Episode Transcript

Announcer: This podcast is produced by Benchmark Education.

Kevin Carlson: One district, one book. It's an initiative that supports the art and science of literacy, while also creating a culture of literacy across a” city.

In this episode: “Win, Win, Win: Creating Community Involvement in Literacy Efforts.”

I'm Kevin Carlson and this is Teachers Talk Shop.

Mike Poore: Once it started, everybody became so passionate about because this is kind of one of those things that just gives you some juice. We all need it, okay? We all want to have something that gives us that fire, that gets our belly going and makes our head explode and say, “Boy, this is awesome!”

Kevin Carlson: That is Mike Poore. He retired as superintendent of the Little Rock School District at the end of the 2021-2022 school year. In 2021, he was named Superintendent of the Year by the Arkansas Association of Educational Administrators.

Mike has been a teacher, coach, athletic director, assistant principal, and principal, and he has served in other top administrative roles. Benchmark Education’s Dr. Jennifer Nigh sat down with Mike recently to discuss how students win when community members and organizations are involved in school and district literacy initiatives.

Here is Jen Nigh with Mike Poore.

Dr. Jennifer Nigh: So, Mike, tell us a little bit about yourself. Tell us about your experience and what brought you to this topic we're going to be talking about today.

Mike Poore: Well, you know, the topic of literacy, of course, for a superintendent, is so important. It's important for me as a parent, now as a grandparent. So, really, it's what makes the whole world go around. We've got to be able to do not just a good job, but a fantastic job of helping all of our learners be ready to read at grade level by third grade. Otherwise, we just know that there's so many challenges to try to overcome that.

Right along with that is, of course, you want kids to be passionate about reading. And I actually think these things can go hand in hand. So when you think about literacy, there's a science to it. And of course, we're really not talking about that today, but for the educators that are listening, they know all about those things of the five components and what we need to do to create a foundational set of skills for young people. But there's another end of this that I think is equally important, which is the art of literacy, and the fact that it can create great passion. You want your educators obviously to be passionate about teaching literacy. You also, of course, want your kids to be fired up to say, “Oh my gosh, I can't wait to read. When do we get to read? When do we get to read?” You want your parents engaged. And in my opinion, the other key component is, how do you then get your community involved in being a partner with you as you do this work to create passion and excitement about literacy?

Dr. Jennifer Nigh: Yeah, absolutely. Something you just mentioned is, getting excited about reading. As a mom of three kids, I wish I could say all three of my kids had that passion, but my youngest certainly does. And even as a 15-year-old, when she says, “Mom, can we go to Barnes and Noble? There's this new book out I'm really excited about”—being able to see that passion in her and know that she's going to be a lifelong reader is thrilling. I wish all my kids could be like that, but it's exciting.

Mike Poore: Let me give you and some of your other readers—as an older guy, my youngest son was the opposite. Probably was the one that spent the least amount of time and had the hardest time to sit still as we read to him and all those things that you want to do as a parent. But now, he's got ignited, and a part of it was ignited through his career choice. And so now he's calling me all the time about leadership books and what he's read. So you never know. Again, I think it goes back to foundation, that every effort that we make as they're young, even if we're kind of getting pushback from whoever, in particular the child, your own student, it's still worth that effort, because ultimately I do think it has long-term gains, impact. They come back to it, is my guess.

Dr. Jennifer Nigh: Good, good. I can hope for that for my other two (laughter). So good, good. All right, well, let's dive a little bit into our topic, which we know is getting that community involvement in literacy efforts. And this is a really exciting topic because we do as educators talk a lot about the home and school connection. We certainly know the power of the educator and leadership in really instilling not only that ability and that proficiency in reading in our students, but also that love for reading. But let's talk about the community. What are the benefits of also involving the community in a district’s or school's literacy efforts?

Mike Poore: Well, I think it really is a critical thing, and I think it can be an enhancement in multiple ways for any district as they think about, what do we want to do this upcoming school year? What do we want to do throughout the year that will allow our kids to be passionate about reading? Because one thing we know, it's just in us as humans that if we have fun and we're feeling like we’re receiving something, we actually end up investing more time into it. Well, the same goes for a young person. I don't care if it's a pre-K, I don't care if it's a second-grader, if it's a middle-school student or a high-school student, that if we pour into them things that will excite them about topics that they're interested in, all of a sudden they become much more passionate. They're going to end up choosing to say, “I want to read another one of those,” or “I want to hear more from this person.” So bringing community in is really, really critical.

And I think that for me, maybe a little bit of my approach maybe came—and I'm sure there's a lot of folks out there that are at least superintendents, maybe deputy superintendents, similar to me—that I was a secondary person. My passion was about my topic, which was history, and trying to get kids excited about reading in more depth about historical facts and figures and events and how that impacted our world.

I felt like, when I became a superintendent, I wanted to invest even more in the knowledge of the Science of Reading—again, that science part, and I feel like I'm still learning there. But the other part is that I felt like a thing that I could bring as a leader was to try to excite the community. Now, some of the things I'm going to talk about, they're a combination of my experiences as a 27-year educator in Colorado, superintendent and everything below, to coming to Arkansas, where I was superintendent of Bentonville Schools and then also Little Rock. And so one of the things that I will tell you, some things were in place and some we created under my tenures. But I think a good example maybe is a starting point is, in Little Rock, I inherited an event and the goal and the target was very simple, but it has such great ramifications, in multiple ways. And it's called the Jane Mendel Reading Day in the Little Rock School district. And the Jane Mendel Reading Day was sponsored and put on by what was called our VIPs, which was, VIPs stands for Volunteers and Public Schools.

And so we actually track that, which is a great thing to track, how much community involved. And a lot of times that can become even a part of a strategic plan of having the community engaged. In this case, what we were doing was trying to have a reader for every single classroom on a given day. And so we literally had hundreds of people volunteer to read in our schools and go into a classroom. They could bring their own book, or we could have a book designated for them by grade reading levels so that they could go in and read appropriately to a kindergartner or a fifth grader, it didn't matter. But they also got to pick their book. And so it could be something that was of interest to them or that they thought was kind of a cool topic for kids, or maybe it even dived into their particular career.

But when you bring a person in, there's multiple things that go on. First off, think about this if you're an educator: When are we on our best behavior? When do we make things shine? When do we want to make everything proud? Well, we want to do that when we have people coming into our school. So it's kind of a win that way right off the bat, that you're kind of like, if you're telling your staff, “Hey, be ready. This is the guy. This superintendent's going to make sure we bring people into our schools. We want to show them off.” Well, if you're ready to show off, it kind of means that you believe in people and you believe that we can put public in front of them, and we're proud to put people in front of them. But it also puts that staff a little bit on edge. “Boy, we're going to make sure our building is the way it needs to look on the outside, the inside. We're going to make sure that what's going on in the classroom, of people coming to greet and meet visitors and all those type of things are outlined”—which is really a great skill to carry on throughout the year.

The other thing that happens as these folks come in to read is that they go into a classroom and they get to go through the book, but they also get to tell a little bit about themselves. And I think that's a wonderful opportunity. And every time I've done that, I've said, “Well, I'm the superintendent of schools,” and if I'm talking to a kindergarten, they might say, “Does that mean you're the boss or the president? Who do you get to control?” And I'm like, “Well, actually, you don't control anybody.” And so then you talk about some things that are leadership.

I've heard so many folks that do the volunteering on this Jane Mendel Reading Day talk about what a wonderful experience that is. We have some people in Little Rock that have gone to the same school for over 25 years to read at the same school, because they're so invested in being a part of that environment. And I think that's another wonderful thing, because that means that they're now invested in that school. And when they come into the school and they see these things and they see the kids and they see the staff, now, when you try to work on your bigger image as a district, you have champions that are there who've actually experienced the school and say, “Wait a minute, hey, don't be saying these kids are awful and that they are disrespectful. I was there.” So we're actually very intentional about saying, “Hey, we need you to become a champion as a part of this, too, and tell people about your experience as you visit the Little Rock schools.”

Dr. Jennifer Nigh: I love that you're commenting on that because as you're explaining this initiative and how you brought the community members in, I'm thinking, “Great, they're reading to kids. We know that's a research-based strategy that has so many implications. So, great, we're doing something that is evidence-based in a classroom.”

But like you said, you're giving these kids an opportunity to see these people out in their community, to learn from them, to maybe see themselves in these community members that they don't know, and how those relationships and those interactions might grow over the years, so that when these kids are out in the community and these individuals are out in the community, the power that that has. And I love that you mentioned the fact it brings this goodwill and this image to a school district, and we need that more now than ever everywhere, because schools are oftentimes viewed in a negative light, teachers are viewed in a negative light, students are viewed in a negative light. And having those advocates—it's not coming from the schools, it's not coming from the teachers trying to tell that. But you've got these advocates that are out in the community saying firsthand, “No, I've experienced this with these kids and these teachers in these schools, and incredible things are happening, and there are power in numbers to make these great things occur.”

Mike Poore: Two comments off of that. One is that, a lot of times, the person that's the first-time volunteer to come in and read is really nervous, because maybe their own set of experiences in school, maybe their experience with their own child, of not being enthused about reading. But when they get into our classrooms, invariably they find the students are so excited they have a visitor. They are so excited that they're getting to be read to and these are even fifth graders, okay, that are that way. So it really is transformational in that way.

And I do want to go back to one other point you made that I probably could have been even more intentional about, of the research part of this thing, is that when you're reading to kids and then you're having a discussion after you've read the book and talk about, “Well, what did you think of this character and what did you think when they were trying to do this certain type of activity and how did that feel to you?” Bringing out those type of things, that understanding the depth of what's really being written about, and maybe even discussing some conflict that may have occurred in the book—those are things that are super, super helpful in so many different ways to enhance what reading should be about.

Dr. Jennifer Nigh: Absolutely. Out of curiosity, in case there's a listener who wants to go initiate this in their own school or district, did you provide or did the district provide any particular training or support to the community members that came into the school, or… how did that work? Just to make sure that your goals were met and also give them any type of, if they weren't comfortable with this, doing it for the first time.

Mike Poore: We have a flood of our own people in the buildings on those days to greet the visitors beyond just the principal and their staff and then just helping them select a book and talking about what will happen in the classroom and just seeing if there's anything that they feel uncomfortable about. But also really prepping them for that whole thing to get ready for the Q&A. Because sometimes the Q&A could go into a direction you don't anticipate.

Dr. Jennifer Nigh: Especially those kindergartners!

Mike Poore: Yeah, like, “Mr. Poore, I really like your shoes!” Or, “When did you become bald? When did that happen?” I go, “I'm bald?” There's things like that occur too that you just have to educate that it's okay to go with the flow a little bit and the teacher will help guide that back into the real activity of the book. But you may end up having some off-the-wall questions, too, and so we always try to prep them for that.

Kevin Carlson: After the break: One district, One Book. Stay with us.

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Dr. Jennifer Nigh: I know you had another really exciting initiative about the One District, One Book, and I would love to hear more about that.

Mike Poore: Well, the One District, One Book, actually, for me, got its roots in the Bentonville school system, but I think we took it to a whole ’nother level when I got to Little Rock. Both of these districts still continue to do this type of thing and it is just such an impactful thing. The basic concept on One District, One Book is that every single student in your elementary—it doesn't matter your grade configuration, it could be a K-6, K-5, K-4, in Belleville was K-4 and in Little Rock it's a K-5—but every student is reading the same book. And we even have our pre-K engaged with a book that is complementary to the K-5 book. So we literally are embracing in Little Rock was approximately 10,000 readers when you look at all those students, and everybody's reading it, not just the students, but also the staff—and that's all staff that we want to encourage, even the classified staff to read it, the principals reading it. We want to have, parents reading with their child.

We also have had guest readers. So, for instance, Governor Hutchinson, who was the governor of Arkansas during my tenure, he and his wife Susan would read. One of the books that they would participate in was called The Lemonade War , and The Lemonade War is a great book, and they actually read the first chapter of the book and then would describe to them, as you read about that first chapter, about supply and demand and why the economy is important. So the governor got to talk about a few things he wanted to talk about, but he did it in a fashion to talk to [the] kids, just like he was talking to his own grandchildren. And then we would have guest readers for every chapter, and there'd be a little short message at the end. We did that not only to try to draw in big personalities, sports figures, newscasters, folks that would be recognized in the community, but also a way that if a child maybe didn't have a parent that had the time or wasn't as engaged as we would hope them to be as a parent, that there was still someone that was reading with that child that they could listen to at night if they wanted to, as they read their own book, or to relisten to a reader.

We also had people speaking Spanish in their books, so that even a Spanish-speaking parent who may not feel comfortable reading The Lemonade War could actually listen along with their child and read and follow it in the book. And so it was kind of a learning thing that way.

The other thing that that we evolved to in Little Rock was that we got to a place—and this really I got to give credit to our state chamber person, Randy Zook, [he] had shared with me in a meeting that on a committee that I'm on, or a board that I'm on, that said, “I'm so frustrated with financial literacy, and we need to do more for kids at the high-school level so that they actually get this stuff and really understand it.” He goes, “Mike, what would you do?” And I said, “Well, if you're serious about this, then what we really should do is tackle financial literacy at the elementary level.” And he said, “Well, what would that look like?” And I said, “Well, you know, what we would do then is that we would really begin to have books that had financial literacy-type topics so that as the students read them, they could then have a better understanding and we could impart as a part of the learning on this of teaching financial literacy along with the book. So when we give these books out, we also give parents reading guides so that they can look at each chapter and say, ‘Here's some things that you need to discuss.’ So you know, you know, what is the impact of cost to a family? That's not a bad thing to teach. Or, ‘Let's have your kids cook with you this week, because this chapter really talks about the different types of products that you need and maybe some of the scarcity of those products.’ So we would incorporate life lessons into the book.”

Now, the coolest thing about that, and this is one that I think your listeners are really going to love, is that as you did this and I learned about it I had no idea about this until I'm in the conversation with the state chamber and he says, “Well, Mike, this sounds like an activity that we could get through the FDIC and have CRAs. I said, “What is a CRA stand for?” And he goes, “Community Reinvestment Act.” Banks throughout our entire country, as a part of the FDIC, have a responsibility to put money back into their community to help educate folks on how to use their own personal finances to the best degree. And guess what? Many of these banks are not thrilled with how they end up spending their money. So think about coming to your own local bank and saying, “Hey, we need you right now, we'd love for you to participate in this book and help us so that—we're not asking you to pay for the whole thing, we just want you to give a segment, would you be willing?” In Little Rock, for us, we kind of always thought this whole thing was about a $40,000 price tag to get books for everybody and then do culminating events. So we'd ask for $10,000. And I'm telling you, we never struggled with getting the $10,000. Sometimes we went to multiple banks, sometimes just one. And in Little Rock, it was Arvest Bank. I'll give them a quick plug and shout out, because they were such great partners.

Dr. Jennifer Nigh: They will appreciate that.

Mike Poore: Yeah, they were wonderful, and they're located in multiple states. But it was a huge investment for us to get that. But if you're thinking about, “Well, that's 10,000, Mike, and you said 40,000,” well, again, you could go to multiple banks. Or here's another possibility: Go to service organizations. So we went to rotary and said, “Hey, we would love to have you partner, and as we teach these cool lessons that come out of the book and get kids excited about reading and teach them financial literacy, what if we also tied in the four-way concept that's a part of rotary?” And so they go, “You're kidding me. We could do that?” “Absolutely, we want you to come in.” And they were a part of all of our kickoff assembly. We had kickoff assemblies at every school, made it a huge, big deal. We then had the four-way test embedded into the different things that could be done at family time or in school so that those concepts—because those are all things that are timeless. I mean, it's useful for any person to learn about the four-way test. And so they would give us money. And then we always as a district felt like we needed to have skin in the game and give some resource because I didn't want them to feel like I'm just asking them all the time and we're not stepping up. We needed to do some things.

Dr. Jennifer Nigh: It was part of your budget, probably yearly.

Mike Poore: Part of our budget. That's right. So all this stuff was really, really fantastic.

Now I want to, if you don't mind, just share how this plays out. Kids read the whole time and then what we ended up doing was trying to say that we always wanted to have a culminating event at the end of it, and the culminating event really was a chance to celebrate the book, but it was also a chance to compete. And you know, when you think about financial literacy and economics, competition—and businesspeople, especially, they like to see a little bit of competition. so we would have “Shark Tanks” at the end of each of our, when we finished reading the book. So the book that I would draw to is just one example, and you can find all this on the Little Rock website, or I can give you additional information to get you set up.

But the one that I'm most proud of was the last one that we did before I retired, which was a book called Lunch Money. And the book was really cool because it was talking about two young people that lived in different homes, and one young person started to sell goods at the school. He was selling candy, and he was making, he would make a buck, okay? He was making some change. And this other young lady saw what was going on and said, “Huh, that's a pretty good idea. I'm going to do something,” and undersold him, came in with a lower cost, and then they started to add products. And finally the school caught on and said, “Wait a minute, what is going on here? This is getting out of control, this isn’t what should be happening in a school!” So they ended up shutting them down. But then the kids found value in what they were doing and said, “Hey, what if we combined our talent?” And so they got together and then actually, in this book, take it all the way to the school board to come up with a different solution of how they can actually continue to work.

So as that's all playing out, I'm thinking about, how can we get something that would be competitive? So we ended up tying the word “lunch” and money into, what if we did a food truck competition? So we had students—kindergartners, fifth graders, kids in special-needs rooms—everybody did the same thing and they would produce their own food truck. So what's the thing to start with? We'll start with, “What is it that you think people would like to eat?” Or, “What is it that you most like to eat?” And then when you think about that, what is the nutritional value? Do the research on it. How much will this product cost? What will it take in order to keep the product safe and cool before you cook it? What will it take to cook it? What are those costs? What would be the design of your food truck? So the artistic end of doing the wraparound, all these kids are competing on coming up with their food truck, and then they have a competition within the school, we have these bankers, we have the community members, we have the Rotarians, all coming in to evaluate the Shark Tank. And then the finalists from each school competed in the culminating event.

Now we're having some cool culminating events. I mean, we've had them at the Clinton Center, which is the presidential library. We've had it at our own offices one year. We've had it in Bentonville. We had it at Crystal Bridges, the world-famous art museum. So we can do them in all sorts of different places. But when we had the final event for this food truck thing, the kids were then doing a Shark Tank in front of three judges and whoever the winner was, first off, they got money. And our Chamber of Commerce actually paid every time for all the culminating events. They contributed $2,500 so that the winning group got, I forget the breakdown now, but it was like a first through fifth place. And so maybe the winners got $1,000 and the group that took fifth place may have had 250, something along those lines. But it was, for an elementary kid and a parent, they're like, “Whoa, this is awesome.”

Dr. Jennifer Nigh: Absolutely, yeah.

Mike Poore: And then, to top it all off, when they won, then they became our advisors to actually create our district's own food truck. And when I pitched this to the bank at Arvest to say, “Hey, this is what we're doing, and this is going to be the activity of how this whole thing will flow with the book,” the first word out of that bank president's mouth was, “Well, can we be the sponsor of the food truck?” And so guess what? We just got another investment coming into our district of a community saying, “We're in,” and then we're getting to do something cool for kids because they actually helped generate the idea of what the food truck would be.

Dr. Jennifer Nigh: That's amazing. And I can imagine, for all those kids that participated, but for those ones that went in front of adults as elementary—we're talking elementary here, right, Mike?

Mike Poore: Yes.

Dr. Jennifer Nigh: Yes, went in front of these adults and pitched an idea that came to fruition, and they won something out of that. What an impact that can have on the rest of their lives. Those are probably our future entrepreneurs, for sure.

Mike Poore: And guess what? As you do these kinds of things and you turn kids on and they know that there's this kind of culminating, they're going to dive deeper into the book. I mean, it just increases the passion about all the things that we want them to have knowledge about or awareness, or, really, again, go back to the word of passion or intensity about a certain topic. What parent doesn't want their kids to be a little bit money wise?

Dr. Jennifer Nigh: Absolutely.

Mike Poore: But at the same time, you want your kid to be excited about reading.

Dr. Jennifer Nigh: Well, and it's really interesting because financial literacy, I'm here in Ohio and I don't know the details as I'm talking about this. But I know that financial literacy, for the first time, maybe ever, is now a requirement for high school graduation. So my youngest, who's an incoming freshman, will have to have a financial literacy course in order to graduate. Now, we're talking high school there, so the power of that information and that knowledge, starting in the elementary, it obviously has its benefits. So it's exciting to hear that that's being, because those are life skills.

Mike Poore: My concept is that you embed stuff like financial literacy in all the things that you're doing in elementary and middle and high school, and you don't need a separate course, because if you're embedding it into the work that you already have, that's so much easier to, to do, because if you add a course and a graduation requirement, it makes it so that maybe that kid doesn't get to take something else. I just like the flexibility, but I want the intentionality of being able to teach the standards and doing it in a way that is meaningful to kids.

Dr. Jennifer Nigh: Absolutely. And drawing attention to that topic and—really, anything can be taught through literacy, right? Any of our content knowledge topics, etc. So to your point of doing that early, is absolutely spot on.

Kevin Carlson: After the break: More from Mike Poore. Stay with us.

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Dr. Jennifer Nigh: So the couple of things that really stood out to me, in case there's another district or leadership team that is listening to this and wants to say, “How can I do this in my school?”—one of the things is obviously there's cost associated with anything, but you just explained that by going out into the community, those costs can be taken care of, or at least a majority of them, even though there was also a commitment from the district that, “We believe in this, and we're doing this every year, so we're going to contribute to it also.”

So cost was not a significant barrier, it sounds like, for you all. There [was] support to handle that and get that book in every student's hand.

Mike Poore: Absolutely. And I actually believe that our community partners took great pride in being a part of this and really saw—when we found ways to stamp their logos and monikers in the way that we distributed the materials and we had bookmarks that could be used for their book that had the rotary four-way test so that every time you open that book, you're looking at the four-way test as a bookmark.

So there's just things that you can do to enhance that partnership. And I will give you one other thing that was kind of a technical part that I maybe should mention is, when you think about trying to create reading guides and you're trying to get guest readers and you're trying to do the Spanish version and you're trying to culminate events, you can say, “Whoa, okay, Mike, be real. You didn't do all that.” No, Mike did not do all that. But here's what we did do: We used—Little Rock is a district of little over 20,000 and so we had an aspiring leaders program and those folks, we'd bring them in and say, “Hey, this is a part of your projects to—"

Dr. Jennifer Nigh: Were those community members, those aspiring leaders?

Mike Poore: No, these were staff members that wanted to be principals and leaders, so this gave them a leadership opportunity. And then we would include our community partners in there, too, so that we always got their advice. The Clinton Center is an example. All six years were huge, in terms of supporting this and always there giving us technical advice and then letting us use the space for free when we would go down there. So that was their skin in the game.

We never had a challenge and it didn't feel like it was a top-down, Mike Poore saying, “We must do this.” Once it started, everybody became so passionate about it because this is one of those things that just gives you some juice. And I'm going to tell you about that right now too. I can't help myself on this: We need juice! Okay? We all need it, okay? We all want to have something that gives us that fire, that gets our belly going and makes our head explode and say, “Boy, this is awesome!” And this kind of stuff, it works so well, in terms of giving people a boost. And we always did this in the spring. We actually did it in the fall and the spring and it just would work fantastic. It was a win win win win win win win win win.

Dr. Jennifer Nigh: Lots of wins for sure, in all of these initiatives. Absolutely. Now, again, this is more of a logistical question, just for rolling something like this out: Did you do the One Book, One Student—did it take place over the course of a year? How much time from start to finish of the actual initiative was there each year?

Mike Poore: We always tried to start the book at right around spring break, because that gave them something to do over spring break. And then it also actually complimented state testing, because even though state testing was going to occur [on] the 1st of April, now you had some activities that let the kids get away from that stress of testing.

Dr. Jennifer Nigh: Or rejuvenate, because you're getting towards the end of the school year. You need that sometimes.

Mike Poore: Juice, baby, juice! Say it, Jennifer! (laughter)

Dr. Jennifer Nigh: (Laughter) That's fantastic. Okay, wonderful. Well, I know you had one other initiative too, in addition to the One District, One Book, but Storytime with Pastors—tell me just a little bit about that one also.

Mike Poore: It's probably going to freak people out to say you're bringing church people into your school and being a part of it, but you know, it never was a thing. And we had all sorts of different types and forms of religion that would come in to support us. And, when they first presented the idea to me, I said, “Well, okay, you know what? Let's just try it.” And then it became a thing, and it's continued even after I've left, which also makes you feel good to say when things continue beyond you, then you know it’s within your culture.

So we would bring in and we would just come into one elementary school and we would invite pastors from all over central Arkansas and the Little Rock region. And I'm telling you, they would show up. And they were showing up for a variety of reasons. One, obviously people that are pastors, priests, whatever you want to bring as a label, they want to see young people exceed. The second thing is that when they got there, they quickly found out that it was one of those things that gave them a boost because they don't get to interact very well. So we set up and would have a breakfast, it was nothing fancy, it was a lot of times Chick-fil-A and juice and some rolls and—

Dr. Jennifer Nigh: Bringing that juice in again!

Mike Poore: Bringing the juice, exactly. So they would get the chance to interact with each other for 30 to 45 minutes in a library setting. We would use the same mechanism that we had with Jane Mendel Reading Day, that we'd have books available for them to read if they didn't have them. We'd assign them to different grade levels so they knew what grade level they were going to go to and which classroom and then people would escort them down there. It also gave me a chance that every time that Storytime for Pastors occurred, I would get to be in front of 60 ministers to be able to give them a little overview of the school district.

Think about that as an opportunity, too, of the positive, of just being able to say, “Hey, I want you to know we're struggling right now, we're having to go through budget cuts and I'm having to tell you, I don't know how we're going to do it. It's just like in a house, when you have a loss of income, you've got to reduce things. Well, we're going to have to close schools.” That is a tough topic. But there's a lot of districts right now that are going through these things in urban environments and really, all over the country, there's choice, there's all sorts of things, less kids in some communities. So having those groups of people in there, getting that chance for me to do a 5-to-10 minute talk to them, but then turning them loose to go into classrooms and be with kids, and this is still something that's going on in Little Rock and again, just a huge win-win.

Dr. Jennifer Nigh: Yeah, definitely. These are all, like you said, win-win-wins because these three initiatives, are they a lift? Absolutely. But the reward is so much greater. And what you did is, or, we talk a lot about creating a culture of literacy in a school or even a district, but you created a culture of literacy in an entire city that was mutually beneficial for community members and teachers, leadership, and students. And the fact that that continues, the rewards of that will continue to be seen after years. And I just think to myself of students, they have their teachers and they have their principals and they have their superintendents and they have their families. But the power of connecting with adults in the community from different walks of life, different professions, what that can do for a child as they continue to grow up through that district and hopefully become a productive member of that city also. So really, bringing that all together through literacy, not to mention all the benefits of that—what a powerful mission that you are on, and it's so exciting to hear that others can pick up these ideas and run with them and make the same things happen in their community, whether large or small. So thank you so much for that.

Mike Poore: Well, and I want to tell you that even during the pandemic, we continued on, okay, we still did this. And so we still found ways to get them the book.

Dr. Jennifer Nigh: Thank goodness for Zoom. (laughter)

Mike Poore: We just had to do it differently. Yeah, we had to do it differently. But it still happened. And I'll bring up one other book that is one of my personal favorites that we read, and it was about The One and Only Ivan. And I bring that up with intentionality because, as a high school history teacher, I'm reading The One and Only Ivan and I was preparing because I wanted to make sure I could keep up with the kids and that's one of the other neat things about this, is that when you're a superintendent, now you go into those elementary schools to walk and talk and you're getting to talk to kids, say, “Hey, tell me about this, what did you think about Ivan and what did you think about when the animal died?” There's an animal that dies, I don't want to give away the story, but you know, all those things. You could talk about it, and it ties you into those kids in real conversations, and they're like, “Wow, you know something about me.” So I love that part of it. But I also, shoot, I'm on the airplane reading The One and Only Ivan and my wife looks over at me and she goes, “Why are you crying?” I go, “Yeah, Stella just died, Stella died. And she goes, “Oh my God, stop.” And then we're flying home and I finished reading the book and I'm crying again. She goes, “Why are you crying?” And I go, “Because it was such a good book. It was such a good book.” And you know what?

Dr. Jennifer Nigh: Kids seeing that, though? That is huge.

Mike Poore: It is! That's exactly the point. It’s exactly the point. You want to have kids feel, and whether it's feeling connection to others, whether it's feeling connection to their classmates and doing a project like a food truck, or whether it's feeling connection to a character that you get to hold on to and learn from, of the experiences of what goes on with Ivan and Stella and all the other characters in that book, those are powerful things that help kids become better for themselves.

Dr. Jennifer Nigh: Absolutely. And you're modeling that as an adult so we're not just always asking the children to do something, we're modeling that same behavior with a student. And that really rolls back to your initial comment at the beginning of our conversation, that literacy, really, there is absolutely a science in learning to read, but there is an art to it also that has long-term benefits throughout all of our lives. So that is a wonderful way to end our conversation.

Mike, thank you so much. Are there any parting words that you would like our listeners to hear as we close up our conversation?

Mike Poore: You know, all the things that I talked about today, there's access, and I know that there'll probably be some information that follows where people could contact me directly, or you can go on to the Little Rock website or the Bentonville website and we want to help you. And I know the Benchmark crew would want to jump in and support you too. So there's ways to follow up on this conversation. It doesn't just have to be listening to a 30-minute podcast. Go do something about this. Go make a difference and start to do some things that engage your community and create greater passion for your young readers.

Dr. Jennifer Nigh: Wonderful. Thank you so much, Mike, for sharing your time, your expertise, and most importantly, your passion. Thank you.

Kevin Carlson: Thank you, Superintendent Mike Poore. Thank you, Jen Nigh. And thank you for listening to Teachers Talk Shop.

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For Benchmark Education, I'm Kevin Carlson.