Postcode tv is on the campus of Duke University in durham, North Carolina, where we are talking with professors and scholars about some of their book. Joining us here is Deborah Hicks. Her book, the road out the road out a teachers odyssey in poor america. What do you do here at duke first of all . Guest i have a couple of things that i do. I am part of a researching occult social Science Research institute and that is the unit composed of people doing research in the social science and disciplined and i do a lot of research. Im also a social entrepreneur, so i direct the nonprofit called page, partnership for appalachian girls education. And there i work with appalachian girls in middleschool and help them get Educational Opportunity and access. I have a couple different hats i wear at the university. A researcher in our social entrepreneur. Host social entrepreneur. Is that a new term . I think it was coined by nicholas kristof. It was a widely used term. People like you basically direct nonprofits and Different Things in the nonprofit air. Host how did you get involved with appalachian girls in middleschool in Western North carolina . Guest that is a long story i wrote about. It really begins with my own history. I grew up in a tiny little miltown in the mountains of North Carolina and i was the first in my family to go to college, which is a very big step for me and ended up for a scholarship through aauw getting a scholarship, going to college and doing super well in college and ended up finally, after a lot of stumbles and falls, going on a getting a graduate degree from harvard in education. That long ternary that i experienced myself came back to my native soul and found that this nonprofit and began working with appalachian girls out here. Host when you say you work with appalachian girls, what do you do . Guest i teach. So we the people who work on this nonprofit have created this kind of out of school sort of opportunities for girls in the most rural and remote parts of the appalachian mountains. They come to an intensive summer program. They have weekly meetings with volunteers and we offer these appalachian girls who otherwise dont have opportunities for Summer Learning enrichment, we offer them but a Wonderful Program in the summer. They come in from all over North Carolina and Madison County and a too Digital Literacy learning. They write literature and they get a really intensive learning experience through the nonprofit that i direct. Host in the road out, or adriano, player, maria, mariah, elizabeth, shannon, jessica and alicia . Guest so, the 37 very amazing from a special girls that i got to know when i was teaching in cincinnati. I mention i got my college degree, graduate degree, got a teaching job in cincinnati, ohio. There i discovered this Pretty Amazing neighborhood. A neighborhood of appalachian people in the inner city. A sort of goes back to part of americas history, for your people in the Appalachian Region moving up north to look for jobs in cities like cincinnati and other cities. So i was teaching and found out there was this Appalachian Community. I went there and said to the people at the Public Elementary School and the community, which you while that may be a teacher in your Elementary School and teach kids, and so i began teaching and got to know these seven girls, player, mariah and so forth. At that time when i first met my students, they were only in second grade. I followed these girls into third grade and fourth grade in midway through the fourth grade year, i say to these young girls, do you all want to have a class of your own . They said yeah, well give this a try. So i began meeting with these girls, seven of them in toto. We met every week and during the summer for four years of their lives. This became a kind of an amazing experience for them and for me. Having a room of our own, crossover where we studied and read literature, talked about stories and mostly i listen to the girls dream about their lives. It is a place where they could dream and tell stories and read books. Host Deborah Hicks, how are these girls similar in outlook of life quiet guest they are for appearance that they are among the very poorest of american children. I found out i let cincinnati in 2009, came back to North Carolina as i said to found this nonprofit. As i was later to learn, cincinnati in 2010 became the third worst city in the United States for child already in urban areas. Only third to detroit and i think cleveland. This is one of the poorest cities in the world for Child Poverty. Part of that Child Poverty with appalachian poverty in inner cities. All of these girls were poor. Many of them had moms who had some drug issues and poor white america, the drug problem tended to be centered around the abuse of the description of painkillers like oxycontin would be an example of that. So i found out that many of my young students, some of them like eight, nine, 10 years old had moms who were doing drugs and as a common factor among the girls. Host how did that affect their outlook on life . Their dreams as you say . Guest for many of these girls, they were when i was to discover as a teacher was for many of these girls, they were essentially orphans. They became orphans to oxycontin and american poverty. So i was their teacher. We have a worldclass. The class became like a family to them and they became kind of like sisters. I was a teacher. I sometimes had to be teacher lee m. Stern and stuff, but it became like family. At one point, two of the girls and one of them was blair. The other one was adriano. They put their arms around one another and said we are sisters. We are sisters. We often begin our class with a snack and food to get things going. I said to the two girls, what makes you are sisters . What is going on . They said we figured out both of our moms are on the street doing drugs. For a time, it was like we have become like family and the class was their sister had had it was a sisterhood of girls. Host did their childhood you see in your classroom in cincinnati, did it reflect what you grew up with in Western North carolina . Just go a little bit. I grab a workingclass girl. I did not opportunity. No one in my family had been to college. As very naive about how college worked in school work. The difference was i was workingclass. My dad had a job. Host did he live with the family, to . Guest he did. Host was that rare . Guest it was pretty common in those days. In rural appalachia as opposed to the urban Appalachian Community, you do tend to have sort of families where you have a dad in mom living in the house. My dad was living in the household, had a job in that was different because the girls that i tot in cincinnati, largely their dads were out of the picture. They have biological dads obviously, but there were not part of their everyday lives. Their moms were starting to lose it because of the drug issue, so their families were beginning to be worked apart. But i found this Appalachian Community in cincinnati is similar to what you see another urban families at the grandmom kind of steps in and starts taking over and taking control of the family. In fact, one of my students i read about, her grandma was her central caretaker and that was pretty common. Host how did you get out . Package it to college . Guest the one key word is education. I have to be very grateful. I was a very naive workingclass girl. I was a little bit of an anomaly because i love books and i loved reading. I was kind of a bookish little girl. I think because of that, i did really well in school, diet aids. I knew nothing about college. Did know how to get in. Didnt know how to apply. Got a letter in the mail saying i had a scholarship because this Wonderful Group of women, this Wonderful Group of women had given me a scholarship. Host how to chew get connected . Guest i honestly cant remember. They probably heard about me through high school. I probably have someone say this girl, this kid can make it. I got a letter saying youve been given a scholarship to college, so i ended up being able to go off to college. Once i got in, it was just really easy for me to excel and keep going and then i went on to graduate degrees. Host what was the hardest part of leaving your town, your naive mess as you say and coming into college . Escrowed the toughest thing is that once you take the road out to go for workingclass and you go elsewhere, you have to give up part of your childhood identity and part of who you are. There is a process of change that has to have been into some extent, it puts you at a certain a little bit of a distance from your childhood and your family and staff. That part is difficult. And involves the change. To me that was great because i went on to college, but then i came back and helped my own people, and the people who are my people, workingclass people. I feel like yeah, i have had to give up some of who i was, but now i can come back and i can help the people who are like me. Host we treated with suspicion back home . Guest know, and i think at the very first but do perceptive word. People like me were kind of cash say shes a little bit different. Shes not exactly like everybody else around her. Shes a little odd maybe. Shes more interested in books than at that point in my life getting married and having babies or whatever. Yeah, you are a little bit different. But luckily that didnt stop me or hamper me or anything. Host your work in cincinnati which you write about in the road out a teachers odyssey in poor america, was a sanctioned by cincinnati public schools, the special class . Guest they were phenomenal. I have to say they were total colleagues, friends. They open their doors to me. To some extent, i think they were a little bit baffled about what i was doing because, you know, i was having this class for girls and reading literature. I think they were like this is working out in the girls were thriving. I was also at the same time trying to bring back what i learned from the class in the other classrooms and staff. So i tried to give back to the school systems. They systems. Theyre absolutely welcoming and wonderful to me in every way. Host besides having a class of seven, what else did you bring differently into that classroom . Guest i would say my own experience growing up, i kind of knew where the girls are coming from. I was a different teacher in that sense. We also did something very unusual these days because now we have a lot of pressure from accountability to teach to the task to get everybody ready to pass these tasks. In urban settings like an urban cincinnati, that his staff. Instead of doing back, we read literature and that is becoming more and more of an anomaly these days to talk about literature and talk about the nurture and story and the stories of your own life. So that was different. The thing that was a little bit different for me as i am kind of oldfashioned literature for them. I like novels about characters and stuff like that. These girls, i tried to bring lake eons Adult Fiction to these girls. And its about girls like them. Host such as . Guest such as a wonderful short novel called a blueeyed daisy. Something about workingclass or appalachian girls that would speak to their concerns. My students wanted not being of that. They turned their noses and said we dont want your kind, meaning we dont like your book. Not because the person, but what i was bringing in. It turned out their Favorite Book was horror fiction. Host blake vampire . Guest some of that. One of my students it turns out she was by the age of nine and then also 10, her favorite author was stephan king. They watch stephen king on television. They read stephen king. Here i was trying to be this idealistic teacher trying to change the world and change them and all they wanted to read with stephen king. So i just gave in and said we are going to read horror fiction and staff and that was transformative for me and for my students because they began becoming readers and really enjoying reading and loving it and staff. Eventually, stephen king read my memoir and we are a very for word about it. Host you regret allowing the girls to read horror fiction . Guest not at all. We did not we actually read stephen king and my class. I did a bunch of research after i read about this literary passion of tears. I found all of these really wonderful, blake stories and stuff for young kids and i managed to create a curriculum around the stories. So what kind of compromise. But they still insisted their favorite author was always stephen king. That was interesting. Host host how long were you with these girls in this class . Guest at the class for four years. Beginning in third grade and going to the end of sixth grade. I made a decision at that point to come back to North Carolina which is where i grew up and began to sound my own nonprofit building on what i learned from these girls. I had to leave the map is very tough because i met these girls for marriage as entering adolescence. I kept up with them. I visited cincinnati. The kept in touch via email and facebook and i went back and forth. But i laughed. Host do you regret that . Or do you feel responsible . Guest i do sometimes feel as i have been able to stay, if i had been able to continue the class, a number of them struggled when they enter adolescence. One of them became a young teenage mom at the age of 16. She finished high school, is going on to, you know, like study hairdressing and staff that she has done really well. There is a time. Then time. Then there is a number sutin a number of students struggling and feel guilty about that. I do my work here is a social lunch for newer. So it wasnt really a choice i had. I thought that i had a calling to do this. Host how old are those girls now . 17, 18, 910 . Guest they are in their early 20s. Host very quickly, adriano, where she now . Guest she finished high school at a very competitive private high school, which he got into with some help from me. She finished high school. She went on to kind of like hairdressing, training or greens. She is a young mom. Beautiful little girl. By every stretch, shes doing quite well. But there were some very rough patches. Host player. Guest blair is more difficult to talk about. Blair was a student who reminded me most of myself. Very. She was a stephen king fan. Her grandma who raised her, grandma lilly Center Vision was blair would become a lawyer and she certainly had those talents. Blair dropped out of school and she dropped out in ninth grade. She 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 do that. Currently, the last i checked in with her, she was working the night cleaning job in an office building. So Something Like a big urban office building, cleaning at night on the night shift. Host maria. Guest maria got married, divorced, had another relationship and had two lovely children. Finished high school, is trying to go back to college and become a nurses assistant, has not quite gotten there yet. Left her partner, is now a single mom raising two beautiful children and shes doing 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 fiance, a study 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. Because of that, she is a dropout. Host any plans to go back at this point . Guest i would love to go back. Sns possible as soon as possible. I would love to go back in the fall in cincinnati. I am very busy. I run a nonprofit. I have a Research Position at duke. I am busy, but i try to keep up as much as i can and stay in touch with the seven girls. Host very quickly, shannon, jessica and alicia. All seven girls in cincinnati . Guest alicia is the one who has left cincinnati and she got married to a service into a soldier in the army. Theyve moved away from cincinnati and she has a child. And shannon and jessica are both again struggled to finish high school and we are not quite able to finish. Shannon did not finish high school. She became pregnant in high school and had a baby that died soon after birth. A baby that was very premature. After that point, begin sort of kind of fallback and dropped out of high school. Jessica dropped out as well, but it has gone back for Baruch College studies and is engaged they are doing well in the context of their communities. I know they wouldnt be seen as sort of like a duke Contact Store whatever, would not be seen as having gone far with their professional careers, but theyve done extremely well given what they were up against, which was a neighborhood of severe poverty in a real serious drug problem. None of the other girls have touched drugs and that is a huge thing in their favor they have not come in the way of their moms. We dont want to go there. Host Deborah Hicks, bridget think you were successful and where did you think you do things differently . Guest we were very successful. We had a super successful class. We have seven girls who were school laughing, literature loving, school Life Experience and a teacher. I think the biggest challenge i face was just about the time that my class finished, i had to leave to come back to my home state and found by nonprofit. The difficulty with not being able to finish the class when the girls were entering adolescence. That is why when i founded my new initiative, page, i ma