redress these differential effects of the pandemic, and I hope... And I think there will be work that is in this space very soon. I think there's certainly been work on the learning losses that students have experienced, and I think there will be more work on what works best to address those learning losses. In my own work, I'm really interested in what will be the effects and I plan on studying this of these disruptions to the early childhood experiences of kids, and so the delay of starting kindergarten or missing out on that pre-K year, and what do these things mean for both short and long-term outcomes. My own work would suggest they're gonna have pretty dramatic effects because we know that when we turn these investments on and we send kids to Pre-K, we provide head start, we improve the early childhood experiences of kids. We see these effects on their both short and long-term outcomes. And so now essentially what the pandemic did was turn all of that off, and so we would expect that that's gonna be pretty impactful for kids.
 
0:36:31.0 AS: Is there something specific that you think the policy makers could be keeping an eye on or start funding now?
 
0:36:38.9 CG: I think that there are a range of things that are mostly focused on targeting resources to the hardest hit schools, students, age groups. And so it's mostly around providing smaller class sizes, providing maybe summer school or additional lengthening, essentially lengthening the school day through after-school programs or tutoring or that kind of thing, and really sort of targeting it at the kids that we think were most affected. And I would argue at the youngest kids where some of these additional supports might help to kind of accelerate the skill development that they missed out on in the time frame when schooling was disrupted because you really can't replicate for the littlest kids that in school, in a group experience that we think is actually so impactful for their long-term outcomes, we actually think that's probably more of what the sort of secret sauce is than the academic skill building is, it's more about learning how to be in a classroom and be among peers and listen to a teacher and that kind of thing, and that you couldn't recreate via remote instruction. And so now I think it's just about finding every opportunity to provide kids with those kinds of learning experiences to build those foundational blocks towards social-emotional development, and building those kind of behavioral skills and regulation skills that we think are so important.
 
0:38:16.1 AS: Great. It's kind of maybe some of those intangibles that I feel like sometimes when you say Catholic school, they provide certain things, sometimes it's that intangible element of a community, as you mentioned, even what you're trying to do for ND PIER, etcetera. Do you feel that way? And is there a mission-driven sort of element for you and for what you're trying to help your students understand?
 
0:38:38.0 CG: Certainly, I think the best school environments are those kinds of environments that build community and encourage students on both their academic trajectories, but also in the development of social-emotional skills, what economists call non-cognitive skills that are so important for long-term trajectories. I think that those kinds of environments exist in Catholic schools certainly, and I think they also exist in some excellent public schools and in some charter schools. And I think we as researchers and as people who are interested in fostering children's skill development, should be looking to these context to understand, what is it about this particular context that engenders that sense of community and help students to build these kinds of skills. And hopefully what that eventually looks like is public schools learning from Catholic schools and Catholic schools learning from charter schools or public schools. And that there is this kind of collaboration or communication across the different types of settings about what works best.
 
0:39:47.2 CG: And I certainly think that those of us who study these kinds of questions who are really concerned as I am about the gap in outcomes for students from different socioeconomic status backgrounds, but also from different race and ethnic backgrounds, that the reason why we are concerned and motivated by these questions is because we want children, people to reach their full potential through the kinds of services, support systems that we're providing. And we're making these kinds of investments and we should make them well, and make them impactful. And so the way that the mission, both of Notre Dame as an institution and of IEI feeds into my work is in thinking about how we get to a place of equitable outcomes for children, and how we get to a place of human flourishing where children are reaching their fullest potential because of the kinds of services supports, the structures that we put in place to make that happen.
 
0:40:54.8 AS: Wonderful statement and wonderful goals, and it sounds to me that you're hopeful for the future of those efforts, are you?
 
0:41:02.2 CG: I am hopeful because we have increasingly through research, I think in large part over the past, say two decades, maybe three decades, really shined a bright light on what is happening in schools and how kids are doing and those critical long-term outcomes. So we may not really be concerned about a test score and sort of how well you're doing at the end of the fourth grade on this particular math assessment, what we ultimately care about is that kids are getting to a place where they are succeeding and they're doing what they wanna do in life, and that they have the foundation and the skills and the background to get there. And so I think we have increasingly understood what is going on on that dimension, gaps in both access to resources and outcomes. And then little by little, we are filling in the puzzle of which interventions, programs, policies get us to that point of more equitable outcomes. And so I am hopeful because I think we are at a point where we rely on research to help us fill in that puzzle where increasingly policy makers are looking to evidence to make the best policy investments. And so we will continue to build that evidence base and get to a point where we much better understand what those investments should look like.
 
0:42:25.8 AS: Well, we're lucky to have you in your new post and your students are lucky to have you, and I just thank you for your time and all your efforts, and I'm hopeful too, and I love learning about an economist view on how we can move forward. So thank you so much.
 
0:42:39.4 CG: Well, thank you. This has been great.
 
0:42:42.0 AS: Yeah, thank you. It's been an absolute pleasure.
 
0:42:43.8 CG: Thank you. No, I really enjoyed it, it was a good conversation.
 
0:42:47.8 AS: And thank you all for joining us for Think. Pair. Share. If you enjoyed this episode, head on over to Apple Podcasts to subscribe, rate and leave a review, it's very much appreciated. Check out our website at iei.nd.edu/media for this and other goodies. Thanks for listening and for now, off we go.

 

0:00:09.7 Audrey Scott: Welcome to this modern education podcast that explores learning, from the everyday exchange of thoughts and ideas to the theories and practices behind entire systems. Think education is cool? So do we. So we pair two conversations, learn about our guests, then learn from our guests, share your takeaways and come back for more. You're listening to Think-Pair-Share, with me, Audrey Scott.

[music]

0:00:41.3 AS: Get ready, because I feel like today's Think-Pair-Share is gonna be a little like the audio equivalent of a choose your own adventure book. That's due to my guest's indomitable spirit and genuine enthusiasm for all things English and language arts. Actually, for all things, period. Dr. Michael Macaluso is a faculty member of the Alliance for Catholic Education and a fellow of the Institute for Educational Initiatives.

0:01:04.4 AS: His primary research focuses on critical approaches in English education, and he hopes to inspire life-long readership both in and out of the classroom. Mike believes literacy has implications for the ways in which we know, see and understand the world, and therefore live, act and interact in the world. I'm looking forward to learning more. So without further ado, hi, Mike.

0:01:23.9 Dr. Michael Macaluso: Hello, hello? Am I good? [chuckle]

0:01:29.4 AS: There is.

0:01:30.8 Mike Macaluso: I just wanna be sure that... You know, Steve came in and set things up, and I just want to... Are we good or do you think you got me? 

0:01:36.6 AS: Yes, we're good.

0:01:37.9 MM: This picks up everything. Even the move of my file folder, I hear.

0:01:41.2 AS: Yeah, these mics are pretty good these days, that's why I'll give you a couple of those tips, if you can try not to hit the table because the mic is sitting on it, it will pick it up, but please do.

0:01:51.4 MM: You tell the Italian not to use his hands. "How am I gonna get through this? Oh God." [chuckle]

0:01:57.0 AS: No, please be comfortable, be yourself.

0:02:00.2 MM: Okay, I will, I will.

0:02:01.6 AS: Don't worry about the little sounds.

0:02:02.1 MM: Alright, sounds good.

0:02:02.6 AS: Everyone will understand. Okay, lots of good stuff on tap, so we'll probably jump right into the fun section.

0:02:08.2 MM: Oh, I'm so excited about the fun section. I'm a little jealous that Professor Gibbs got the Halloween section, but I'll deal. I'm excited to see what you have on tap for me here.

0:02:16.5 AS: I kinda like the theme idea, but because I know a little bit about your fun personality, we went sort of eclectic instead.

0:02:22.2 MM: Yes, I love eclectic. Oh my goodness, this is great. Such a visitor.

[chuckle]

0:02:28.3 AS: That's okay. We ready? Heads or tails? 

0:02:33.2 MM: Heads.

0:02:34.7 AS: Beard or mustache? 

0:02:34.8 MM: Oh, beard.

0:02:36.7 AS: Lions, tigers or bears? 

0:02:37.5 MM: Oh my, let's go... Let's go tigers.

0:02:42.8 AS: Nice. Tiny house or RV? 

0:02:45.4 MM: Tiny house. I can't handle an RV. I don't think I could do that. I really don't. Nor could my wife, so. [chuckle]

0:02:52.7 AS: I'm right there with you, but I do like the look of an Airstream on like a Christmas tree lot, maybe? 

0:02:58.3 MM: Yes, that looks so nice. It does. It's like picturesque. But living in it I can't imagine is picturesque, so.

0:03:05.6 AS: This might not be for us either, but how about zombie outbreak or alien invasion? 

0:03:10.4 MM: Oh, this is so fun. I mean, we could just talk about this, this is rapid fire... Actually, I feel like we could talk about this. [chuckle]

0:03:16.7 AS: We'll go off on this tangent. [chuckle]

0:03:19.4 MM: I would probably say zombie invasion, just because I feel like you have the potential to fight back and think of ways to fight back, whereas if aliens come, they're just gonna beam you up and you have no plan of attack. But one of my favorite movies growing up was Independence Day. I loved it. Man, the movie... That movie and Jurassic Park were game changers. But I'll go with zombie... What is it, zombie... Zombie invasion. Apocalypse, whatever.

0:03:45.0 AS: So I had to laugh actually, I was like, you actually did mesh the two, 'cause I said, "Zombie outbreak or alien invasion," and you said, "Zombie invasion," like the best of both worlds.

0:03:52.6 MM: There we go. [chuckle]

0:03:54.5 AS: Okay, misquoted movies or mistaken lyrics? 

0:03:58.1 MM: Oh man, I feel like I sorta treat movies as like somewhat kind of sacred, so you can't misquote. So I'll go the... What is it? The misspoken lyric? I really like that Taylor Swift song. I don't even know what it is, but she said... The actual lyric is like "star-crossed lovers", and for the longest time I thought it was "Starbucks lovers". And I actually think Starbucks... Do you know what I'm talking about? [chuckle]

0:04:19.6 AS: I totally thought it was... I still to this very moment thought it was Starbucks.

0:04:23.2 MM: But I like "Starbucks lovers" better because I feel like that works so well with what her song is trying to say there, and I think Starbucks... Maybe I'll write to her and just say, "You should officially change it, 'cause that just fits so much better and a much more poetic level of what your song is trying to say."

0:04:38.5 AS: Okay. Fiction or non-fiction? 

0:04:41.4 MM: Fiction, hands down. Although, am I supposed to be commenting on these, because I'm just...

0:04:45.5 AS: You can.

0:04:46.2 MM: Okay.

0:04:46.9 AS: Sure, it's your show, Mike, you do whatever you want with it.

[chuckle]

0:04:49.6 MM: So I have to give a quick little plug. I've been in somewhat of a non-fiction kinda kick lately because there is this great author, she was recently nominated, like short-listed for a Newbery. She wrote The Rise and Fall of Charles Lindbergh. I knew very little about him, but she's a local author, and she's done a ton of stuff, she's also written on the Romanov family, and the Charles Lindbergh book was so good.

0:05:14.4 MM: I mean, it's just like fascinating, and I would totally use that book in an American Lit class or History class. Talk about history repeating itself. This, I recommend this book to everybody, and now I'm reading with my boys, she just wrote one on The Curse of the Mummy's Tomb, it's with King Tut. Again, fascinating.

0:05:32.4 MM: She starts each chapter by saying, "They say that there was a curse with the mummy's tomb," and then talks about examples of how this curse has happened, and then she'll go into the history and the backstory of how they found the tomb. So she is just doing a wonderful job of making history sound like a story and a narrative, and I just highly recommend, especially the Charles Lindbergh book, but now this mummy one just came out.

0:05:55.2 AS: Is it Candace Fleming? 

0:05:57.2 MM: It's Candace Fleming, yes, Candace Fleming. Way to go. Oh my goodness, they're so, it's just so good. So a little caveat there, fiction, however, she's doing some wonderful work with non-fiction, highly recommend those books.

0:06:09.3 AS: Excellent. Okay, DC or Marvel? 

0:06:11.2 MM: Oh man, this is hard now. See, I thought I had an answer, but now I'm stuck. So I loved Batman growing up, which was DC. And that crazy show, as a kid I have such memories coming home from kindergarten and having my lunch in front of the TV to see which villain was on the Batman show that day, and I just... You know what I'm talking about, right? 

0:06:30.8 AS: Yes, I do. All the goofy like "boom"...

0:06:32.9 MM: Yes, it's "boom, pow" right? But then as I got a little older my superhero taste matured, I think. I've definitely become a Marvel fan, and when I started collecting comic books, 'cause I did that, it was always the Marvel book, so like X-Men, Spider-Man, those were just kind of, I think, such a key to my childhood.

0:06:54.2 MM: I don't know if you know this, but I'm the very first one to say that I think it's comic books that sort of saved my reading life. I was not an avid reader. I didn't like reading in school, it wasn't a huge fan of the books that we had in school, and I didn't like the way that you had to read and then you're just automatically quizzed on what you had read from a book, it was like a reading comprehension quiz. And it was reading comic books on the side that just sort of kept me reading.

0:07:18.5 AS: That's great. I definitely wanna come back to that thought because I have an art background and I think that there's a lot to be said about some of this, graph novels and all kinds of stuff too that bring other people into the reading and comprehension universe too, so we'll look forward to following up on that in a few minutes. What is your spirit animal? 

0:07:39.3 MM: Oh, that's a good question. I feel like it's gotta be some type of bird of prey. I feel like some sort of connection with birds of, birds of prey. So maybe like an eagle or a vulture or something like that. Not a vulture, that's kind of gross, but some kind of...

[laughter]

0:07:58.3 MM: Some sort of majestic, maybe a hawk, like a hawk might be good.

0:08:03.2 AS: Buzzard.

[chuckle]

0:08:03.9 MM: Not a buzzard. But I feel like if we could think about this in terms of a patronus in Harry Potter, like what would my patronus be, and I definitely feel like some sort of like hawk or eagle. Or like a falcon, something like one of those types of birds, I feel like.

0:08:18.9 AS: Those are very good.

0:08:19.8 MM: I don't know what that means or what that says about me, but that's just kind of what I feel a connection to.

0:08:23.1 AS: I know, I think we're gonna have to go to BuzzFeed to figure that out.

0:08:26.2 MM: Figure that out.

[chuckle]

0:08:26.2 MM: "What your spirit animal says about you."

0:08:30.5 AS: What do you think about ravens? 

0:08:32.3 MM: Ravens. So maybe that's my... There you go. Maybe like a raven would be my spirit animal. I feel like that fits with sort of the dark, brooding, mysterious. But I feel like I'm not any of those things, but I try to be or something. Or I wanna be. So maybe the raven fits.

0:08:47.0 AS: You were the Notre Dame Leprechaun. How did you feel when you first put on the suit, very first time? 

0:08:52.8 MM: That's a good question, and I really appreciate that you call it the "suit" and not the "costume", 'cause we're particular about that. That is not a costume, it is a suit, so thank you very much for recognizing that it's a suit. You sort of step out of yourself in that moment, and you just kind of recognize that this is something that's larger than you.

0:09:09.3 MM: There's this great scene in the West Wing, I don't remember when it happens, but President Bartlet, I think it's like his parish priest comes to visit him from home and knows him so well, and calls him him "Jed" and he's like, "Is it okay if I call you that?" And he's like, "If you don't mind, call me President Bartlet when we're in the Oval Office. It's not about me, it's just about the office, and it reminds me of the office."

0:09:28.2 MM: While a leprechaun is nowhere near the President of the United States, it was just one of those things of like, "Okay, this is something that's bigger than me and beyond me," and I think that was just affirmed over and over at sporting events or visiting communities and going out and doing service visits. Just people that would come up to you because of a Notre Dame connection, not because of a you connection, and just because of their love, their admiration, their joy for Notre Dame and wanting to share that.

0:09:49.2 MM: So just a larger than life feeling, I think. It was not something that I was prepared for when I became a leprechaun, but something that I just sort of very much grew to love as a regular part of the job. There was this one time when I was in the bookstore and I was just dressed in normal, my normal clothes, and there was this old man who was just kinda watching me, and I was sort of aware that he was watching me.

0:10:10.9 MM: Finally he just came up to me, and no joke, Audrey, he had tears in his eyes and he just said, "Thank you." And I'm just like, "What are you... What are you thanking me for?" And he just looks at me and tilts his head and he just goes, "Thank you so much," shakes my hand and walks away. And I was just like, "What was that?"

0:10:25.5 MM: It's just larger than life, he just feels some connection and there's some story there, and he didn't obviously wanna share the story in that moment, but enough to just say thank you and move on. So I just always think about that man, and that's just a great sort of a small example of regular occurrences kind of like that.

0:10:47.6 AS: That speaks to your personality too, and your warmth and you're, just exudes that and welcomes people to you, so they made a great choice when they chose you.

0:10:55.8 MM: Well, thanks Audrey. That's really nice of you. Thank you so much.

0:10:58.5 AS: Welcome. Okay, you care deeply about literacy, which we're gonna get into a little bit more, but speaking hypothetically about books, what would the title of your memoir be? 

0:11:06.8 MM: Oh man, it's so hard. I have no idea.

0:11:11.1 AS: It is a hard one.

0:11:14.7 MM: You wanna recognize all aspects of yourself and the ups and the downs, and maybe something like, "What's next?" I feel like that's kind of been, I don't know, something maybe I subscribe to. Whether I fail at something and whether I do well at something, just sort of thinking about, "So what comes next?"

0:11:30.1 MM: That just sort of came to me. I don't know if that's profound or if that's lame, but what is the next thing? And not to say that I'm moving on from one thing to the next, but just sort of like, "What's the next opportunity or what's the next challenge?" Or, "What's the next thing to do?" Right? So what's next? 

0:11:43.1 AS: Yeah, I like that a lot.

0:11:44.8 MM: Well, thanks.

0:11:46.5 AS: You're welcome.

[chuckle]

0:11:49.8 AS: I mean, it's not to say you're not reflective, but we're moving forward.

0:11:49.8 MM: Have you thought about your title? 

0:11:52.6 AS: Gosh. No, no, no, we're not turning any tables here.

[laughter]

0:11:56.9 AS: I am not on the hot seat. Can you take a minute to orient the audience to your connection to Notre Dame and to ACE, and help us understand what you're working towards right now? 

0:12:07.5 MM: Yeah, so I actually went to Notre Dame as an undergrad. I followed in the footsteps of my two older brothers. I was an English and Political Science double major in undergrad. From a young age, I knew I wanted to teach and I wanted to be a teacher. I flirted with a lot of things here and there, but I just kept coming back to teaching, and so when I came to Notre Dame, I knew about the ACE program already.

0:12:28.5 MM: One of my brothers was a senior at the time, and over the summer, a pamphlet about ACE came to the house. I kept it, even though I was not even a freshman yet, and I actually brought that pamphlet to my interview, to my ACE interview when I was... When I was a senior, just as evidence of I just really, I knew that ACE was something that I felt called to do.

0:12:47.9 AS: Oh my gosh.

0:12:48.0 MM: You know, with that I was fortunate to do ACE, I got to teach high school English in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. I just fell in love with teaching, I fell in love with Baton Rouge, and I just sort of never looked back from there. It was also one of my goals, once I left my high school, to return to my high school and to teach English there.

0:13:03.9 MM: So after ACE, I was able to do that when I taught there for five years, I got to teach English and history and I just loved it, it was great. So I knew I always wanted to teach and that was an aspiration I had, but then when I was in ACE, two things happened. I mean, number one, I met Kati Duffy, who would eventually become Kati Macaluso.

0:13:21.8 MM: And then ACE just sort of introduced me to just the world of education, and I just wasn't... I just loved my undergrad experiences so much in English and Poli Sci, and I think it was really when ACE where I just thought for a minute, "Well, maybe there is something else for me." And so ACE really planted the nugget of grad school and maybe pursuing education beyond being a classroom teacher.

0:13:49.8 MM: But I absolutely loved teaching at Benet. I loved it there so much. I kinda joke with Kati that if we weren't dating and if she hadn't said that she'd marry me, that I'd be chaperoning prom still at Benet Academy. Which, I say that because I just loved it there. I really loved it. But we had...

0:14:03.8 MM: When we started dating, I think one of the things that sort of brought us together was we both had this sort of mutual goal or desire to pursue grad school, and so we just kinda held ourselves to that then, and when our first child came along, it was kind of like, "Okay, if we're really serious about grad school, we need to look into this." So it was really hard for me to say goodbye to Benet, but we went to grad school at Michigan State together.

0:14:21.1 MM: Notre Dame wasn't necessarily on our radar coming back here when we were then on the job market, but I think at the end of the day, it just made so much sense. And we loved Michigan State, they have a phenomenal College of Ed, but we just kept coming back to this idea of we miss sort of the anchoring and the centering of Catholic education, we felt like that's really what drove us as educators, and so when ACE called, it was kind of like "Yeah, this is kind of a no-brainer then."

0:14:45.6 MM: So we're back here. I love what I'm currently doing working with ACE teachers. I work primarily with our middle school and high school English teachers, along with Kati. I get to supervise some communities. I currently supervise our Plaquemine site and our New Orleans site, so one, I get to go back to Louisiana, which as I said before, I just fell in love with Louisiana, so now I get to visit there.

0:15:05.6 MM: Very involved in our undergraduate program, the Education, Schooling, and Society program, and then I also do some work through our Center for Literacy Education. So those three worlds I just feel like are worlds that I'm very comfortable in and just I love so much and I just, I'm very grateful to have a foot in each of those worlds. I feel like that sort of makes up really who I am as a whole person.

0:15:27.9 AS: Can you outline the framework... The Center for Literacy Education, ESS, ELA, can you tell me what those things stand for, how you're a part of those? 

0:15:35.5 MM: Yeah, so Center for Literacy Education is one of our centers here through the Institute for Educational Initiatives. And there's a number of things that the center does in terms of pushing out policy and research and working with local teachers. Any sort of initiative that is ELA or English language arts related, or literacy education related. And then Education, Schooling, and Society, so that's our undergraduate program here at Notre Dame.

0:16:04.2 MM: Some people don't know that we have an education program here. It's not a certification program, a certification for teaching, but it's sort of like a sociological perspective of education, so just a range of classes, fascinating classes. One of the things that's so nice about it is it's housed in the Institute for Educational Initiatives, but as a result, we have faculty from all over campus teaching classes through the ESS program.

0:16:32.3 MM: You can have it as both a minor or a supplementary major. We actually just became a major because our classes have been so popular and students are taking more than what is needed for the minor. It's one of the reasons why we did this, so now students have the opportunity to take it as a supplemental major. But it's just...

0:16:49.0 MM: I feel like that program is just so life-giving because it allows students the luxury to talk about education through a number of angles, through including the interdisciplinary perspective that students are coming from. So this semester in my class, I've got students in the College of Business, the College of Science, I've got a range of Arts and Letters majors.

0:17:09.4 MM: Some of them wanna be teachers, some of them just care about education, some of them are hoping to do education work in some way in the future, so they just wanna learn more. And so it just becomes this vibrant community of people who care about education in some way, and wanna talk about it in different ways and through different lenses. So it's just this... We're the most popular minor on campus, it's just become this really wonderful, vibrant community of professors and students that are talking about education in meaningful ways.

0:17:38.8 AS: Yeah, I think that's wonderful. I'm so glad that it's sort of gotten that promotion to supplemental. That's wonderful. So congratulations. What's directing you to be so interested in that literacy angle? You have so many important things that you're a part of because of it. Can you talk a little bit about that passion? 

0:17:58.4 MM: Yeah, I think what just sort of drove me was I just, I developed later on this kind of love of reading and of literature. And when I say "later on", I really feel like it was maybe later in high school, and then it's developed since then, of just kind of this love of reading or this appreciation for literature.

0:18:16.7 MM: The feelings that I have when I share that or when I talk to people about it, I think that's just always what has motivated me and what has driven me. That literacy element was always... It was my supervisor in ACE, when I was talking to her about grad school and thinking about moving forward, she got to know me pretty well and I got to know her and I really valued her as a mentor in addition to her being my supervisor.

0:18:39.1 MM: But she said, "I think it's more than just the literature that motivates you. In seeing you in the classroom, it's really about the teaching of this, and it's really about the teaching around this, that is what brings you joy and what brings you love and it's just what's... It's so apparent in the classroom." So that really helped me to see that it wasn't necessarily just about the literature, but just kind of like the animation of it in the classroom and helping students to see maybe the things that I appreciated or what could be appreciated, and really just to get students to enjoy reading.

0:19:09.1 MM: I remember my first year, a parent came up to me and she just said, "I don't know what you're doing, but my daughter loves reading this year, so please just keep doing it." I don't know what I was doing either. I just think that...

[chuckle]

0:19:20.0 MM: I really don't. I just think that it's something that I love and something that brings me joy, so to be able to share that with others, is just something that motivates me. I think that's something that comes across to the students that I teach now, whether it's my undergrads or whether it's the ACE teachers. I think sort of my zeal or my love or my passion, both for teaching and for what I'm teaching, is apparent.

0:19:47.2 MM: And it's not like a put on, it's just that I love talking about English, I love talking about books, and I love talking about how do we teach students about these things and what sort of animates our discipline. So that really kind of is what drives me, I think in the day-to-day and in the work that I do.

0:20:01.5 AS: It's really obvious that you do just really enjoy it, and I think that genuine and authentic joy is, "contagious" isn't the right word, but I think people want to know more about that and they want to maybe have that be a part of their lives. That comes from you and your presentation of it. Is there an element to the importance of story that is sort of underlying those things, something to connect to? Everyone has a story.

0:20:28.0 MM: That's a great question. I don't know that I've thought about it that way before, but I do think you're onto something there. When you asked the question about fiction or non-fiction, I gravitate towards fiction, but I think one thing that I appreciate about fiction is being able to learn about others who have had experiences different from my own. And that's...

0:20:48.2 MM: One of the classes that I teach here is a Multicultural Lit class, and that's just sort of the whole framework of that class is like, we're gonna read as many books as possible from as many different perspectives, and they're all fiction books. Now, they are written from the perspective of the author, so presumably the authors had experiences like that, but the idea is just that fiction can allow us this sort of imaginative, this imaginative window into what life is like for other people and how other people...

0:21:16.0 MM: How other people experience events similarly or differently from our own. So to that point, everyone has, I think everyone does have a story, and I think story ultimately is... What's the right way to say this? Stories ultimately do push us forward and do make us think differently or make us want to experience something maybe that we haven't experienced before.

0:21:37.5 MM: I think there's also a just age-old idea of art imitating life, life imitating art, that I think you see in books. Just sort of always been sort of driven to or driven by and fascinated by the, just some of the moral and ethical questions that a book could pose, and sort of thinking through that with a group of students maybe who are just at a nascent understanding of some of these big issues.

0:22:01.7 MM: So I remember some of the books that I loved teaching when I was teaching high school, like Lord of the Flies, it's a dark book, but there's just so many good questions that arise from that, and I think helping or genuinely talking with younger people, younger students about, "How would you answer this question, or how are you thinking about this?"

0:22:22.8 MM: To me, I just think that's what's so enriching about those experiences, and when else are you gonna be in a situation where you have 20, 30 some people together talking around one text and enjoying that as an opportunity to just think and to just sort of imagine, "What does this pose?" There's this... Can I'm keep going? 

0:22:41.7 AS: Yes please. [chuckle]

0:22:43.7 MM: There's this wonderful book right now, the author is Neal Shusterman, and he's written this... It's called Scythe, and it's this... It's a whole series. I recommend this book series to everyone. It's so phenomenal. And it's a YA book, so it's written for younger... It's written for teens. But the moral and ethical questions that that book poses, it really just makes you pause and think and reflect.

0:23:07.1 MM: To be able to talk through this with young people, even though it's fiction, has real life consequences and has real life ramifications for how they think about other people, how they interact with other people, how they live their own lives. I just think that fiction very much has real life effects, and to write a book like that that is fiction, that is imaginative, but can have real life effects, that's what it's all about, right? 

0:23:33.5 AS: That's very interesting, actually. I know that some of the work that you are currently contributing to, I guess, is maybe a more diverse reading list. Can you talk to us a little bit about that, why that's been important to you, and what some of the focus and future of that work is? 

0:23:53.8 MM: This all came about because in grad school, there was a class, an undergrad class that was... I can't remember the exact title. I think it might be very similar to what I call it now, but something that along the lines of issues of diversity in multicultural literature or something like that, and it was a Young Adult Lit class that had all multicultural literature.

0:24:12.7 MM: And as one of my assistantships they asked me to teach it. It wasn't really an ask, it was just like, "Here's what you're doing," and it was basically like, "Well, you've taught... You've taught before and you've taught English, so this is what you're gonna do." And I had not... As someone who had taught high school English, I taught whatever high school English classroom teaches, so I just was, it was a whole slew of books that was unfamiliar to me, and it was just sort of...

0:24:37.5 MM: I don't wanna say life-changing, 'cause I think that might sound like trite or overused, but it just really changed the way that I think about reading, changed the way that I think about books, and changed the way that I think about what matters in terms of what we put in our young people's hands.

0:24:55.3 MM: So to go back to what we were saying before, just kind of allowed me to experience life through other people's perspectives. That's the whole point of the class, is this idea of perspective-taking. "What does this book allow us to think about or to understand in light of someone else's experience that may or may not be similar to our own?" So that's really what kind of then motivated this... I don't know what to say. If it's like a love of mine or a hobby.

0:25:17.5 MM: Or just, I've just really come to appreciate young adult books, and especially young adult books that are just from a plethora of diverse authors with diverse experiences, and that's really where that came from. And then in grad school, having the opportunity to think about that, and I was so happy to bring that class here to Notre Dame when I came over, and it was something that ESS had wanted to offer for a while, so I was just so happy to have that in our slate of classes here.

0:25:43.0 MM: But we really just read a lot of contemporary books. When I say that, I mean within the past five years or so, and we just come to every book talk, every kind of conversation of just like, "What is this book doing to maybe challenge stereotypes, or to unlearn things that we've learned just sort of in growing up, or as part of our experiences in the world?"

0:26:09.2 MM: And so it's really a fun time because there's just been this kind of explosion in this renaissance of young adult and middle grade books that are just being written right now by, again, a range of diverse authors, and so it's just an exciting time to just pick up a book right now and read about someone else's experience. And that again, huge ramifications and implications for what we think about in classrooms and in schools today.

0:26:33.0 MM: That's really kind of whats lit my fire and it's kind of insatiable, I'm always looking for a book and probably to my own detriment because I keep getting books from the library or putting books on my good reads that I just don't have... I don't even have time to read right now. Or I'll check out three books at once from the library, and I'm just like, "This is impossible? There's no way that I'm gonna get to this."

0:26:57.0 MM: But I'm teaching that class next semester, and like I said, it's almost like a new slate of books every semester because I try to update it and I really try to keep it current, but the concepts, the skills, they're all there in terms of just like, what does this mean for our schools, and most importantly like our kids today? 

0:27:14.8 MM: What potential and possibility does this have for a kid to be reading a book that maybe has a similar experience to their own, or what potential does it have for a kid to read that is so unlike their own, it helps them to understand how other people experience the world? 

0:27:26.6 AS: I like that a lot. And actually, you started sharing a little bit earlier that you are not maybe the greatest reader, maybe you didn't enjoy reading as a young child yourself, but can you talk a little bit about how that changed for you? And then, what you hope to spark in the people that you teach? 

0:27:44.3 MM: At the end of the day, what I care about for my own students, what I care about for the students that our ACE teachers will teach, especially our English ones, at the end of the day, we just want kids to read. We just want life-long readers. And so what are we doing to really inspire lifelong readership? 

0:28:05.1 MM: For me, that just wasn't the case for me growing up in school. Part of it, I think the main part of it was just like reading was treated as a means to an end for a comprehension check, and for someone who wasn't a great reader and didn't like it to begin with, that was just really taxing and not motivating, and I just, I didn't know to the extent about good things that were out there.

0:28:26.7 MM: So it was sort of like I had this reading life outside of school that really was supported by my mom especially, but my parents, of just kind of things that I think people knew would be interesting to me if they were passing me books. But it really started with those comic books. I don't know what it was that I had this attachment, but I remember my first X-Men comic book, I was like, "This is so cool. Where was this?"

0:28:52.4 MM: And then kind of weird, by the time I got to high school, and I took this class that was British Literature that everybody had to take, so much of comics is informed by our rich literary tradition. And the things that we were reading in this British Literature class were things that I knew from comic books, and kind of like allusions, or just like, I don't know, just sort of I saw very much this crossover between sort of my extra reading life and my in-school reading life.

0:29:21.7 MM: And that's where I think it just kind of fermented this, "Mike's gonna be an English teacher," because I finally saw this crossover and this parallel. But that was disrupted for me by the time I got to grad school and I got this... I had to experience this other whole set of books in terms of genre and perspectives with young adult and multi-culturally, and so now I'm in this track of, I don't know, maybe this non-fiction track will pick up, I don't know.

0:29:49.8 MM: But there's kind of been this weird, I don't know, this kind of... What's the word? I'm picturing like a DNA strand of where things cross over sometimes, just going in different directions. And so I think that just speaks to, again, this overall idea of the power of reading and the way in which our reading can take off in some cases, and just sort of the role that reading can play in our lives in the real world, and just how it makes us think or believe or act differently.

0:30:17.4 MM: I think about it as just kind of this larger story of how reading has shaped the next steps for me, which maybe connects to my memoir, right, just like it really is these different sort of eras of reading that have spurred on the next step of my life or my career or whatnot.

0:30:39.4 AS: I like it. See, it's all coming together Mike. [chuckle]

0:30:41.5 MM: It genuinely really is. Sounds subconscious, it's like, "Next steps," and then here we go.

0:30:46.8 AS: When you get home tonight, "Chapter One."

[laughter]

0:30:51.8 AS: The Double Helix. For some reason I'm...

0:30:52.6 MM: That's what it is, yeah, yeah.

0:30:52.9 AS: I'm picturing The Double Helix, yeah. I have to maybe follow-up on one thing. You said you just want people to read, but do you really just want people to read, or you want people to broaden their minds be able to see points of view of other people? Is there really sort of an underlying deeper hope for you? 

0:31:11.7 MM: Yeah, I think that's what it is. I think you just hit on two of them there. 'Cause it's kind of subversive for me, 'cause I know with the reading is gonna come other things, and so if they're willing to pick up a book, then with that book may come... Even if it's just like from an English language arts standards perspective, like vocabulary development, or seeing a sentence written in a way that they hadn't seen before, sometimes even if it's something as minuscule as that, just kinda what reading is gonna do to push you further, to help you think differently.

0:31:49.4 MM: And then I just keep coming back to this idea that I do think even fiction books, I think books just have real ramifications in the world, in terms of how people think, behave, act, believe. And so that's really what it comes down to for me. I have a picture in my office that, "There's no such thing as a kid who hates reading, there's only kids who haven't found the right book yet."

0:32:06.8 MM: And so I really do believe that, that it does come down to just sort of helping, not just kids, but anyone just sort of like find the books, the books that are pushing them, or the books that are tapping into their interests and helping them to think differently or encourage them or motivate them or inspire them.

0:32:26.7 MM: Every time I read a Pat Conroy book, I'm just like... So he just writes so beautifully that I'm just inspired to write after that, even though I have no ambitions to write or whatever, I just need to sit down and I need to write something, because... So anyway, so even just something like that, this is what books do, they have real ramifications.

0:32:44.0 AS: I'm seeing a real future for this memoir.

[chuckle]

0:32:47.2 MM: Keeps coming back.

0:32:49.9 AS: That is Betsy's, "We are all readers and writers."

0:32:52.2 MM: "All readers and writers." So poetic there.

0:32:55.4 AS: Okay, I appreciate all those thoughts. I do wanna talk about another exciting element that's sort of tied to all of this, is the new award that you guys have created for new books. Actually, so I'm gonna let you tell us about it. It's called the Alexandria Award. We please tell us the genesis of this and what you're trying to do with it? 

0:33:14.6 MM: Yeah, I'm so excited about this project, and I feel like people are getting annoyed with me because I just keep talking about it, and I just wanna tell everybody about it because I just am so excited about it. So this award came from a couple of things, so number one, there's a lot of good research out there that says that teachers need books in their classrooms. Not just any books, but contemporary books, highly engaging books.

0:33:37.6 MM: There is a big push right now for thinking about social justice in the classroom, having diverse authors in the classroom, because we just haven't seen that in English classrooms to a large extent before. What's being taught has traditionally what's always been taught. And then with that, we also know that Catholic school teachers, especially English teachers, will use books to animate the faith as well and to talk about our faith.

0:34:00.6 MM: As we all know, the teachers lead very busy lives and they just don't have time sometimes to vet books or to find the new books or to find the right book, and so as I was reading some of these really good books, I was just like, "Man, this book should be in a classroom. There's no doubt in my mind."

0:34:17.1 MM: I read the book, Front Desk, which is about this girl in 5th grade who immigrates to America, into California from China with her parents, and it's just a phenomenal book, and I'm just like, "Why are we not... " 5th graders should be reading this book, there's no doubt in my mind. It talks about big issues like racism and immigration in such simple terms, that are just like, this is, even for me as an older person, it's just helping me to relearn things that I never knew before. Or to un-learn things I didn't know before.

0:34:46.9 MM: So that was kind of the impetus then behind this, and, "What could we do?" And I'm like, "What if we establish an award that would do this work for our teachers?" We would vet these books, we would pick a book, and then importantly, two important aspects of this, we would create some sort of short curriculum guide that would help teachers think about this book, in terms of everything we're talking about. Some framing of Catholic social teaching, some big questions, how they might go about teaching it.

0:35:14.6 MM: And then secondly, actually give them the book and get the book in their hands with the potential that they might take it up in their classroom, they might give it to a student. So that's the award then, I was like, "That's what we need to do here, is we need to just gift books to teachers with the curriculum guide that addresses social justice issues, that can talk about our faith, so it's not just literacy formation, but faith formation."

0:35:39.3 MM: And then one day I was reading The Daily Saint, and I read about Catherine of Alexandria, who was martyred at the age of 18. So automatically, I'm like, "We have a young person here." And then she loved school, she was a great student, she was a great orator apparently, and she was able to just with her oratory skills, she converted a bunch of people in ancient Egypt.

0:36:03.5 MM: She lived during ancient Egypt and was able to convert hundreds of people at a time to the faith, even to the point where it got to, I think it was like the emperor's wife, she managed to convert the emperor's wife, and at that point he had had enough and he's like, "You've converted my wife, now you gotta go," and so she's killed then.

0:36:20.3 MM: But talk about a, just like a tenacious teen who stands up to injustice, recognizes what is wrong and unfair and speaks out against it, knowing that this could have consequences for her own life. And for me, then that just clicked. I'm like, "We're gonna call it the Alexandria Award, it's gonna be named in honor of her." But there's also this layer of, Alexandria was the home of the great library, so it has this other added element to it.

0:36:43.3 MM: I love that anyone could pick this up and thinking like... I don't want them to dismiss the book because it maybe has a faith component to it, so by calling it The Alexandre award, I just feel like we're checking a bunch of boxes here. So that's where it came to be, and when I presented this to the folks that be around here, it's funny, the reaction that I got was, "You're thinking too small," or, "You've gotta go big with this."

0:37:07.8 MM: And so I just met with so much support over here, which I'm so grateful, grateful for. John Staud, Fr. Lou, Ernest Morrell, they were just all like, "We really need to take this to the next level." The book that's chosen will commemorate St. Catherine in some ways, in that we might see in the book iterations of St. Catherine in sort the young adult or middle grade protagonist, that is the award either.

0:37:32.5 MM: It's been in the works for a while now, and we're so close, December 1st, we're gonna make the formal announcement of the winner. Which I'm so excited about because it's been...

0:37:41.8 AS: It's just exciting.

0:37:43.2 MM: It's been a long time. My point with this though, is that this will... I'm confident that this will change classrooms. The fact that we are giving schools books, we're getting this into teachers' hands with a curriculum guide, this will change things. That will help teachers to really think about, "Is this a book I can feasibly bring into my classroom?" It's got Notre Dame and the Alliance for Catholic Education behind it. If we give them those pieces, then maybe this will actually change the literary landscapes of our classrooms.

0:38:15.2 AS: And I love the idea of you're trying to make concrete change. I love the word "tenacious", and I think maybe you have a little bit of that spirit in you.

0:38:26.2 MM: Thanks. [chuckle] That's what I mean. You were probably annoyed by the tenacity sometimes. But you know, Catherine, she just didn't care, she was just speaking up and she's like, "No, this is wrong." And so I think there's elements of that that we've lost today too. I just think in when we think about the current political climate, someone sometimes needs to stand up and just say, "No, this is wrong," or like, "Guys, this is a no-brainer."

[chuckle]

0:38:53.4 AS: Mike Macaluso, no-brainer.

0:38:54.2 MM: I know, right? Could I have... We got the medal. This is the actual medal.

0:38:57.2 AS: It's so pretty.

0:39:00.1 MM: I know. Isn't it beautiful? And I love how it's so shiny. So it's got Catherine on there. On the back it says, "Faith, courage, virtue, tenacity and advancing gospel values through literature." But wait, are you ready? This is where, listen. Did you hear that? 

0:39:14.6 AS: Oh my gosh. Yes.

0:39:16.3 MM: It's a heavy metal.

[chuckle]

0:39:18.5 AS: That's hilarious. First of all, for the audience members who have heard little sounds the whole time, Mike's Italian hand gestures may or may not be hitting the desk, etcetera. But that is a heavy metal. I could feel that from here.

0:39:32.6 MM: It is, right? So heavy metal with kids, right? Yeah.

0:39:36.8 AS: I don't see how it could lose. When you were thinking about doing something, why was an award something that was important? 

0:39:44.8 MM: When I say that teachers sometimes don't have the time to really vet books, I mean, one thing that... I think one place where teachers look and value and trust is awards, right? So when we think about famous awards, like the Newberry Award. The Caldecott, that's a picture book one. The Prince Award is for young adult literature.

0:40:01.9 MM: So awards matter when it comes to English language arts, and there's a lot of faith and trust in awards. And there's been a proliferation of awards too lately that focus in on specific angles, or an award that is looking for some specific aspect of an experience or topic or whatever in books.

0:40:29.6 MM: And so to me, that's why the award made sense here, 'cause this is something that people will recognize as it's been talked about, it's been vetted, it has a value to it. And again, coming from Notre Dame, coming from the Alliance for Catholic Education and the Center for Literacy Education, it will not be overlooked in that way, and so again, I just wanna say we're trying to do some of that work for our teachers, to just make it easier for them to adopt it for their classroom.

0:40:56.6 AS: Wonderful. I think you're a hopeful person, I think you look forward with hope. Is that true? How do you feel right now? We're heading into Thanksgiving and the Christmas season.

0:41:05.8 MM: Thank you for saying you think I'm a hopeful person. That's really nice. I mean, I think as we all know, it's been hard lately in the world stage, with everything going on, but ultimately I think that's who we're called to be, and I think that's who we are and we think about our faith.

0:41:21.1 MM: I think that's just like the story of Christ, of just sort of this ultimately hopeful image of we do resurrect. I think it's all the more special at Thanksgiving and Christmas on the horizon, I would like to think that I'd feel the same way even if Halloween were on the horizon. But it's just a special time of being even moreso thankful and grateful and hopeful, and the anticipation that comes with the holiday season.

0:41:50.2 MM: But yeah, I just think that's who we're asked to be and who we're called to be, is just a hopeful people, and I think there is a lot to be hopeful, and I think you can wanna think about young people and our students, there's just so much to look to in, in today's youth, that's inspiring and that's hopeful moving forward. I think that we're in good hands moving forward, when we think about the good folks that are out there.

0:42:15.5 AS: I love it, and I love the idea of sort of we're all readers, we're all writers, we're open to the possibilities that a book offers for all of us. What does literacy mean to you? Growing up it might've been like, "Oh, just reading," but I think it's larger than that. Can you help us understand? 

0:42:35.2 MM: The idea of literacy, I think has come a long way, and that originally it was just sort of pencil to paper, alphabetic writing, reading, but I think to what we've pointed to throughout this conversation, or I've pointed to throughout this conversation, is that literacy is not just decoding words on a page, it's not just something that is fixed or neutral, but it is something that matters in terms of how we interact in the world, how we know and understand the world, how we come and know to live in the world, and what it means for us to be literate beings, as opposed to just someone who can read words off of a page.

0:43:16.9 MM: All of that has implications, literacy has implications for the ways in which we know and understand the world, and therefore then live in the world and act in the world and be in the world.

0:43:28.2 AS: Thank you. I think that's a different way to consider it then maybe a lot of people think about literacy.

0:43:34.6 MM: And that's something I sort of just take for granted now, is like that's just the way that I think about it, so I don't articulate that. But that might be a good way.

0:43:41.1 AS: I really appreciate that, and I think the idea of literacy will continue to evolve. I think it's critical that people see themselves, as you say, as literate beings, and that doesn't just mean how fast you can read or your vocabulary. It means much more than that.

0:43:55.9 MM: Yeah, values, beliefs. All that comes down to how we are instructed to read, to write, to think, to be.

0:44:03.5 AS: Absolutely, and I think that that helps inform why some of these things are so important to you and others, and all of us here working on side by side, open minds, connectivity, tenacity, all kinds of good stuff. No-brainer.

0:44:19.8 MM: No-brainer.

[laughter]

0:44:22.2 AS: But thank you so much, but...

0:44:24.3 MM: Oh my goodness, thank you.

0:44:26.0 AS: I really had such a fun time chatting with you. No surprise there. Thank you so much for your energy, for all of your hard and passionate and your genuine authentic self is just wonderful, so thank you so much for everything, Mike.

0:44:35.6 MM: Well, thank you, Audrey. I do wanna say too, I do appreciate this series, it's really fun. I work with these people on a day-to-day, so it's kind of fun when I'm doing stuff to have the series playing in the background and just kinda learning a little bit more about my colleagues and to see what pushes them and how they think about things. So I love the series. Think-Pair-Share.

0:44:54.8 AS: That is so kind of you. Thank you so much. What an enormous compliment that is.

0:45:00.5 MM: Oh my goodness. Well, I love the work that you do and so appreciative for you, Audrey. So thank you so much.

0:45:04.2 AS: Thank you so much, Mike. Have a great rest of your day. We'll talk to you soon.

0:45:08.5 MM: Okay. Can't wait. Can't wait to listen to this.

0:45:09.3 AS: Thanks, Mike.

0:45:10.8 MM: Okay. We'll see you later. Thank you.

0:45:10.9 AS: Bye bye.

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0:45:12.8 AS: And thank you all for joining us for Think-Pair-Share. If you enjoyed this episode, head on over to Apple Podcasts to subscribe, rate and leave a review. It's very much appreciated. Check out our website at iei.nd.edu/media, for this and other goodies. Thanks for listening, and for now, off we go.

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