Janis Baron and Alex Wu

00:04 Hello. My name is Alex Woo and today I'm going to be interviewing misses Janice Baron So can you tell me about where you were born?

00:12 I was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, on Mother's Day, actually, I was born.

00:19 Wow. Can you tell me about where your family's from?

00:22 Well, my father was born in Czechoslovakia. He came to the United States when he was in 1905. He was about seven years old with a family of almost 14 children. He was the next to the youngest. And my mother was born in the United States in western Pennsylvania. But both her parents were born in areas that were probably the Ukraine area of, you know, of eastern Europe. And then I grew up in a small town in western Pennsylvania near Pittsburgh.

00:57 All right, so do you know how much, do you know much about where you're. About your father and I guess how it was before he came to America?

01:09 Well, not a lot because he was young and, of course, but I know because he was the next to the youngest. There were many brothers and sisters who preceded him. So there were originally, I think, 13 of them. Not all of them lived to adulthood, but many did. And they came in waves, you know, the older ones came first, and then one of them married over here, and they would send money then back for others to come. So eventually they all migrated to that area of western Pennsylvania, and then as they became adults, many moved to Florida, actually, and some settled in the Pittsburgh area. So all I know before that time is that they were involved in some businesses and then came to the US. They began other businesses as well.

02:01 All right. Yeah. Well, thank you for sharing that. Okay. So, yeah, I guess about you. Tell me about your childhood.

02:11 My childhood. Okay. So I was the middle child.

02:14 Okay.

02:14 My sister is six years older than I am. Then I was the next. And my brother was four years younger than. Yeah. But we were always extremely. We still are extremely close. My father was a judge in western Pennsylvania. He was an attorney first, a district attorney, and became an elected judge in Pennsylvania. Judges were elected. And my mother mostly was at home with us, although she had a career prior to that as a concert pianist in an all girl band, which was pretty unique at that, in that era for a woman, you know. And it was extremely happy childhood. I had wonderful parents. We did a lot together. We traveled. We, my father was very well known and very much loved. And so I sort of gathered a lot of that, you know, from his experience, experiences. And we, you know, we remain close forever. It's interesting to me because I know not all families stay close like that, but we certainly did. My parents gave us every opportunity, whatever our interests were. So I, you know, I had a normal childhood. I played games and ball and rode bikes and read a lot. And as I said, we travel, and we would have always be exposed to theater and art and music and all of those things. It was a pretty safe kind of childhood, you know, in that way. And as I grew up, my parents were great role models for what the important values were, and that was a very important part of my life. You know, my father believed strongly in giving back to the community, was very charitable, very moral, you know, and so character became the most important thing to us. Fortunately, school came easily to me. So, you know, I love learning, and so I did well in school, and there's nothing about my childhood I would change, you know, if I could. So I guess that's pretty good statement about it.

04:31 All right. Yeah. All right.

04:32 Yeah.

04:32 Thank you for sharing that. So, yeah. Do you have any, I guess, childhood memories that you like to share?

04:42 Well, I have. I have a lot, you know, and many relate to my father. I was very close to my mother, but to my father, my father was more of a role model to me in that he was out in the world, and I was very interested in what he was doing. And I do remember, it's probably an unusual childhood memory, but I remember that my father used to take us on weekends to prisons, so probably not many kids had that experience. Father would go to the prisons because he wanted to be sure that the people he sent there knew they hadn't been forgotten, and to see how they're doing and how their families are and what they're planning to do once they have served their term, and always dispense justice with mercy and compassion. And so I. I remember being very impressed by that, walking around and talking to people and seeing the way he treated people who many in society would have shunned, just kind of forgotten about, and realized that he would treat those people in that prison the same way that he treated the governor of Pennsylvania who came to our house, or the monsignor of the York diocese or whatever it might be, whatever important person might come across our path, of which there were many, including President Kennedy, who campaigned in our hometown. He treated them the same way that he treated, you know, people who go down and out. Extremely impressive to me as a child, realizing that it didn't matter what color someone was, what their persuasions were, what their status in life was, that everyone was worthy of respect. And I think that stayed with me forever. So that was a sort of a pivotal experience. We laughed about it later and said, we're the only kids who have spent their weekends in the prison, but it really made a difference in a lot of ways.

06:35 Yeah. Wow. Thank you for sharing that. Yeah. All right, so another question I have is, by your childhood, were you exposed to any family traditions and cultural traditions?

06:47 Well, my parents were jewish, and so we grew up in a community that really had a small jewish community, but it had a. A temple, and my father was the, you know, the president of it, and he was the superintendent of the Sunday school there. And so my mother played the piano, so we were always very involved. I wouldn't say it was a highly religious upbringing, but we observed all the holidays and definitely embraced the culture, you know, Judaism, you know, and so. And then we had family members because the family was so big, you know, we would celebrate those holidays with other members of the family.

07:25 Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. All right. So, I guess. Can you tell me about what you did when you. Where you found yourself when you became an adult?

07:37 When I became an adult. Okay. Well, in between childhood and adulthood, you know, I, of course, you know, went to high school. I was valedictorian in my high school class. I was very active in lots of different activities. And then I went to the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, and I chose that school because I wanted to be in a big city and I wanted to be in the east coast. And my guidance counselor was directing me toward Ivy League schools, but I didn't want to go to a single sex college. I really enjoyed. My brother and I were very close. I enjoyed being in classes and learning with boys as well as girls. So the only two options I had were Cornell and Penn, if I wanted an Ivy League school, so I went to Penn. I wanted a city, but I also went there to major in journalism, because that was my original plan. I had worked on newspapers in the summers, big county newspaper. I was the editor of my high school newspaper, loved to write, so I went with the intention of majoring in journalism. I never. I only babysat one night in my whole life, and that was enough for me. Four boys next door. I thought, no, no, no. That's not my way to earn a living. So when I got to Penn, I mean, it's ironic because I'm surrounded by children, and I found my calling with children, but that wasn't what I ever set out to do. So I set out to major in journalism, but by my sophomore year, they dropped that major at the university.

09:08 Oh, really?

09:09 I either had to shift majors or move to a different college. And so I decided to major in education because it was the most liberal education I could get. It didn't require a lot other than a student teaching assignment and some education courses, but I could pretty much take liberal arts and all the classes that I really wanted to take. So I kind of accidentally got to adulthood into a career that I hadn't planned on before I discovered how much. I mean, how good I was at it, how much pleasure I got from it. So sort of an accidental road there. And once I discovered that, then I just continued to build on it in a lot of different ways and expand it so that I was doing a lot of different things within the field of education. And that was. It was very, very rewarding to me. So that's how I ended up as an adult, kind of finding my way to a career, and that's how I ended up in Boston, you know, because I ended up coming up here for a job. And also I had gotten married around that time. But I think my childhood in a small town like I grew up in was preparation for better preparation for the real world than it might have been if I'd been in a bigger city where people tend to cluster by likenesses, because I grew up with every ethnic group you could imagine. I mean, in spite of the fact that we were raised as jewish. I went to midnight mass with my best friend, Joni. I went to candlelight services at the Methodist church with my other best friend, Patti. And I went to all these different ethnic events, and, you know, I had friends of every race, religion, whatever. And so I never felt any difference, you know, treated anybody any differently based on any of those factors. And I was pretty surprised when I went to Philadelphia and I met people from bigger cities who really only grew up with people like them.

11:13 Yeah.

11:14 And didn't have the wide experiences I had had living in a very small town. So I think that living through that, and, of course, I grew up in the sixties. It was a very tumultuous time, you know, with. With civil rights, for example. And, you know, we took a trip down south in the sixties with my parents, and that was an eye opening experience, and, you know, certainly made an impression on me, but it was, you know, the time of the Vietnam war, so there was a lot going on in the landscape around me as I was entering from college to adulthood. And all those things do, you know, impress you in some way?

11:55 Yeah. Well, all right, well, thank you for sharing that. So, yeah, I guess. Can you tell me about your career in education, then.

12:04 Sure. Yeah. So I ended up initially getting a teaching job and discovered, wow, this is really awesome. I love it. I love being able to impact kids in a positive way.

12:18 Yeah.

12:19 And I was always very creative as a child. You know, I would invent things and create things and start clubs and organizations, and I was very organized and all kinds of ways. And I really love the fact that initially, you know, in the early years of my teaching experience, we had a curriculum, but we were free to kind of expose kids in the way we wanted to, to the curriculum. It wasn't as scripted as maybe it is today. Well, that was good for me because I was creative and capable, and so I was able to make it fun and really make it special. I ran into an adulthood a few years back in Andover in the park, and he had been in my 6th grade class, and he said something to me that really made an impression on me because I hadn't thought about it this way. He said, my mother was visiting with me and he happened to turn to her and he said, your daughter was a transformational teacher. And I thought, wow, if someone asked me many years ago, what kind of teacher do you want to be? I'd probably say that because it's better than being a good teacher or a great teacher, transformational, to be able to make changes in people's approaches and their learning styles. And so I felt that I could do that, that I could take what might be difficult for kids and turn it into something that was suited to their learning styles. It was sort of, I think was intuitive to me because I love creative thinking. So I love those years teaching. They were wonderful years. I had freedom to do so many interesting things, took kids to theater, produced theater shows. We did 1776 as a full class production. And, you know, so that was fun. And then in the same time, I started to become very involved. Well, it seemed they were giving me the advanced learners, so I would usually get those really, you know, extremely capable language arts students, and I do advanced literature with them and a lot of writing with them. And I became more involved in gifted education. And there was at that time a gifted program in Andover public schools. So I was asked to be the director of that. So branching off from that, I started to do consulting in other school districts around differentiated instruction and academic, you know, different kinds of learning approaches and also specializing in the area of gifted education. And so that kind of expanded. I became trained in a thinking skills model that was nationally validated. So I was training teachers in probably 60 different communities across Massachusetts. And that was very rewarding, because I felt that every time I'm training a teacher, I'm training hundreds of kids, affecting hundreds of kids, because that teacher will continue to use those, hopefully those strategies for years to come. It was around that time that I was starting to do the consulting, that I started the kaleidoscope summer program, which was almost 40 years ago.

15:31 Yeah. Wow.

15:32 One of the things that helped build the program was that as a consultant, I was meeting hundreds and hundreds of teachers. I would, for example, go to Haverhill, and I trained 300 teachers over a couple of years, but I would notice certain ones that were just outstanding, and I would sort of ask, what do you do in the summer? How about coming to this program? And so I don't know if you remember Ruthie or Chrissy or some of those people. They came all those years ago because I met them through the training. So all my work kind of intermeshed in a way. And then I did have an opportunity to be a principal of a private school, which was fantastic. And I love that experience as well. So, you know, I've kind of approached education as a teacher, as a principal, as a mentor, as a coach, you know, as a program developer, all those different areas. But education gave me enough opportunity to do more than just teach it. Although. Although I. I could have done that. I love the independence I had in creating some of my own pathways.

16:39 Yeah. All right.

16:41 Well, yeah, still doing it. Still doing it. So, obviously, I loved it.

16:46 Yeah, well, yeah. Thank you for sharing all that. So, I guess, do you have any, like, very memorable stories about your. I guess, any time in your education career, like something. I really mean something to you?

17:01 In my education career, there were just so many. I think it happened all the time. People would come back and say, you know, because of what I did at kaleidoscope, I found my career path. Yeah, those were all so meaningful, or even a little thing that happened last summer. I got an email this Christmas from my grandmother, who said, I just want you to know what an impact you had last summer because you let my granddaughter switch into a robotics class. I went back home to California. She joined a robotics team, and their team actually won something in the state. And I thought you just, you know, fortunately, I knew her well enough because she lived in Andover, too, to tell me this. But I wondered, like, how many times has this happened? And I just don't even know about it. It's an amazingly powerful profession. You know, there was a quote from Krista McCallough, who perished in the Challenger explosion, and she said, I touch the future. I teach. And so you really do have that feeling that it keeps moving forward. You're paying it forward all the time. So there are many, many stories like that where, you know, I heard back from people who said, or even just a mother who emailed me this summer and said, my kids loved their courses. They had such a great time. I told them about the courses I took when I was there.

18:24 Oh, wow.

18:25 So it's now another generation. So those kind of things just sort of validate that we were doing some great things. And for me, the joy has also been bringing great teachers together and setting a really high standard that people can meet, you know, and expecting that of kids, too. You know, I think they meet those standards as well, you know. And so, I mean, I have a quote in my office that says, if you love what you do, you'll never work a day in your life. And I feel that way. I never, ever had a job where I woke up and thought, oh, gosh, I gotta go there today. I've always been very invested in all those relationships and.

19:11 Yeah. Wow. Yeah. Well, thank you for sharing all that. Yeah. So, yeah, I mean, I have, you know, related to kaleidoscope. I mean, I guess. I mean, you said, I think it would be. Would it be right to say that, you know, it's probably the most influential thing you've done to you?

19:30 I think. I think as far as a massive impact, because if you consider 41 years, two years and thousands of children and loving learning, which is what I want to see them do, is about learning, probably. Although only second would that be to my two sons, who are really the most important focus of my life.

19:55 Yes.

19:56 In fact, I'm here with one of them now in Vancouver, who, by the way, is a professor at the University of British Columbia. So he, I guess, feels the way I do about teaching.

20:05 Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

20:08 It was. It was a very impactful entity that I created with the help of a lot of other people who shared that, that joy in doing it, because it was always, I mean, it was lots and lots and lots and lots of work. I can't deny the hours that it took, but it was. And weekends and nights and always on my mind. But the results were worth all of that. You know, all the parents that I met and all the. With all those relationships were very. And you. I met you.

20:40 That is also true. Yes. All right, so, you know, on that note, I want to know then. I think it was, you know, two years ago. Right. You know, you couldn't do kaleidoscope. Right. So did that make much of it? How much impact did it make on you?

21:00 That was a really hard decision. We already had 400 kids signed up in February because people signed up very early.

21:07 Yeah.

21:08 You know, teachers had committed, and out here in Arizona, where I'm living now, and I was watching the news and seeing what was coming down, and I noticed what was going on in California, you know, and at that point, they had pretty much shut down.

21:25 Yeah.

21:26 I started to think that I just don't see how we could possibly maintain the quality of what we do. And our, with kaleidoscope, the quality of the program, the quality of the staff was always paramount. But perceiving that was the safety of the children. And when I really thought it through, I did not see how we could guarantee the kids would be safe for the staff. And so I made the decision much earlier than other programs did. Alex. It was hard. I thought, no, no, I can wait till June. But I could see where it was going. I could feel I'm in other states and watching it all, and I thought, it's not going to be possible to do this under these conditions. Vaccines weren't even out, I don't think. No, I didn't even have a vaccine at that point. And so I thought, I think we better pull the plug. We can't meet people's expectations. And so I think it was in April that I sent out the notice to everyone. And I thought, I hated, hated, hated to do it. In fact, I sat, I wrote the email to everyone who signed, teachers, and I sat with my finger on the send button for probably half an hour. That's how it was. And then I did. And I just felt it was the right thing. And I will tell you, many, many parents wrote back and said, you know, we're really sorry about that, but thank you for making the decision early enough for us to know we need to do something else.

22:52 Yeah.

22:52 And then I thought, well, it's tough because all these people had paid money. It was a business decision, too. It was hard because as businesses run, people don't realize it's a year round business. It goes from September to September. So we don't just spend money in the summer. It's money that goes out for program expenses all year round. So let's say everyone who signed up said, give us our money back, please. I was prepared to do it personally because there wouldn't have been enough money in Kaleidoscope's account. We'd already spent money from September to April right. So. But that didn't happen. People took credits. Some people needed the refunds. We gave them right back. Some people asked for credits. Some people donated to the program because we are a nonprofit. One person donated $1,000, and that person worked for Pfizer, and Pfizer matched it and donated. So we were able to get through, plus with some SBA help, because the SBA was helping, the small business association, administration was helping businesses, and we were able to make it through fine. And so that was a very rewarding experience to me in that it showed the confidence people had in us to say, just keep our money for a donation or hold our money for next summer. It just was a really. It felt very positive to me. But it was really hard, after all those years, to not go.

24:22 Yes. Yeah.

24:23 But it was the right decision. It was really the right decision. We couldn't have. We would have had to cancel anyway. It just would have been June.

24:29 Uh huh.

24:30 More people had signed up, and more people were just.

24:32 Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, yeah. Thank you for sharing all that. Yeah. All right. So, um. I guess, on another note, um. So, I think, um. So, yeah. So you lived in Andover for a bit. For a time, right?

24:48 50 years. Yes, I lived inover for 50 years, yeah.

24:52 Oh, wow. So, I guess, so what. So what brought you to Andover was, you know, your career in Andover, correct?

25:00 In a way. So when I got married, my husband was from Medford. We lived in Arlington, near. Near to Medford. And I don't know what happened. I went out driving one day, and I must have landed in Andover. This is a beautiful town, and I had heard about Phillips Academy in the past because my parents were very much into education, so I was aware of it, and I just loved the area. And, actually, apartments there were less money than they were closer to Boston, so I thought this would be a great place to live. So we moved there, and then I got a job teaching at Bancroft school. The second year, it was open, you know, it was a very open, modern building.

25:44 Yeah.

25:45 So I was very excited to teach there, and that's where I taught for the first eight or nine years. Even before my kids were born, I was at Bancroft, which I just loved again, because I had a lot of freedom to do all kinds of interesting things. It was a good match for me. And so then we bought a house in Andover, and I've been there, so it's been 50 years, and that was a long time ago, and I love the town. I was involved with the ABC program. A better chance I had an ABC student. I was on the board. I got very invested in people in the town and families. And so it was a place I never really thought about moving out of, you know, and so I stayed until we sold our house in 2020 that summer that we canceled kaleidoscope. Really, we spent time putting the house on the market. So I had had a home in Arizona for 20 years. I bought it 20 years ago. I was just a vacation and, you know, investment, you know, property. But we, we had thought that we would settle out here eventually. And so that's why I'm here now. Even though I go, I'll go back and forth, you know, whenever I want to. But I decided to stay at this house, you know, not where I am now in Vancouver, but in Arizona. So I'm living there.

27:16 Yeah.

27:17 But Andover was wonderful. My kids grew up there. They played sports. They, one of them, Andy, went to Phillips Academy. He had that experience and loved it. And, you know, I had so many positive experiences and relationships there. You know, when I come back, it's like being home. Even though I grew up in Pennsylvania, the majority of my life was in Andover.

27:41 Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, thank you for sharing that. So I guess. So you live in, you know, you know, you live in Arizona. So can you tell me, I mean, can you tell me about how it differs from there? Here in Andover?

28:02 Yeah, very different. Well, as I said, I've been coming here for a lot of years, like for a month or two at a time as come out. He played a lot of tennis, so he loved being able to play year round outside here. I have another, my son who lives in Vancouver is the one I'm visiting right now. But my other son lives in Scottsdale also, so he's only half an hour away from me. And he just opened a brand new restaurant. And so, you know, I enjoy spending time with him. I have other cousins out here. I have friends. My best friend from childhood I was about twelve, lives in Montecito, Santa Barbara, California. So we talk all the time and I can go there and she can come here and family love to come here. So I have a lot of company, which is wonderful. It's completely different. You know, the landscape's different, the wildlife is different. But I like the southwest. I always was attracted to the south. It's very much more colorful than people think. And it is very hot in the summer. So when I left Scottsdale a few weeks ago, it was 110, which in spite of being dry, it's really just hot. But I do love, I love the flowers, the cactus. I love the ability to be outdoors so much. I go for a long walk every day. I just went up to Sedona a couple weeks ago. My sister in law lives up there, my father in law, who just turned 102 weeks ago. So there are people around and friends. There's enough for me to do. I also joined some organizations like the Penn Morton Club, Arizona, so I can be involved with alumni from University of Pennsylvania. And I joined the Frank Lloyd Wright foundation, which is phenomenal, a lot of Frank Lloyd Wright influence here and some other organizations that I can learn from because I have to do that. And then I also am getting involved with the Arizona Gifted association because I'm on the board of the Massachusetts Gifted association. But I can't do a lot other than give verbal input into things, whereas I did do a workshop for the Arizona gifted Association a month before the pandemic became worse. And I'm going to go back and do some work for them this fall. So I'm not going to be wasting my time. I'm still consulting with kaleidoscope. I consulted all this past year. I was very involved, just only there one week behind the scenes, you know, doing a lot, and I'll do that for at least another year as well. Yeah, I might be back out next summer, you know, for at least a week.

30:50 Yes.

30:51 But there's just, it's a different landscape. And I also could, my sisters in Kentucky, my brother's in Florida, my best friend's in Santa Barbara. I want to spend time with people at stage of my life that's really important. So I can do that with less commitments, you know, back in Andover.

31:11 Yeah, yeah, yeah. Thank you for sharing that. So my next question is, you know, as both an educator and a parent, I'm sure there's a lot of things you could answer this question, but what would you like to be remembered for?

31:25 Well, I mean, obviously, kaleidoscope and what it did to bring some really exciting enrichment opportunities to kids is important. In reality, my kids, you know, are my greatest legacy. You know, they're both respectful, loving, caring, kind, you know, involved good people, all the same things that I saw that my father and mother, you know, instilled in us. Yeah, I wanted, of course, to instill in them. And there I'm in touch with them every day. Maybe that's more than I should be. But, I mean, they will call my, here's an example. My son, who's here, had meetings yesterday, and his wife is a clinical psychologist. And so they both had things going on. And so he knows I like Dairy Queen, so he doordashed Dairy queen for me to come to the house. I know that sounds like a little thing, but it's a thoughtful thing.

32:27 Yeah.

32:28 And he's always is. And they both are. They both check on me. They want to be sure I'm okay, make sure I'm eating, you know, all those things. And in a nice way, you know, and I feel that, you know, all the rest of my family, who knows, my two boys thinks, you know, the world of them, so that that's the most important thing to me.

32:49 Yeah.

32:50 Remember, because they're the ones who will remember me, hopefully the longest. Right. And beyond that, I think it's really just about character because nothing else really matters. You know, I never felt, I mean, certainly money helps. Money helps because you can do good things with money, you know, and it helps avoid certain stresses. But it's not the God that some people might think it is. It's going to not go with you. And there's so many things that are more important, like how you treat people and whether, and I mean all people, all ages, all types, all, you know, the wide variety, the diversity of population. So I guess I'd want to be thought of as someone who respected others.

33:45 Yeah.

33:47 And beyond that, I guess, you know, I don't know. I guess it's up to everyone else to make that determination as to what memories are most important, you know? Yeah, I know when my mother, when I lost my father, which was way too young, he was only 74, which I'm older than that, I just remember thinking that I didn't have any regrets and that he knew how much I loved him. I knew how much he loved me. It wasn't like, oh, no, we didn't get this resolved. It was not that same thing with my mother. So I would just want to be sure that there are no regrets, that if I feel something, I've said it, whether it's good or bad, that people are honest in return. I think that's really important.

34:34 Yeah, yeah. Thank you for sharing that. All right, so next question I had is, out of curiosity, since you've been in gifted education, working in gifted education for a long time, how do you notice any change in that?

34:59 Well, sadly, not in Massachusetts. I guess that's how I'd answer it. Massachusetts has dropped the ball when it comes to meeting the needs of whatever you want to call them, gifted, accelerated, above grade level learners. Mage, the organization on which I am part of the board, has been struggling to get any kind of legislation that addresses the needs of these kids in a public school setting. But it hasn't really happened, surprisingly, I'm sure, to many in Massachusetts. Arizona, on the other hand, funds gifted education across the state. And that's why when I spoke at the Arizona gifted, a conference, there were 400 plus people there, versus Massachusetts, which might have had 85, many of whom were our board members. You know, teachers are required to get training. There are programs in every district. Parents have a lot of options, you know, to see that these kids needs are met. There's just a lack of understanding in Massachusetts, it's not included in any meaningful degree with the education teachers get. I've done a lot of training in differentiated instruction, and I'll go to a school district and I'll say, how many of you have had. It's called Di training. And many teachers raise their hand and I'll say, well, how many of you learned about meeting the needs of gifted kids during that? And very few have. Well, that's a big part of it. Differentiation means the wide range. How do you meet all their needs? And. And so, you know, it's. There's a whole population of kids who are what we call two e twice exceptional, which means they may have a learning challenge as well as being academically gifted. Massachusetts doesn't seem to recognize that, at least not the way they should. So that's. That's a not pleasant. The fact that other states across the country, if you looked at a map and you went to certain websites, I can go to or show the parents that certain states have just definitions or a certain mandate for certain kinds of services. Massachusetts, none of the above. So that's not happy, in my view, because there are kids that I hear from every day, who are you sitting around doing nothing. Now, one of the programs we run at Kaleidoscope is called Kite.

37:20 Yes.

37:21 Kite is specifically geared for above grade local kids. And those kids are, like, starving when they come in there because they want to learn something. And one of the things we make sure of is that we're teaching them things they don't know. So basically, we make sure that we're covering areas of the curriculum that aren't covered in the regular curriculum so that they go home and say, did you know, you know, you have to have that to just propel that. That love of learning, that eagerness to learn, if they come home every day is like, oh, my God, I had to wait 2 hours for everyone else to catch up. That's not good. So I'd like to see more improvement in this field. In Massachusetts, a lot of times parents pull the kids out, which they shouldn't have to do, you know, or they shouldn't have to wait till high school to get, you know, honors courses or AP courses or something more challenging, either. Yes, that's. I forgot to mention one other thing I think is important. When I was growing up in my room, my mother had a poem posted, and the poem was if by Rudyard Kipling. And that poem was a guidepost. It's really interesting. It talks about how, you know, not to be let down by what others say about you and how to, you know, lose and still pick yourself up and keep going forward. You know, it's really inspirational. And I used to read it even as, like, elementary age kid. And, you know, I got little bits and pieces each step along the way. But ultimately, it's something that I sort of learned to live by.

38:52 Yeah.

38:53 And so I always had, my mother loved literature, so she always had wonderful quotes and things, things that basically, I mean, the other side of this domino is Shakespeare. William Shakespeare. Right. So I was always exposed to all those interesting, all that language, which I still remember. So I think that was also a very important part of nurturing that love of learning, which what I love to do now, it's an adventure. Learn something new, you know, at least. I, I went to a lecture at Frank Lloyd Wright, because I'm the Frank Lloyd Wright foundation. There are members only events where they, you can learn about the history behind a certain room at his architectural location called Taliesin. And I was, it was so exciting to just go and learn something I didn't know before. So I want kids to have that experience, too.

39:49 Yeah.

39:50 Kind of motivated me along the way.

39:54 Yeah. Well, yeah. Thank you for sharing that. Yeah. Thank you. So, yeah, another question that I have is, I guess everything that's happened in your life, do you have any, I guess, life lessons that you've learned?

40:09 Oh, my goodness. So, so many. I have to think of which ones, you know. So I guess one of the things I've learned is that you don't, I'll just whittle it down to its basis basics. You don't sweat the small stuff, you know, like, you don't just get all worked up over things that really don't mean anything in the long run. I also learned when I was a young child, I somehow managed to figure out that I didn't have to worry about everything all at the same time, that I could almost schedule it and say, well, I don't need to worry about that until the weekend. I was actually able to do it. And I think that people become overwhelmed because they're trying to think about everything all at once. And you have to really triage and say what's most important, that I go to the birthday party of my hundred year old ex father in law, whom I still love and I'm close to, or that, I don't know, go shopping for a new whatever, whatever, you know, which would never be on my list. I think it's a matter of thinking about what really matters. I think that was the lesson that I got from my parents as well, you know, and that you. Nobody has everything and nobody should want everything, but if you have the important things, that life is beautiful and you. And the most important thing is really to be able to spend the time with the people you care about.

41:49 Yeah.

41:49 Because at some point you can't anymore. And that whole idea of no regrets always resonated with me. No regrets. No regrets. I wasn't in a situation where I said, oh, I should have visited my mother more. Well, no, because I visited her as often as I could. And I had her living with me my last three years, last three years of her life, you know, so I didn't miss that. And one of the reasons I left my principal position was because my mother turned 90 and I just wanted to be able to visit her more often. With my other jobs, the consulting kaleidoscope, it was more flexible. With a job like that, I really had to be there all the time. And I just knew I couldn't do that and still give her the time I wanted to give to her. So I think that was always a big lesson. And also, I know it sounds, again, trite, but you treat others the way you want them to treat you.

42:40 Yes.

42:41 Golden rule, you know, and that you do owe something back. Here's an example, and it's passed down. My kids were little and they got a gift from a relative. They'd be so excited and want to tear into it. And I would say, well, wait a minute, it's not your gift yet. No, grandma sent it. I just got it. It came in the mail. I said, but it's really not your gift until you thank the giver. As soon as you thank the giver and it becomes your gift. But there's an obligation there, right? And they would grumble at first, but then they'd call, and if they didn't get through, I would say, well, you know what? We can still play with it now. You tried but we'll try again later to make sure that was complete. Well, my grandson, who just turned twelve, had a birthday last week and that's one of the reasons I want to be here. I couldn't previously because of kaleidoscope. He was born during Kaleidoscope and my other son, his uncle, had given me $320 bills to give to him in a card for his birthday. So my grandson is twelve, opened it up and the $320 bills fell out first. He was excited just about the card. And by the way, I send him cards all the time with nothing in it because I don't think kids should always think they're getting something, you know? So anyway, the $320 bills fell on the ground. My grandson reached down, picked them up, handed one to his dad and said, this one's for charity, dad.

44:09 Oh, really?

44:10 Twelve years old.

44:11 Wow.

44:12 And this weekend, and he did the same with his birthday money. He split that in half. Okay. And with the party and then this weekend we're going to sit down and talk about which charities it's going to go to. But no one said to do that. So to me, those are the life lessons that are really important. You know, I was so proud of him, you know, just to automatically say, it's not all about me.

44:36 Yeah.

44:37 So I think that's the other life lesson that I learned that, you know, as much as, you know, everyone has some degree of ego, you have to put that aside and put others ahead.

44:48 Yeah.

44:50 On many occasions. And so I guess that's, that's one of them. I mean, my parents, they didn't preach those lessons. They lived them by example. I saw it. It wasn't what they told me, it was what I saw them doing. And especially my dad, who had a lot of power politically and in other ways. And the way he used it was judicious and kind and merciful and, and just wise.

45:23 Yeah.

45:24 Yeah.

45:25 All right. Yeah. Well, thank you for sharing that. So, um. Yeah, that was the last question that I had. So is there anything that you didn't get to mention that you'd like to mention now?

45:36 I don't think so. That was very thorough, Alex. You did a great job of good questions. No, I guess the only one thing I will say, and I said this to parents when I've done workshops for parents, is, you know, as parents, we all want the best for our kids and we have different definitions of what the best is. It might be the best education, it might be the best job, it might be this or that. But what I've told parents in workshops, is this what you really want? When people have young kids, they're not thinking it this way, but this is what I will tell them. What you really want is that 30 years down the road, your kids still want you in their lives. Okay. And I think when parents have young children, they just automatically assume that's always going to be the case.

46:21 Yeah.

46:22 But from my perspective, at my age, with my experience and all the people I've known, it's not a given. It is absolutely not a given. There are many families that are fractured. There are many families that do not. My brother does is a lawyer, and he does some family law, and he said, it's unbelievable how people fight and don't get along. And so I think that parents need to keep their eye on the prize. And the prize is that you have a life as an older person with children who really enjoy your company.

46:53 Yeah.

46:54 And I'm here for a month, and I keep saying, is that too long? Not at all, because that's something they want, and I want, and I'm so constantly grateful for that. Both my kids enjoy having me in their lives, but it took a lot of patients through periods of their lives when maybe I didn't believe they should be doing what they're doing and kind of stepping back a bit and letting them make their mistakes and be supportive of what they want, not what I want for them. So that's something I learned. But I think it's a really important message for people to keep in mind that those cute little adorable kids who just need you all the time, someday they won't need you, but in a way, you kind of want them to, you know, for different reasons, but you kind of want to share their lives with them. You know, that was kind of what I learned over the years.

47:50 Yes. All right, well, guess that's another life lesson that is.

47:53 It really is.

47:55 Well, yeah. So if that's the last thing you wanted to add, then I guess. Thank you so much for sharing your story, and thank you so much for your time.

48:03 I thank you for embarking on a journey like this. Definitely.