I am part of our research unit. It is a unit that compose the people who are doing research in the special sciences and social of bernard. Partnership for appalachian gruels education. Their i work with a bludgeon rolls in those help them get Educational Opportunity and access. Have a couple of different hats. Is that a new term . I think it was coined by a bear goes christoph. It is a widely used term. How did you get involved with up luncheon grows and middle school in Western North carolina . Guest it is a long story. I write about it in the road out. I grew up as a workingclass girl in that tiny, little miltown in the mountains of North Carolina and was the first of my family to go to college, which was a big step for me. I ended up, there was scholarship for my group called auw, getting a scholarship, going to college, and doing super well in college. Finally after a lot of stumbles and falls i went on and got a graduate degree from harvard in education. From that jeremy i experienced, i came back to my native sold, North Carolina, and founded this nonprofit called page. Host and when you say you work with apple action rules, what do you do . Guest i teach. We, the people, who work with the nonprofit work with this kind of out of School Opportunities for girls living in the most rural and remote parts of the appalachian mountains. Weekly meetings with volunteers. And we offer these girls who otherwise cannot have opportunities a really intensive and wonderful educational program. They come into our program from all over the mountains of North Carolina and at Madison County and do digital there is a learning, write, read literature , and gather a really intense learning experience through page cub of page, the nonprofit i created. Host who are these women . Guest these are seven very amazing special girls i got to know when i was teaching in cincinnati. I mention that i had got my college degree. Their i discovered Pretty Amazing never heard of appalachian people. It goes back to part of American History when you had people in the Appalachian Region moving up north to look for jobs in cities like cincinnati and dayton and akron. I was teaching at the university of cincinnati and found out there was a Appalachian Community and went there and said to the people at the public elementary school, would you all let me be a teacher . So i began teaching and got to know these seven girls. And at that time when i first met my students they were only in second grade. I followed them into third and fourth grade. Midway through fourth grade i said to these young girls, do you want a class of your own . This said, yes. I began meeting with these girls, seven of them in total. We met every week and during the summer for four years of their lives. And this became an amazing experience. Having a class of are all aware we studies that read literature and mostly i listened to the girls dream about their lives, it is a place where they can dream and tells stories and read books. Host hal r. These girls similar in their outlook . Guest they are poor, among the poorest. I left cincinnati in 2009 and came back to of carolina as a started to found my nonprofit. As i was later to learn cincinnati became the third worst city in the United States for child poverty. Only 32 detroit and cleveland. One of the poorest cities in the United States for child poverty. Part of that was appalachian poverty in the inner cities. Many of them had mothers who had some drug issues. It poor white america, the drug problem tends to be centered a round the abuse of prescription painkillers. I found out that many of my young students, some eight, nine, ten years old, had moms who were doing drugs and it was a common factor. Host how did that affect their outlook on life . Guest i think that for many of these girls that were the teachers were essentially orphans to drugs and poverty. So i was there teacher. We have our own gloss, but it became a family. They became like sisters. I was a teacher. I sometimes had to be teacher lee and stern, but it became like a family. At one time to girls, and one of them was blair and the other was eight rihanna, they put their arms around one another and said, we are sisters. We often began our class with a snack food. I said to them, what makes you sisters . Is it, we just figured out both of our mothers are on the street doing drugs. For them it was, we have become this family. Guest did their child had reflect what he grew up with . Guest of little bit. I grew up car was a workingclass girl without opportunity or access. I was naive about how college and school worked. The difference was, i what i was working class. My father had a job. Host did he live with the family . Guest he did. Host was that rare . Guest i think it was common in those days. In rural appalachian as opposed to an innercity, you tend to have sort of families where you have a dad and mom. My dad was living in the house, and that was different. The girls, largely their fathers were out of the picture. They had biological dads, but there were not part of their everyday lives. Their mothers are starting to lose it because of the drug issue. Families were beginning to be ripped apart. What are saw in this community is similar to what you see in other urban families. The grand mosque steps and and search taking over and taking control. In fact, one of my students, her grandmother was very essential caretaker. Host how did you get out . Guest education. I was very naive. I love books and reading. I got this i knew nothing about college. A lot of i got a letter in the mail saying i got a scholarship. This Wonderful Group of women had given me a scholarship. Host how did you get connected with them . Guest i cant remember. They probably heard about me through my school. This girl, this kid can make it. And i got a letter saying, you have been given qaeda scholarship to college. It was is really easy for me to excel and keep going. Host what was the hardest part of leaving your town, my eagerness ff cahuenga of. Guest once you take the road out, if you go for workingclass and go elsewhere you have to give up part of your part of who you are. Theyre is a process of change that has to happen. To some extent it puts you at a certain and little bit of a distance from your childhood and family. It is that part that is difficult and involves a change. For me, that was great. I went on to college and have come back and helped the people who are my people, working class people. I have had to give up some of los, now i can come back and help the people are like me. Host were you treated with suspicion . Guest i think it is a very perceptive i think that people like me who are kind of poor, workingclass kids, a little bit different. She is not exactly like everybody else. She is more into books that she is at that point in my life getting married or having babies you are a little bit different. But that did not stop or hamper me. Host your word, what you like about end the road out a teachers odyssey in poor america, was it sanctioned by the cincinnati Public Schools . Guest they were phenomenal. There were total colleagues, friends. They opened their doors to me, and some extent i think they were of little bit baffled about what i was doing. Having this class for girls at reading literature. This is working out. Dow was trying to bring back what i learned. Ive tried to get back to this system. Two or absolutely welcoming and wonderful to me. Host besides having a class of seven what did you bring differently . Guest i would say in my own experience growing up. A new where the girls were coming from. I was a different teacher in a sense. Such as a wonderful short novel called a blueeyed daisy more about working class or appalachian girls but aauthorizes that would speak to their concerns, and my students wanted nothing of that. They turned their noses up at that and said, we dont want your kind meaning we dope want your book not me as a person but the books i was bringing in. Turned out their Favorite Book was horror fiction, and host like vampire guest some of that. One of my students, blair, she was, by the age of nine and then also ten, favorite author was stephen king. And they watched stephen king on television, read stephen king, and i was trying to be this idealistic social justice teacher, change the world, change them, and all they wanted to read was stephen king. So i just gave in and said well read horror fiction and stuff and that was transformative for me and my students, because they began becoming readers, and really enjoying reading and loving it and stuff. And eventually stephen king became dead my memoir and wrote a very nice blurb about it host do you regret allowing the girls to read horror fiction . Guest not at all host or sponsoring it. Guest we did not read actually read stephen king in my class. I did a bunch of research after i learned about this literary passion of theirs, and i found all these really wonderful, like, ghost stories and stuff for young kids and managed to create a whole curriculum around ghost stories, so we compromised. Host how long were you with these girls. Guest we had the glass four years, beginning from third grade and then to sixth grade, and i made a decision to come back to North Carolina, which is where grew up, and begin to found my own nonprofit, building on what i learned from these girls. But i had to leave and that was very tough because i left these girls when they were just entering adolescence. I kept up with them. I visited cincinnati. We kept in touch via email and facebook and Everything Else and, i went back and forth, but it left whan they were in sixth grade. Host do you regret that . Guest um host do you feel responsible . Guest i do sometimes feet like if had been able to stay, been able to continue the class, a number of them struggled when they entered adolescence. One of them became a young teenage mom at the edge of 16. At the age of 16 she finished high school, going on to, like, study hair dressing and stuff. But she has done really well, but there was a time period when the were a number of my students struggling, and i felt guilty about that. But i knew i had to come back to my native state and do my work here as a social entrepreneur. Wasnt really a choice i had i mean, felt i had a calling to do this. Host how old are those girls now . Guest anywhere early 20s. Host very quickly. Adriana. Guest she finished high school and a very competitive private high school she got into, and wend on to hair dressing training program. Host a young mother. Guest a young mom. A little girl. Beautiful little girl. And by every stretch she is doing quite well. But there was some very rough patches. Host blair. Guest blair is more difficult to talk about. She is blair was a student who remind me most of myself. Very precocious. She was the stephen king fan that first began talking about stephen king and stuff. And her grandma, who raise her, grandma lily, said her investigator was that blair would become a lawyer, and she certainly had the talents. Blair dropped out of school, and she dropped out in ninth grade. Just couldnt finish high school, and then she ended up kept trying and trying to go back and get a ged and wasnt able to too that. So the last i checked in with her, she was working the night cleaning job in her office buildings. So Something Like a big urban office building, cleaning at night on the night shift. Host mariah. Guest mariah is got married, divorced, had another relationship and had two lovely children, finished high school, trying to go back to college and become a nurses assays stand, has not quite gotten there yet. Left her partner, is now a single mom, raising these two beautiful children, and she is some shesing too pretty well. Host elizabeth. Guest elizabeth has struggled as well. Elizabeth has a very young child. She had a baby a little over a year ago. And has a fiancee, a steady partner, so she almost finished high school, did not pass one section of her science test. Her Science High School test and because of that, was not allowed to finish high school. And because of that, she is a dropout. Host any plans to go back at this point . Guest i would love to go back. And as soon as possible. I would love to go back at least once a year, and im hoping to go back in the fall in cincinnati. I am very busy. I run a nonprofit in the North Carolina mountains and i have a position at duke. So i try to keep up and visit as much as i can good stay in touch with these seven girls. Host and shannon, jessica and alicia, and all seven girls in the cincinnati area. Guest alicia is the one who has left cincinnati, and she got married to an serviceman, a soldier, and in the army, and they moved away from cincinnati and she has a child. She is married and had their first child. And shannon and jessica are both, again, struggle struggled to finish high school and were not quite able to finish. Shannon did not finish high school. She had her she was became pregnant in high school and had a baby that died soon after birth. A baby that was very premature, and after that point began certain of distancing herself from school and began to kind of fall back and dropped out of high school, and jessica dropped out as well but has gone back and done the ged for the college studies, and it is, i think, engaged to be married. So those girls door are doing well with the contacts in their communities. I know they wouldnt be seen as sort of like, late say a duke would not be seen as having gone far with their professional careers but have done extremely well, given what they were up against, which was a neighborhood of just severe poverty and a real serious drug problem. None of these seven girls have touched drugs, and i think that is a huge thing in their favor, that they have not gone the way of their moms. They said to themselves, we want Something Better for our lives. And we dont want to go there, and they didnt. Host Deborah Hicks, where would you do things differently and where were you successful. Guest we had an intimacy. A successful class, seven girls who were attaching themselves to school, loving literature, loving books, loving a schoollike experience and a teacher. I think the biggest challenge i faced was just about the time that my class finished, i had to leave to come back to my home state and found my nonprofit that i was thinking about founding. So the biggest difficulty was just not being able to kind of finish the class when the girls were entering adolescence, and that is why when i founds me any initiative, i made sure we are serving girls in the middle school years, trying to work with students, girls, in the years when their most vulnerable and trying to define who they are and what they want to be in life, and so that is something i learned from the class in cincinnati i brought back with me to North Carolina. Host if people are interested in your nonprofit, whats the web site . Guest its carolina dpage. Org, and its partnership for appalachian girls education. The carolinapage. Org and you end find stuff on the web site, go to a stories page on the web site and watch digital stories, meet the girls, hear their voices and learn about their lives, and wed love for people to check out the web site and meet these amazing appalachian girls. Host when you go back there, when you involve these local girls are you treated again with suspicion, as a harvard dogooder in a sense . Guest in the mountains in Madison County where page is located, we have an expression, from heres and not from heres. I am kind of at this stage both a fromhere and a notfromhere itch rent an Old Farmhouse in the Community Called spring creek from farmers out of mass disson county, and when aim there in the farm house, im a fromhere. When guy to the page program where we offer this program for appalachian girls, im kind of a notfrom, here. I dont sound like an appalachian girl anymore and i just have become more of a professor and a researcher and that kind of thing, but part of me is always a from,here, and its doesnt leave you. Youre always in way, the same girl you were when you were a child. Host we have been talking with author and educational scholar, Deborah Hicks about her book the road out, a teachers odyssey in poor america. Booktv asks what you read thing summer . Chris matthews autographed his book, tip and the gipper oso thats the first one im going to read this summer. Obviously its a book about tip oneill, the speaker, and ronald reagan, the president , how the would two of them to high demetrically opposite views but were able to forge a relationship and get things done. The presentday congress could use a little of that advice so id be very interested to see how it relates to the present day inaction of congress. I also have some other books. Ive been very much mesmerized by the new deal for the years, fdr and the new deal, but its really multifaceted, and ira rote a book called fear itself the new deal and the oins of our time looking at the politicked of the new deal and how fdr put together this coalition of northerners, northern liberals and southern conservatives and at a time when communism and socialism, fascism, naziism were rising all over the rest of the world and then also with the new deal, there is a book called americas soul in the balance by Gregory Rollins who sent me his book, the holocaust, the fdr state department and the moral disgrace of an american aristocracy. I along felt the state department and fdr himself frankly didnt do enough to rescue the jews of europe from the holocaust. Theres lots of documents showing that the United States could have done things such as bomb the Railroad Tracks leading to the gas chambers and the concentration camps and didnt do it because the war effort was taking center stage and they didnt want to do anything to deviate from that. So this book delves into that and thats another perspective of the new deal. Double down by mark hall present about gamechange 2012. The 2012 election between president obama and mitt romney. Thats going to be fascinating and i look forward to looking at that again. Also, the outpost talks about american valor in afghanistan. I try to visit the Wounded Warriors here in washington at Bethesda Navy hospital, Walder Walter Reed hospital, and shows extraordinary bravery on the part of our soldiers and this is a book about that bravery and how they all banded together. Finally, just so you dont think im too serious, theres a book here called my ipad and i also intend to read this, this is a present given to me, along with ipad for dumbies because im tired of havin