Jonathan Conyers: How to Thrive Against All Odds

27:28So with hindsight, how do you decide who to go with, who to believe? Well, in the book, I did believe Tyson. I did believe RJ, but people always think that your village members are always positive role models. Some of my village members was drug dealers. Some of my village members told me what not to do. Some of my village members gave me the blueprint of what my life would be like if I kept going down this pattern. And I made mistakes. I was a kid. A lot of me assembling my village was luck. You know, I'll be irresponsible to say it wasn't luck. And a lot of me developing my village members was going through bad situations and taking some of the lessons they had and trying to use those lessons to show what I didn't want for my life.

28:17Some of my village members was there for a short period of time just for survival. I knew they weren't good people. I knew they weren't doing the right things, but I knew I had to rely on them to survive in that moment of my life. And I prayed very hard that in those moments of survival, I didn't jeopardize my life forever. and I came very close guy I came very close to jeopardizing and I'm here not just because of my village members I'm here because of the grace of God I'm here because of luck and I'm tired of people in my community always having to be lucky which is another reason why I wrote this book I wrote this book one to show that I am not an exceptional person and I know I know before you say you may say Jonathan I read the book you're definitely an exceptional and here's what I will say to that.

29:04Here's what makes me quote unquote exceptional. I was able to listen. I had people in my life that said, hey, you need an education. I showed up when adults that were smarter than me asked me to show up. What is exceptional about that? That is something that every person innately has in them. I wasn't born with a special DNA. I wasn't born 6 '8 and can jump over a hoop. I wasn't born with God gift genetics I was born with grit and resilience I was put into spaces because of my zip codes because of the people and things that were going on in my community because my family was not in a position to give me the things I needed at that time and my necessities so I had no choice but to be resilient I can take you to any neighborhood in the Bronx and show you a thousand resilient kids this book was shown to give them the blueprint to say hey, you don't have to struggle.

29:59You don't have to think Tyson's your only option. Maybe listening to RJ sooner would have helped me not be in that situation with the law, not be on those corners selling drugs. So that is the message of the book. Like, how do I show you kids through my trials and tribulations that you can have a better life by just listening to just loving people and opening your heart to people who may not look like you, who doesn't understand our community. I know Deco didn't understand what it was like for a kid to go through a metal detector every day in sixth grade or to be a black boy in the South Bronx.

30:35I know Pam didn't understand what it was like for me to go through those things, but they understood things that I needed that will get me out of those situations. They understood what going to college was like. They understood what being successful in college was like. They have seen thousands of kids like me go through the system and come out. So I just had to rely on them. I just had to listen. And I don't want to make it seem like that's easy, too, because there's so many kids who are hurting. There's so many black and brown kids who are hurting who need to understand. That is the little things.

31:05It's not the big things. Mommy don't need a lawsuit. Nobody needs to win a million dollars. It's looking for people in your community. Every community has them. I don't care what's the crime rate. Every community have some group of powerful and superheroes, which are teachers, which are counselors, which are our community advocates that love people and that want to help and that have a wealth of knowledge that they want to give. We just have to tap into our kids and show them the walking proof. There's not a lot of people from the South Bronx that end up being Jonathan Kearns, and I understand that.

31:37But now I want to go back and show them that I'm no different than you. I grew up in these same areas. The only difference was I was willing to do whatever to I assembled my village and I was open into listening and following directions. And I think that's important. I also think it's important from the adult side. This book is also for the adults. It's also for people like you, Guy, to read it and say, an act of kindness, bringing remarkable people on this platform and creating healthy dialogue. You're becoming a part of people's village without you knowing it. There's going to be people who watch this and say, hey, maybe I want to read Jonathan's book.

32:12Maybe I love his journey. maybe his journey makes me want to be a better teacher, makes me want to be a better person, makes me want to give a homeless man a meal. I watched an episode with David Ambrose. He called me and he was like, Jonathan, I'm a part of your village now. And we've talked about these things. I've never met David in person, but now he's a part of my village. It's the conversation. And that happened through the book world. It's the conversations. It's just picking up the phone and an act of kindness where you could become a part of somebody village. And adults need to understand that even more than kids, adults really should be reading this book.

32:46People that want to do good and to understand that just a smile on your face, just the, are you okay? Can get somebody from going off that ledge and being the best version they need to be that day. Wow. Jesus. So Jonathan, let's suppose that there are kids listening to this and You had an extreme case. Both your parents were crack addicts. But what's your advice to kids when they're in that kind of setting and how do they break out of the cycle? it's hard guy it's hard i don't want to sit here and be irresponsible and make it seem like i have the recipe for how to survive drug addict parents i don't but one of the things that really helped me was my ability to dream my ability to dream in the dark my ability to believe that there was something out there that i knew i couldn't touch that i couldn't grasp but just to know that there was better.

33:44My ability to be open. One of the most difficult things about this book was I wanted to forgive my parents. I wanted to learn more about them. And by learning more about them, I learned how remarkable they were. And I think a lot of kids who have parents that own drugs fall into the trap of the stereotype, fall into the trap that their parents are beneath them, that their parents are less than, that their parents are not worthy of love and respect. And I was one of those kids before. But to learn that my mom sang that the Apollo, to learn that my mother was a junior in nursing school when she got addicted to drugs was so good to feel.

34:28To learn that my dad almost won the Golden Glove Boxing Champion in New York City. To learn that my dad graduated from high school or the 4.0. You know, lightning doesn't strike multiple times. If you look at me and my siblings, all of us are doing well in life. My parents raised five kids, both was drug addicts, and yet all five of their kids have degrees. All five of their kids are homeowners. All five of their kids are out there changing the world. I have multiple brothers in education. I have two of us is in medicine. Like there were beautiful gifts about my parents, you know, and they passed us on work ethics and mindsets.

35:10You know, my mother always tell me, what would I have been if I didn't get addicted to drugs? Look at my kids. You guys are the recipe of what my potential can be. And although I am thankful and I'm happy that my kids turned out okay, it hurts her to see that maybe she could have been a CEO, that maybe she could have been executive if she didn't get trapped into a cycle that I don't want to come here and sound like an expert that was forced into her communities. That was a part of a bigger plan that I believe within the Black community. So what I would tell those kids is that, one, you have to find your village because you're born into a place where the people who are supposed to provide for you, the people who are supposed to protect you, just cannot.

35:59And no matter how much they try, even if your parents love you, that drug will consume them and it will make their reality a forced reality. And they won't be able to give you the things you need that every parent should be able to give their child. And I'm not talking about fancy vacation. I'm just talking about the basics, shelter, food, conversation, warmth, love. It don't take a lot to give those things, even at the lowest level. And my parents, they were struggling to give some of those things because of what they were going through. So I had to rely on other people, whether it was my siblings, whether it was village members.

36:35And I had to find ways to release that frustration and anger. And I didn't always do it right. You will see throughout the book, a lot of times I made mistakes, but I never gave up hope. I never stopped dreaming. And I believed and I created deadlines. I created goals to force myself to believe that I can get out of what I was going to, even with deep down inside, I didn't see a way out. I felt trapped. So that's what I would tell all these kids is to one, don't try to understand your parents or forgive them for them. Do it for you. You can't move on. You can't heal. You can't see clearly unless you decide to forgive them and understand them for you.

37:14Two, survivors will survive. How do you use education? How do you use teachers? How do you use positive role models? How do you use people that are destroying your community as village members to learn what I should be doing and what I should not be doing? And the book is a blueprint for all of that. And more importantly, it's not really on the kids. it's on the superheroes, which are the teachers, which are the people in the community, which is people who have platforms like yours, which is people who have platforms like me to pick up my book and read it and know what kids are really dealing with.

37:55Deco and a lot of people who read my book had no idea of all those things. There's things that I talk about in the book that my mom is going to find out for the first time that she couldn't believe that she missed because she was so deep into her addiction that she wasn't paying attention to the things her child was doing. And I never had to explain to them that I was going through a lot. They just showed up and was guideposts for me every time I needed them to. And that was more than enough to overcome what I was going through. So it's really not less about what the kids will do because the kids are going to be kids.

38:27They're going to make mistakes. They're going to lash out. It won't be a perfect story. It will be a drop. It will be a climax. It will be all over the place. It's going to be a NASCAR race. And it's up to the adults. It's up to the village members to put it into these kids' heads that they're special. To understand that when they lash out or they don't have a pencil for class today, that that may be because they didn't even eat dinner last night. How could they focus on a pencil? To pick up on the social cues. To be willing to give a little bit of yourself to make the world a better place. And I think that's what the true responsibility come from.

39:06Not what kids should do, what adults should do to protect these kids. And I'm very fortunate that I had plenty of adults who was willing to protect me and fight for me. Up next on Remarkable People. I think there's a stigma behind it's a stereotype where we're giving someone something. People still have to earn their spot at these universities. They still have to qualify to even be considered for these universities. What it does is it stops the machine and these individuals from blocking us out, even though we deserve to be there.

39:39Become a little more remarkable with each episode of Remarkable People. It's found on Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. You're listening to Remarkable People with Guy Kawasaki. can i ask you what you may consider to be a tasteless question you can ask me anything yeah you don't have to answer but with hindsight and you mentioned david ambrose what do you think would have happened if you went into foster care and the government broke up your family so that's a great question me personally i don't know i wasn't in the foster care system I was a foster care child briefly because my brother took me from my parents, which I talk about in the book.

40:27But I didn't go through the foster care system. So I don't know what it's like. I've heard stories. I know that it needs tons of work. I know that our nation has a lot to do with foster care rights and making that situation better for kids in that situation. But I don't have no lived experience of it. So I don't know. I don't know what could happen to me. I don't know what trauma could have came in my life from that experience. But what I will say, guessing based on the person I am, I probably would have found the best person in the foster care system where I was located. And then I probably would have found the worst person, made them a part of my village and used them to try to better my life.

41:10And I say that and I make that crazy guess because, again, I'm resilient. and people that are resilient are the strongest and most gracious people in the world. And my resilience would have made me survive. I think I could survive anything. That doesn't mean I want to, you know, I'm tired of surviving. I'm waiting for the point in my life when I could just live, when I could just give back, when I could just thrive, but I am a survivor. So I think I would have survived. I would have learned as much about it as I can, like David Ambrose is doing. And I would have went back and stuck it to them and tried to change the system.

41:50Like I'm trying to change many systems that have personally affected my life. Like what? The juvenile system, drug addiction, and how that affects people, the narrative of how that affects Black communities, the narrative that all crackheads beg on the street and don't love their kids and can't raise families. That narrative is changing due to the opioid crisis, But we know, I hope people know why it looks like that's changing because of the type of people is affected now. So I am trying to bring speech and debate to numerous communities. There's a reason why I'm trying to do that. I think having a voice, I think creating safe space for kids.

42:32I think kids being able to go into these rooms and have conversations about things that are affecting them, that are hurting their lives, being able to freely express yourself when you're going through a lot is important. So there are numerous things I'm trying to do to bring awareness to a lot of issues that's going on in the world and to make sure children and adults have platforms and a voice to speak up on things that are hurting them. So you mentioned this very briefly a few minutes ago, but there's this line of reasoning, again, primarily by rich white men, that affirmative action should go away.

43:12And these entitlements and like that kid you encountered in that first debate, people in the projects, they're just taking the free money and they're living great lives and we should stop these social programs. And so all things considered, where are you on affirmative action and those kind of programs post this Supreme Court decision? Well, we want to get rid of affirmative action. I think we also should get rid of legacy, right? People with legacy shouldn't be admitted also. So we want to tear down the system. Let's tear it down and make sure nobody gets any privileges. And also, too, affirmative action.

43:50Yeah, maybe I was a product of it. Maybe I got into it. Matter of fact, no, let me take that back. I was a product of it. You know, maybe I did get into college because of affirmative action, but I had to earn my spot there. And you can check the records. I'm pretty sure I did better than 90 percent of the kids at Stony Brook University. None of those grades was handed to me. I not only did it with one of the hardest majors. I did it as a father. I did it work in two jobs continuously throughout four years. And I finished on four years with a major and a minor. And I just didn't finish. I excelled.

44:27So affirmative action, it's not giving anybody anything. It's just stopping these individuals from being prejudiced and blocking the door and being gatesmen from letting us into these universities. And even with affirmative action, how many percentage of Black and brown people are really at these universities. The margin is still so wide. We still have a lot of diversity issues in a lot of these Ivy League schools and a lot of these institutions. And it doesn't benefit the counterpart. You want people from all different walks of life to communicate with each other, to talk to each other, to learn from each other.

45:07And anybody who think that I had any advantage in life.

45:17People in the projects are living luxurious lives. One, I am willing to give my email. I will give you guys a tour of Webster projects any day. And you tell me what type of advantage I had in life. People that are parents now, it's hard and I'm an adult with much more resources. I don't even know how I did it at 17. I think back and like, how did I even survive that? So affirmative action, I think is important. And I think there's a stigma behind it's a stereotype or we're giving someone something. People still have to earn their spot at these universities. They still have to qualify to even be considered for these universities.

45:57What it does is it stops the machine and these individuals from blocking us out, even though we deserve to be there. And it's right in our wrongs. We have redlining. We have so many things that have set Black people so many years behind. And the people who have caused these issues and who have pushed this setback should be responsible for trying to help us at least lowering the players' field. And I hope everybody in SCOTUS picks up my book. I think they should see the type of kids that benefited from them, from affirmative action, and what these individuals are doing in society once they're given a platform, once they're given the right tools to lower the playing field.

46:38And I think it sucks. It's a difficult time in our nation right now with so many things being stripped apart from women's rights, from all these issues with voting issues, from segregation, from books being banned. It's like we're moving backwards so much and it's discouraging, but it's going to take people like me. It's going to take people like you, and it's going to take an effort to continue to share these stories. Storytelling is what's going to save this. I really believe that. I think storytelling and sharing ideas and sharing real life experiences of why these programs and why these issues matter is what's going to change the narrative.

47:17We have to take back the story. We have to show that affirmative action is not a handout and the people that are benefiting from it are doing amazing things and deserve a spot at the seat. And it's crazy that, you know, there's people on the Supreme Court that benefited from it. And there's Supreme Court justice. I would think they would know that it works, but okay. I'm not an expert in these things, but it seems like they should be more aware that it works. Listen, at the very least, you should send a copy to Clarence Thomas. Oh, I would love to. I would love to sit down with him too i'll talk to anybody and respectfully everybody deserves dialogue everybody deserves a conversation and respectful healthy dialogue i don't know you think clarence will read it i think he should yeah i don't know if i want clarence a part of my village though but god bless god bless him honestly i'm praying for him i promise you that when your episode is ready we will send a link to stacy abrams i had stacy abrams on a few weeks ago and she is a remarkable person oh my god she is the remarkable person and i am very aware that you had the wonderful miss abrams on i was actually sad a little bit because i was like why didn't guy interview her after me i can't follow up stacy abrams uh um so i was a little sad i was mad at you just a little bit i was like i don't know if i'm gonna let guy be a part of my village after doing that to me i set the record straight stacy said you're having jonathan on shit i gotta get on before him because there's no way i could keep up with him so i'm doing her a favor by putting her on before you but that that is amazing if there's any way i can send stacy abrams a copy of this book which i wholeheartedly believe that she will read this book and know that what she is doing and her impact aligns with what my book is so okay we can if we can get stacy a link and i can get stacy a book that is more than enough and i appreciate you for you jonathan with total certainty madison and i can get her a copy of your book and we know this because we send her socks for her as we sent you so we have her address to send socks we can certainly send your book we will take care of that okay you're the best we should have it autographed by you and then you send it or something okay she gives the green light please i wouldn't hesitate i'll walk to georgia to give it to her just let me know it may take me some time i'll get it to her we're coming to the end here i i want to embrace a very important subject which is how do you show gratitude to your village and in particular, this example where you wanted to get in touch with Mr.

50:16Marshall and he had died. How do you show gratitude? It's a great question. If you talk to most of the people in my village, they would show you that I show too much gratitude. When Mr. Marshall passed away, when I was in ninth grade, it was one of the toughest things for me. And I vowed to myself that in my blessings, I would never make it about me. And I always will remind the people who have helped me, the people who stood side by side with me during some of my toughest times will know how much I love and appreciate them. My story went viral for the first time. And a lot of people started to reach out to me.

50:58My Instagram blew up. I created a huge following after the Humans in New York story came out. and the Humans of New York story was supposed to be about me. And I switched it and I made it about Deco. And the reason why I did that was because the Brooklyn debate league was going through some tough times. I could have selfishly just told my story. And after you read the whole book, you know that the Human of New York story is barely touching an iceberg, right? There's so much more in depth that nobody know and a lot of secrets that I told in the book. But I decided to take that moment that I knew would be viral, that I knew Brandon Staten, the amazing friend of mine, had this huge audience and platform.

51:38And I made it to highlight teachers and their impact. And because of that, Dico's nonprofit, Dico says it's our nonprofit. I'm the co-founder, but it's really his. But Dico's nonprofit received$1.3 million off my story. That's how I show gratitude. Pam, I speak at Stony Brook University all the time. I was just their commencement speaker. I do mentorship. I talk to students. I provide internships for the students at Stony Brook University through the EOP program, which stands for the Educational Opportunity Program. That's how I show gratitude. Malcolm, who was a character in the book, I've supported his career tremendously and gave him opportunities for him to express his art and acting career.

52:17That's how I show gratitude. People in my village, the majority of them was in my audio book, and I gave them a five star treatment. That's how I show gratitude. I'm constantly reminding them how much I love them, how much I respect them and what they do. And I think I'm overbearing. I could see they like Jonathan Stobb. We know you love us. That's the way I show gratitude. In my blessings, I always try to share it with them. I always try to give them opportunity. I try to give them knowledge now of things that they gave me when I needed to, as far as the book world, as far as the podcast world.

52:46How do you do this? I have so many mentors and villagers who have their own ambitions that I never knew about because they were so busy trying to save me as a kid. So now as an adult, I can be their friends. I can learn about their story. I connect them to friends. And I support a lot of their businesses. I invest in a lot of their businesses. So that's how I show my village members love and support. And I also show them love and support the number one way is by showing that their effort was not wasted. By waking up every day and being a good person. By showing them that the energy they put into me, the investment that they put into me was worthwhile.

53:23And now I'm doing that for hundreds of students. And that's the real essence of it. It's not the investment. It's not the money. It's not even the connections so they could chase their dream. It's the proof that all the work I put into you, Jonathan, was worthwhile because you are out there trying to change the world and you are out there paying it back forward to so many kids at risk who need your stories and who need your guidance. And I think that's the real true testimony. So even though I never got to tell Mr. Marshall, I never got to tell Dr. Hodge, I love them and I appreciate them and all the yelling I did at them.

54:01It took a little while, but I understand now why they did the things they did. I hope they're looking down at me and saying, boy, all those fights with that young, hardheaded kid was worth it. And I pray that I'm living a good life and a righteous life for them. wow that's a great way to end this podcast but i have one or two more questions hey guy you can ask me four more come on we're having a good time you don't gotta end it don't worry so how do you measure your personal success how do you keep score now i keep score by how many times people tell me thank you i keep score by how many times people tell me john this helped me John, thank you for showing up.

54:45John, thank you for picking up the phone. My success is in the little things, you know. Yeah, in college at first, and I'm like, I want to be a doctor. I want to work in medicine. It was all about money. It was all about living a lifestyle. It was all about sticking it to them. It was all about showing them that this kid who had nearly a 1 % chance of graduating college, based on all the trials and tribulations I've been through, was going to prove them wrong and make a boatload of money and have a gigantic house and do all of that. Unfortunately, I haven't accomplished none of that, but it's okay.

55:14But it's by the thank yous. It's by doing right. It's by paying it forward. It's by being a great coach at the Brooklyn Debate League. It's by being a great clinician. It's by holding patience and holding parents' hand during some of their most difficult time. It's about showing up and not cheating myself, knowing that I'm doing right by everybody who comes across me and know that I'm giving back and making a difference. That's the true definition of success for me. making the world a better place. And, you know, I'm in the early stages of it. I'm still 28. I don't know what these conversations have for me yet.

55:49I don't know what all the things I pour into my community has for me yet, but I pray, I truly pray that years from now I could look back and I could read one of my students' memoirs. I could have a student come back and give a speech for me at the nonprofit and say, coach, that conversation, that meal you bought for me, showing up to the courtroom when I was in a bad situation. Let me stay at your house for a couple of days when we got evicted. I hope all of those things that I do makes them a better person, makes them have the life they dream of and make them pay it forward to the next generation.

56:26So that's how I measure my success. And right now I'm feeling very successful at all the kids and all the amazing people I get to help. You can say no, but I hope you will consider me as part of your village now? Guy, you're definitely a part of my village. And yes, I appreciate you for giving me the platform. I appreciate you for even creating a platform and a positive platform. I love a lot of crazy podcasts. Some of them are messy, but I love a lot of good ones too, where I can learn something from it, where the dialogue is powerful, where the conversation means something and your podcast is definitely doing it.

57:02And I I hope my podcast can get to where yours is at one day. So thank you. And thank you for even thinking about me. I don't think I'll ever be able to surf like you, but maybe I could do podcasts like you. Okay. I have one last request. Do you know who Garrett McNamara is? No, I do not. He had a series called 100 Foot Wave. He surfs 100 foot waves in Nazarene, in Portugal. He's maybe the greatest big wave surfer. and i asked him in his episode if he would someday tow me out at nazare and let me catch a wave at nazare thank you god that my wife has not yet listened to that episode but anyway so you might wonder what the hell does this have to do with me guys so here comes the relevance which is someday when i come to new york i want you to give me a tour of the projects i want to see first hand Done.

58:03And you'll be safe too. Don't worry. Nothing's going to happen. I gave very, very wealthy friends tours before family members. I'll give you a tour. Introduce you to people in the community. We could walk. And it's cool. And another thing is too, they call it the Joker stairs now. So remember the stairs where the Joker is dancing down those long stairs? I grew up right across the street from those stairs so we could my project building is literally across the street from those stairs so it's always funny us in the Bronx we get mad like you know how dangerous those stairs used to be I didn't want to dance around there but yeah we could walk up the Joker stairs we could talk we could have a great time yeah we had a great time my grandmother still lives there doesn't matter how well I do in life she will never leave so we could visit grandma too you can just tell all your friends I'm Jackie Chan they know they know you guy cominsky you're famous enough on your own right

59:09now we are cutting to a recording of a phone conversation that i had with dico And I expected this to be a five, ten minute conversation about Jonathan, but we got deeper and deeper. So I hope you enjoy what I intended to become a gray bar actually became an interview in and of itself. Here's Deco.

59:41I interviewed Jonathan for my podcast, which is called Remarkable People. It struck me that truly you are a remarkable person. So I just wanted to have a conversation with you too. Well, that's very kind of you. Thank you. It's obvious. And I happen to believe that as a profession, teachers are pretty much always remarkable. I have had great teachers in my life. So I want to express appreciation for you and all teachers really to start off. Thanks, Guy. Your story is so interesting. And I obviously read it from Jonathan's side, but maybe you can tell me your side of how this kid is showing up in your debate club as a freshman.

1:00:32And most of the people in the room are sophomores, juniors and seniors. So can you just relay that story to us? I certainly can. Would you like me to give a little like the backstory of how I ended up in that room? Oh yeah, absolutely. Jonathan. Okay. So all four of my grandparents were immigrants to this country and my parents both went to the local high school. And then my dad became a construction worker because my grandfather, his father told him, you have to work with your hands. That's reliable work. And my dad ended up being on the construction team that built my high school. And I went to Stuyvesant High School, which is one of the specialized high schools in New York City.

1:01:12you have the test to get into. And when I was there, it was a transformative experience. It's a phenomenal school and really great teachers and kids. But the really transformational part for me was being a member of the speech and debate team. And that became even more important after September 11th, because my high school was located a couple blocks away from the Twin Towers. And I was 16 at the time, and I was there. And we saw the buildings on fire. I remember friends standing at the window and pointing and telling me that they could see people jump. I don't remember if I looked. I do remember running for my life.

1:01:48I remember thinking I was going to die. And I remember in the months afterwards. suffering from what I now recognize as symptoms of PTSD. And the only place that I really had to process what happened and how I felt about it was speech and debate. And at those tournaments where I was showing up and talking about current events and real world topics and talking to my peers and also talking to adults who were judging those tournaments, it was my space to process this traumatic thing that had happened to me and to talk about why it mattered. and to start to make meaning out of it. Two years later, I went to college.

1:02:29I was the first in my family to go to a four-year college. And much to my surprise, I got accepted to Yale University where I studied philosophy. And by the, you know, had great, four great years there, mostly learning how to take care of myself and recover from PTSD through the help of some very compassionate and wonderful teachers and friends that took care of me. And by the time I was about to graduate, I wasn't sure what to do next. And when I looked at all the things in my life that I'd enjoyed, the common denominator was being around kids. I'd been tutoring every summer and during the school year, and I love teaching other people.

1:03:05I was a freshman counselor. I was working with younger students, and so I joined Teach for America. My placement school was Frederick Douglass Academy, and that's where I met Jonathan. From the first year at FDA, the principal told me that every teacher had to run a club. and he asked me what sports I had played and I told him rugby and he said great you're going to be our lacrosse coach and I was like sir I don't know how to play lacrosse he's like you know whatever it's it's a violence it's the same thing just with sticks you just hit each other and I was like Dr. Hodge look let me start your debate team and and I did and we were we were a motley crew for a while that we didn't even have I didn't have a classroom we were meeting in the culinary arts room there was no budget we were like selling chocolate bars and Gatorades I I was lugging in from Brooklyn to Harlem on the subway every day in some roly suitcases.

1:03:53But I remember by the time I met Jonathan, I think I was a third-year teacher there, and we had a team at that point. We had a captain of the team, and we had been to Yale and Harvard and a lot of local tournaments, but also some national circuit tournaments. And Dr. Hodge, because he saw that it was a successful program, gave me the chance to grow it by building classes into my schedule that were just for debate. So in addition to teaching Latin, which is what I primarily taught at the school, I got a couple of debate electives. And most of the kids who signed up for my debate electives were seniors because seniors have the elective blocks in their schedule.

1:04:34And that made sense. Most of them were seniors. Some of them were on the team. Some of them weren't. Okay. But one day this freshman shows up at my door and he goes, it's my lunch period. Can I just sit in on your class? And I remember being a little stunned because this is a high school, right? Kids don't audit classes during high school, during their lunch periods. I was like, what are you talking about? But sure, you could definitely sit in on my class. Here's a chair, you know, have a seat. And I wasn't sure what to expect. Maybe he was just going to sit there and be quiet. It wasn't like he was taken for a grade or anything.

1:05:10But immediately, this kid started speaking up and blowing everybody away. And he was holding his own with these seniors. And it was not an easy class. They were reading Immanuel Kant, right? We're learning about deontology and consequentialism and John Rawls and the hell of ignorance. And I have them reading Professor Michael Sandel over at Harvard, teaches a course on ethics, and he wrote a book called Justice, What's the Right Thing to Do? So I have them reading Michael Sandel's book. We're listening to the lecture series and watching it in class. It's a very rigorous class where this is, that is not like just a passive thing.

1:05:46You could sit through it, but Jonathan, he's doing all the readings. He's coming to every class. He's writing the papers. He's participating all the time. And I say to him, you got to join the debate team, man. You are so good at this. So he joins and again, he blows everybody away. He comes to all the tournaments. He comes to all the practices. He's like a really, really smart kid. He's a kid that's just always got away with words, you know, and you can hear it now when you talk to him. I'm sure you heard it yesterday, but he's always been that way since I knew him when he was 13 year old kid.

1:06:20He's just got away with words. And so when he went to tournaments, he did really well. And you can imagine my surprise at the end of the year when I gave the kids a chance to stand up and say what this class meant to them and what they're taking away from it because i like ending the year in like a full circle kind of reflection way you can imagine my surprise where john stood up and was like i joined the debate team to keep myself off the streets and everybody we all looked at each other the kids me were like what is he talking about and he kept talking as you know i was in juvie last year and i was like what like we had no idea that this was a kid who had struggled in the way that he had struggled because he was just the nicest, most respectful, smartest, hardest working kid in that room.

1:07:08And I remember looking around when he's telling us the story of what happened to him and how he was in juvie and how he joined debate to keep himself off the streets. Every kid in that room, like their jaw was like on the ground. Everyone was like, whoa, what? You would never guess. Like you honestly would just never guess. And after he told us that. And I learned a little bit about his backstory. And I still didn't know the whole backstory because when I read his book a couple of weeks ago, I learned stuff and I was like, Jesus, John, I didn't know that happened to you. It's incredible how resilient he is and what he's been through.

1:07:45But when I learned a little bit about his story, it made me even more certain that this kid belonged on the team. And it's not like our traumas were the same because they're not, But I remembered when I was 16 and trying to process terrible things that had happened in my life, speech and debate gave me the platform to do it and how important it is for kids to have a place to use their voice to talk about what matters to them. And particularly in school where often what they're told is to sit down and shut up and they're not told to stand up and speak up about what matters to them. Like it was important that we have this platform.

1:08:24So I was thrilled that John was on the team. And it so happened that the following year, his second year on the team, when we were going to Harvard and he had earned a spot there because he was just such a phenomenal debater, the topic was about juvenile detention and whether juveniles in the system should be treated as adults or not. I remember pulling him aside before the tournament started and I said, John, there's going to be 400 debaters from around the country here. And they're going to be the top debaters from the nation. But let me tell you, I guarantee you, you are going to be the only one who has ever experienced the juvenile detention system out of all 400 of them.

1:09:15So when you go into those spaces, I want you to remember that what you have to say really matters because you get this in a way that nobody else does. It's really special for me and for him to have that particular opportunity at that tournament to speak up about this thing that had been so traumatic for him as a kid. And then the irony is that when he lost that last round, the judge says it was because he used too much of his experience in his debate. Yeah, and that's something that unfortunately I have seen over and over and over again with many of my students in speech and debate. I think it's because people that are judging this event sometimes lose sight of the point.

1:10:07that there's a lot of jargon in debate there's a lot of technical stuff and words that you use and strategies that you use and it's a very competitive sport but for educators like me and most of my coaches like my colleagues would agree at the end of the day it's it's not about the jargon or the technical pieces or the language that you use the strategies because the kids aren't going to use that after debate right no one's going to be talking about critiques and turns and spikes. That's all just jargon. What they're going to use after debate, we hope, every educator hopes, is their voice. They're going to understand that what they have to say matters and they can say it in any space, across lines of difference, to rooms of people that don't look like they do, that didn't grow up the way they did or where they did.

1:10:56And that gets lost sometimes at tournaments because people get caught up in the competition and in what they think the conventional debate is supposed to look like. And I understand there's value to conventional debate, but at the end of the day, the reason I do it is so that kids understand that their voices matter. I did not expect the interview to go like this. Oh my God, I think I'm going to go interview more debate coaches. My God, you're so articulate. Thanks. I mean, I'm a debate coach, so I hope I know how to speak well, but you know, I'm working on it. If you're working process, oh my God, I hate to see someone who's finished.

1:11:35You should listen to some of my kids. I interview at least 50 or 60 very remarkable people a year. And this is like Jane Goodall, Margaret Atwood, Stacey Abrams. I have pattern recognition. I can recognize remarkable people. And you and Jonathan are both so remarkable. And from the outside looking in, what's the lesson of Jonathan? What can people hear about his story and say, huh, this is what I learned. This is how I can apply this to life. There's a lot to learn from Jonathan's story. I think people that have been through similar circumstances can take away that their circumstances don't define them.

1:12:23and even though all of society might be telling you that this is your destiny and this is your fate and this is where you belong and this is what's going to happen to you, it doesn't have to happen that way. It's really up to you and the choices that you make and for those of us that were lucky enough to not have to go through the circumstances that John went through, I think the takeaway is to remember and to recognize the resilience of people who are struggling with serious traumas. I'm a white person and I'm never going to understand what it is to be a person of color and especially a black person in this country.

1:13:01But when I talk to somebody like John and I learn about his struggles that his family's face and that his friends have faced, whether we're talking about drug abuse, whether talking about mass incarceration, like what we're talking about, the school to prison pipeline and being in schools like a lot of his friends didn't learn how to read in middle school because such a failing public school. It It just makes me really check my privilege and think about we have a lot of work to do to change the systemic oppression that is working to keep our fellow friends and neighbors and community members down.

1:13:36And that's, I guess, why I stayed teaching that there's so much at stake here. We're talking about people's lives. And to me, and I guess probably John would say the same thing, the key is education. And I know that's what changed my life. And it was the first in my family to go to college. The trajectory of my life is different than my parents or than my grandparents. And heaven knows the people that came before. And I imagine John would say the same thing. So when we talk about education in this country, we have to remember, just like when we're talking about speech and debate. It's not all about just jargon and strategies and concepts and things.

1:14:16Yeah, so all those things matter. Sure. What we're talking about has very high stakes. And sometimes I feel like that sense of urgency gets lost. And the human impact of this gets lost when we talk about education and kids suffer from that. Kids get lost in the shuffle. But we have to do better because there's a lot of Jonathans out there. I've met a lot of Jonathans in my 15 years in the classroom, and they deserve better. And how do you react when you hear people, primarily white, male, privileged, who say we should go to a skills-based perspective and the college degree per se is not necessary or sufficient?

1:15:02You can interpret that as, yes, it's a better way of looking at the whole person, or you can say it's only because you're white and rich you can say you don't need college if you're black and poor you do need college just to break the barrier there are so many hot button social issues right now that when you look at through this lens your view might change so that that's one of them the extent to which college is is not a nice to have but a need to have right now Another is, speaking of college, look at what happened just last week with the Supreme Court's decision about affirmative action. What about meritocracies?

1:15:41And like I said before, I went to Stuyvesant. And, you know, my brother went to Stuyvesant. My other brother went to Bronx Science. My siblings are products of the New York City public school system and the specialized public school system. But I also recognize that my parents could afford to put me in a test prep program where I was able to study for that test. I got help. Not all kids have that advantage. And it's a problem right now that out of the 1.1 million kids in the New York City school system, so many of them are stuck in schools like Jonathan's Middle School where kids literally were not learning how to read.

1:16:19So when we talk about the meritocracy and what's fair and what should we have SATs and should we just look at test scores and should we figure out who gets the spots at the best high schools or the best colleges? It's not as simple as that. I'm not saying that we throw the baby out with the bathwater and there's no tests and no scores and whatever. I'm saying that, number one, there needs to be a balance and that we need to be looking at the whole kid and their whole story and what challenges they're facing and that they've overcome. and that they're working on. And then number two, that when we move forward as a society, we need to remember that it's in everyone's best interest for everyone to have the best job possible.

1:17:04So maybe instead of focusing on who's in the top schools, right, maybe we focus on like, well, what's happening at the other schools? Like, instead of lifting the ceiling, How about we lift the floor? How do we ensure that every kid, regardless of what zip code they were born into or what school they were zoned for or how much money is in their parents' bank account, has a decent shot of getting the skills that they need to do better than their parents did and to live their lives in a way that everybody would find acceptable? And it's complicated right now. We're not doing a very good job as a society in navigating those questions, I think.

1:17:43When you hear a CEO say, we're dropping the college requirement as we recruit, do you say, hallelujah, that levels the playing field? Or you say you are inadvertently unintended consequence, you are hurting minority students? I can see it both ways, but I don't think college is the be all end all necessarily. because I know lots of people without college degrees who are very successful and lots of people with college degrees who are not. I think what it comes down to is the quality of education that people are getting, especially in the foundational K through 12 years. And if they want to pursue vocational school afterwards or graduate school afterwards or college after or whatever, professional school.

1:18:34They have options. And I know lots of people that skipped college and took a coding bootcamp and are now making twice as much money as I am and good for them. But had they not gotten the foundations in K through 12, they don't have options. When John talks about his life and his middle school, when he moved here from Virginia, he couldn't believe that in the middle school in the Bronx where he was, nobody knew how to read. And these are things that we take for granted, that literacy, that's a right that people enjoy, and it's not right now. I think that's the wrong question to be focusing on of whether colleges requiring SAT scores or CEOs are requiring college degrees.

1:19:19And I think we have to be looking way earlier down the pipeline of somebody's life of what was your educational experience from K through 12? Were you in a place where you were safe enough to focus on your school and prioritize and valued enough given the resources you needed to succeed? John probably told you the reason that he came into my debate class at FDA during his lunch period was not because he was curious about philosophy. It's because he wasn't safe in the cafeteria because there were rival gang members there that could have hurt him. Right. Kids can't focus on learning if they're worried about being safe.

1:19:58This is just Maslow's hierarchy of needs. Right. The bottom line, fundamental. And a lot of our kids right now, for lots of reasons, whether we're talking about not having enough food and like poverty or we're talking about gun violence or we're talking about whatever, bullying, like socioemotional reasons. There's lots of reasons why kids are not safe in the K through 12 system. And so they're not being able to self-actualize while they're there. And then that's, I think, where we need to be putting our focus. And I'm a little biased because I'm a K through 12 teacher, but that's what I think.

1:20:31My head is exploding a little bit. I've done this only about four or five times in three years where someone plays a big role in my main interviewee. So I add a little gray bar, sidebar with the person or the wife or the husband. But you could be center stage here. It really doesn't have much to do with Jonathan, but I am so curious. so when you underwent your gender change you got forced out of fda oh that was an interesting time yeah undergoing a change is let's put that in air quotes because just to be clear you can probably tell from the sound of my voice like i'm not on hormones and i never had surgery and i don't intend to but what did happen when probably my third or fourth year at fda i can't remember exactly when no, it was my second year, I remember, is I realized that I was not expressing my gender in a way that felt true to myself.

1:21:36So I, little by little over the course, my first year there, actually, just for context, it was very difficult for me to figure out what to wear, because you don't really think about it, or many people don't think about it, but teaching is a very gendered profession. Almost all of the men wear shirts and ties, and almost all the women wear dresses or blouses with like low flat flats or heels or that kind of thing. And I remember my colleagues at Teach for America Institute, as we were getting ready to become teachers the summer before we started, they asked us, what are we most nervous about? And a lot of my colleagues said things you would expect.

1:22:13How do I manage a classroom? And I don't know how to plan lessons and what have you. I remember I wrote down, I don't know what shoes I'm going to wear. And I didn't, I wasn't trying to be petty, but I was like, genuinely, I don't know how to be professional in a way that is so gendered. So my first year I was pretty androgynous and the kids picked up on it because kids are very perceptive and it made them uncomfortable. And it made them uncomfortable because they could sense that I was uncomfortable. And kids, they got like little antenna, like They'll tune in into whether the adult in front of them feels safe and secure.

1:22:52Because if that adult doesn't feel safe and secure, then how's that adult going to keep the kids safe and secure? So they were right to tune into that. And some of them would tease me about it and talk to me about it and what have you. And I didn't like how it made me feel. So my second year, I came back and I was like, well, I'm going to give the people what they want, I guess. So I went and I bought some heels and some makeup and some dresses. And I dressed the part. I dressed, I had my hair up in a bun and I put on makeup and heels and I showed up and a lot of people were like, wow, nice. You look great, Mystico.

1:23:23Like I love the new style. But it felt so cringy to me because it was like I was wearing a false skin. I don't know if you ever seen the Rudolph the Red Nose Reindeer cartoon, but there's like a scene where like his parents are trying to put charcoal over his red nose to hide it. And they're saying, oh, you look great. And he's like, it's just uncomfortable. And that's exactly how that felt to me because I was like, everyone's telling me I look great, but this is just so uncomfortable. So over the course of that year, pretty much one article of clothing at a time, I made a 180 from wearing dresses and heels and makeup to wearing suits and ties and having short hair.

1:24:05And that's when I really started to feel more secure as a teacher because, again, kids can pick up if you feel safe and confident and they know that you can keep them feeling safe so they feel confident. And some people were totally fine with that. And my students, for instance, like they were great. And some people were not. I had some staff members make some comments directly to me. Some may make comments about me. When students came up to me and now that I was expressing this way that the students understood that I was queer, some students, queer students came up to me and said, we want to start a gay straight alliance because we need one here.

1:24:46And I recognize nobody calls it a GSA anymore, but this was 2008. It was a while ago. We called them GSAs back then. I know they're more inclusive now, but okay. and I went to the principal and I asked if you know and I set up this GSA and he told me if you set that GSA up in this school you will be out by June those were his words out by June and uh we set it up anyway we just did it secretly and pretended it was a different club and genuinely like I put up like fake flyers and had like fake pamphlets I was like if anybody walks in we're just gonna quickly pretend we're talking about this other it was silly now that I think of it But we did what we had to do to give kids a space to talk.

1:25:23And that worked for a while, but it still was just really hard. It was hard to be in a space where there were adults saying homophobic things. There were administrators saying homophobic things. There were some kids that I didn't know. My students were great, but kids that didn't know me would see me and I guess I confused them. So some of them would say homophobic things. And eventually where I landed was I needed to leave. And it was really hard leaving my students and especially my debaters behind. But I had to go. When you say the person said you'd be gone by June, is that Mr. Lodge? Dr. Hodge.

1:26:05Dr. Hodge. So Dr. Hodge said that? he did and i have a tremendous amount of respect for dr hodge who ran that school like a tight ship he dedicated his whole life to those students the way i read the conversation was i don't think he meant you know i personally don't like gay people and i will fire you i think what he meant was the school is not ready for that if you try to make that happen okay it's not going to go well for you that's how i read that conversation but it was little consolation to a 23 year old on my first job. And I was like, that's not really what I wanted my boss to say, but okay.

1:26:42And can that still happen today? At the school that I went to afterwards, some similar stuff happened and it's part of the reason why I left there. So yes, I would say that stuff like that can still happen today. Legally, it's not supposed to, but I've had a number of students, of colleagues who in just the last couple of years experienced some tremendously homophobic and transphobic things at the hands of their peers or sometimes even their supervisors and administrators. And that's here in New York City. So it should not be happening. It is not legal that it is happening. But yes, it absolutely can and does still happen today.

1:27:23And that's to the adults who have the power in the building. if that's happening to adults imagine what's happening to kids because at fda as hard as it was for me it was way harder for the queer students some of them were pulled into the assistant principal's office and they called the parents and outed them to their parents in front of them on the phone some of them were yelled at for holding hands boys holding hands with boys or girls yelled at in front of the class in the hallway what are you doing that's disgusting like it's terrible what happens to queer kids so i don't want you to feel so bad for me at least i was a grown-up like it wasn't great but i was okay but bullying towards queer kids absolutely still happens today you're talking about new york right imagine florida or texas yeah exactly yeah it's a lot better than it was and what i'm sure it's a lot better from when i remember than even when I can't remember.

1:28:23I'm sure it was even a lot worse before my time, but it's still unacceptable the level of homophobia and transphobia that kids and adults are experiencing in our schools. Okay. I've taken up 34 minutes and five seconds of your time. I thought I was going to take up 10 minutes of your time. Sorry, guy. No, I'm not. this has been remarkable conversation it's blown me away taken me totally by surprise listen who am i to thank you or anything i don't know you you don't know me i'm not in new york it's not like you're impacting my life or i can impact your life but you are making the universe a better place deco there's no question i will end with the way you started which is it's not just me.

1:29:17And this is what teachers sign up for. And I'm blessed and honored to get to be able to do this work. And it doesn't feel like work. When you love your job, it doesn't feel like work. My uncle told me once, and I think that's great advice. And I'm just, I feel very blessed to be able to do this. So thank you. But also, it's my pleasure. So there you have it, the remarkable story of Jonathan and Deco. It should remind us of the profound impact that teachers, mentors, and coaches can have on people's lives and make a difference. Don't forget that Jonathan has a new book out. It's called I Wasn't Supposed to Be Here.

1:30:00Maybe he wasn't supposed to be here, but with his grit, determination, and people like Diko, he certainly made it. I'm Guy Kawasaki. This is Remarkable People. My thanks to the Remarkable people team. They are Jeff C. Shannon Hernandez, Alexis Nishimura, Louise Magana, Fallon Yates, and now the Nizmer sisters. Madison, the drop-in queen of Bali and Santa Cruz, and Tessa, a new draft choice coming to us from the fine state of Nebraska. Until next time, mahalo and aloha.

1:30:47This is Remarkable People.