An Army of Normal Folks - Kellie Lauth: How 25 Students Came To Own Patents! (Pt 2)

Episode Date: October 28, 2025

At a time when 67% of students are not at grade level, Kellie Lauth is revolutionizing education in America. Her nonprofit MindSpark is spreading an innovative approach called problem-based learning like wildfire across the country. And it’s resulted in over 25 of their students owning patents, starting dozens of companies, and a 15% improvement in STEM and literacy achievement! Support the show: https://www.normalfolks.us/premiumSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Hey, everybody. It's Bill Courtney with an army of normal folks. We continue now with part two of our conversation with Kelly Loth, right after these brief messages from our generous sponsors. When news broke earlier this year that baby KJ, a newborn in Philadelphia, had successfully received the world's first personalized gene editing treatment. It represented a milestone for both researchers and patience. But there's a gripping tale of discovery behind this accomplishment and its creators. I'm Evan Ratliff, and together with biographer Walter Isaacson, we're delving into the story of Nobel Prize winner Jennifer Dowdna, the woman who's helped change the trajectory of humanity. Listen to Aunt CRISPR, the story of Jennifer Dowdna with Walter Isaacson on the IHeart Radio app,

Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. When you're high, you feel different. You think different, you talk different, you draw different, you listen to music different, but you probably knew that. Problem is, you also drive different, and not in a good way. That's why driving high is illegal everywhere. So if you're high, just don't drive. Make a plan to get a sober ride, because if you feel different, you drive different. Brought to you by NHTSA and the Ad Council.

In the chaos of World War II, a king dies under mysterious circumstances. and his children never stop searching for the truth. There's no nice way to put this. Time's running out for Simeon and Maria Louisa to find answers to the question that haunts them. The Butterfly King is a historical true crime podcast from Exactly Right and Blanchard House. I'm investigative journalist Becky Milligan

and I'm following the trail of King Boris III of Bulgaria, a ruler caught between Hitler and Stalin and the shocking secrets behind his sudden death. If it's 1943 and you want to kill a head of state and you have access to a whole stock of sophisticated synthetic weapons, why wouldn't you use them? A royal mystery unlike anything you've heard before. The entire series is available now.

Listen to the Butterfly King on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm I'm Yvalongoria and I'm My Tengal, Mr. Hun, and on our podcast, Hungry for History, we mix two of our favorite things, food and history. Ancient Athenians used to scratch names onto oyster shells, and they called these Ostercon to vote politicians into exile. So our word ostracize is related to the word oyster.

No way. Bring back the Ostercon. And because we've got a very Mikaasa esucasa kind of vibe on our show, friends always stop by. Pretty much every entry into this. of the planet was through the Gulf of Mexico. No, the America. No, the Gulf of Mexico.

Continuano are being so forever and ever. It blows me away how progressive Mexico was in this moment. They had land reform, they had labor rights, they had education rights. Mustard seeds were so valuable to the ancient Egyptians that they used to place them in their tombs for the afterlife. Listen to Hungry for History as part of the My Cultura Podcast Network, available on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Michael Lewis here. My book The Big Short tells the story of the buildup and burst of the U.S.

housing market back in 2008. It follows a few unlikely but lucky people who saw the real estate market for the black hole it would become and eventually made billions of dollars from that perception. It was like feeding the monster, said Isman. We fed the monster until it blew up. The monster was exploding. Yet on the streets of Manhattan, there was no sign anything important had just happened. Now, 15 years after the Big Short's original release, and a decade after it became an Academy Award-winning movie, I've recorded an audiobook edition for the very first time.

The Big Short Story, what it means when people start betting against the market, and who really pays for an unchecked financial system, is as relevant today as it's ever been, offering invaluable insight into the current economy and also today's politics. Get the big short now at Pushkin.fm slash audiobooks, or wherever audiobooks are sold. There was a box on the desk, the only thing the former principal left me, with 4,000 keys in it that were not labeled. They went to every single cabinet indoor in the building in a jumbled box.

And I thought, this is the greatest metaphor for what I'm doing that I've ever seen. I don't even know where to start. Each key represents a child. Yes, like this challenge. You know, we had a dead body on the campus like the first couple weeks. Yes, like domestic violence, this guy flew over the fence and died on the grounds. We had squatters out back. My custodians got in a fistway.

I mean, I cannot make this up. And I remember calling my dad saying, like, I, this is. This is too much. I'm a little, yeah, I'm in way over my head. And what Bob say? He said, you know, you'll figure it out. Yeah. You got it.

Being a wuss about this deal. Get back on the horse. You're fine. But so we went from... Might need it if that Bob in just to hang out of the school for a week. Exactly. Hit a couple kids with a wrench and straighten things out. Yep.

And 25 teachers walked out. Walked out when you walked in? Uh-huh. Because they weren't having you? They weren't. They were done. They were done with all the things. whole thing. And so I had to hire pretty much a new staff. And when I walked in the ones who stayed, plus the new ones, the first thing I said was, if you don't believe that kids who are poor, kids who are black, or kids who are brown can learn, then you get out. Because I'm not doing this with you. This is not happening. All of your classrooms, you have shown me that you lower standards for these kids and not raise them, and this stops today. And so if you're not going to be on this journey with me, you're out. I will not work with you.

Did you lose more than? Yes. that's what I expected the first school. So that's what happened to this school. Yep. And I said, you know. So they walked over the dead body and left. Left. Yep.

I said, you know, we have to climb out Everest twice. And we're not even at base camp. I have six graders who can't read. Most of my kids are three levels behind. Like, this is real. So if you're not up for the challenge, you've got to go. So. So in one year, one year, one year, we went from a turnaround school on the verge of being closed

to a performance school. How? By just doing problem-based learning, by investing in my staff, by saying we're going to believe kids can learn and we're going to invite industry in to make things relevant and authentic. And that's it. Like everyone, you know, we're always looking for this like silver bullet

or this magical thing in education. It's not. It's about people. Keep telling people. It's not about stuff. It's about human beings. And just really investing in my staff, leadership training, project management training,

Again, throwing them out into industry saying, you're going to leave this initiative. You're going to do that. You're going to figure it out. I mean, our values were have porous boundaries, be a yes organization, and fail fast and pivot. That's it. And that looks more like a business mantra than it does an education mantra. It does. And that's how we...

I'm thinking that's what I do every day. Right. And that's how I led the school was on the model of industry of like, we're not going to be stuck. We're just going to dig in and figure it out. And we just started doing lots of things. We started feeding kids, started clothing kids. We started helping adults connect to education. I mean, just all these programs and all these things to start.

We fed kids' breakfast, lunch, and dinner. You know, we just started becoming this kind of community hub and this innovation center. And that was really the goal. And people came to visit and got it pretty excited. How old is your son at this point? So here's the thing. Mike, I have three kids, and my son's in middle school at this point. They're in a private school up north.

And I said to my husband, I got to walk my talk. So we took them out of a private school and put them in my school. That school? Yeah. How much did your kids like you? Yeah. It was a huge change for them. And I will say one of the greatest things we've ever done.

That's getting kicked off a horse. Mm-hmm. That's your version. Mm-hmm. Because if it was going to be good enough for the kids in that neighborhood, it should be good enough for my kids. Did it worry you doing that? Was it a little bit of a mom gut check?

Yeah, definitely. I mean, I'd be lying if I said it wasn't, but I also knew that it would be okay. And it was. I mean, not only was it such a much better learning trajectory for them, they went on to the high school that I had worked with prior. We have a great high school in our neighborhood. Everybody goes to the high school. And I'll never forget putting a North Glen High School stake in my ground

because my kids were getting ready to graduate. And my neighbor said, your kids go to Northland? Why? Like, what? I said, yeah, they do. Like, it just, you know, it's like, it's still just had that sort of. Are your kids, any of them, what are their ages? So they're all in college now.

They play, all of them, play sports in college. All play sports in college? Yes. And my son was studied engineering in my STEM school. Study engineering in the STEM high school is studying engineering in college. What's he play? He, lacrosse. All right.

The next two? Lacrosse. La Crosse and LaGrosse. And my daughter also plays flag football. In college? So she plays club because they don't have, yeah, programs. That's so cool. It's very cool.

And then she's in biomedical med, and she started that track in middle school. Wow. All right. So now you say. Yeah. So I had partners, industry partners, and donor partners, philanthropic partners that were like, this has got to be scaled. This has got to go somewhere.

And so this Mind Spark was sort of born of this idea that teachers matter. Adults in the system matter. And we do a lot of programs for kids, but we don't often kind of put those adults in that equation. And could we scale what we were doing nationally? And that's really, I mean, that's it. That's the premise of it. Well, so tell me what I, the Mind Spark's got, it's a spark as an acronym, and you've got really five targeted.

rifle shot and things you're achieving. Yeah. So the S stands for sustained transformation. So we don't want to be a one and done. We don't want to be this drive-by organization. We want to know that if you work with us, not only is there a return on your investment, but also that this

idea is sustained, right? It grows. It scales. It's replicatable. It's durable. The other one is partnerships are formed. So we don't go into any community where I don't leave behind five to seven foundational partnerships for the schools, industry, community orgs, whatever it is. the A is that all succeed.

So again, just this foundational belief that this should be good for all kids, right? That we all succeed, no one gets left behind. And then the R is for recruitment and retention. So teachers tend to not stay in the profession very long. And so this idea was that we wanted teachers to stay and love what they do and kind of create this identity about being the greatest workforce developers in America, right? Being foundational to the economy, being foundational to society. And then the last one is just kinetic, this idea that what you do matters and that you, if I upskill you and I invest in you, I expect you to go pass it along.

You go do something cool with what you've learned. And so the idea is to invest in teachers to then go back to their districts all in the world and carry this problem solving model with them. Yes. And we work with teachers, principals. It's like an organic spread. Yeah. Yeah. And we work with large and small systems.

It's not just teacher by teacher, but we work with. groups, schools, districts. So how do you get these teachers and where do they come and how does it work? So the interesting about Mindspark is actually our clients, our industry partners. So I work with some of the biggest brands in the world. I work with Samsung, KPMG, IBM, Otter Care's. The clients are them. Yes.

So what happens is industry, so you're in industry, you would come and say, I want to do something in education. I want to make an investment in education, or I've done something for a long time in education. It's not really working. I'm not getting a return on my investment. Or we have a program we run an education. I'm fed up, right? I feel like the system's broken.

I'm done. Or we have a program we've done, but we're tired of running it. So they come to us and we help them revamp, re-up their strategy, re-imagine it, create a new one, give them one, whatever it is. And then we deploy that work with schools all over the country. Wow. Mm-hmm. So where are you, how many schools? I mean, tell me.

what it looks like. Yeah, so we currently have worked with just over 100,000 educators. We've impacted about 2.7 million kiddos. We've worked with tens of thousands of schools. And that's everything from like literally a microschool with one teacher and three kids to LA Unified. So we define teaching learning very broadly. And it's all community centered. So we come to you. We spend time. We get to know the community. We get to know the assets in the community. We get to map all the partners that are already in the space. Can a whole school district? Yes.

An entire district? Yeah, I mean, we've had trainings as large as, you know, over 600 people together. We've had trainings of small five. Is there any follow up to make sure these teachers are doing what they've supposedly So we follow every cohort. We follow every cohort for up to two years post-engagement to see what they're doing and we collect data on them. Wow.

To say, is it working? Are they still at it? Are they still there? Are they making more money? Are they happier? What are kids doing? What does that look like? is the can you qualify the return on that investment at all yeah so right now if you are a mind spark

educator you've worked with us in a cohort you have we have an 88% teacher retention rate no kidding and I think the national average is around 40 42 so you're better at what you do and happier because you are better at what you do we'll be right back When news broke earlier this year that baby KJ, a newborn in Philadelphia, had successfully received the world's first personalized gene editing treatment, it represented a milestone for both researchers and patients. But there's a gripping tale of discovery behind this accomplishment and its creators. I'm Evan Ratliff, and together with biographer Walter Isaacson,

we're delving into the story of Nobel Prize winner Jennifer Dowdna, the woman who's helped change the trajectory of humanity. Listen to Aunt CRISPR, the story of Jennifer Dowdna with Walter Isaacson on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. When you're high, you feel different. You think different, you talk different, you draw different. You listen to music different, but you probably knew that. Problem is, you also drive different and not in a good way.

That's why driving high is illegal everywhere. So if you're high, just don't drive. Make a plan to get a sober ride. Because if you feel different, you drive different. Brought to you by NHTSA and the Ad Council. In the chaos of World War II, a king dies under mysterious circumstances and his children never stop searching for the truth. There's no nice way to put this.

Times running out for Simeon and Maria Louisa to find answers to the question that haunts them. The Butterfly King is a historical true crime podcast from Exactly Right and Blanchard House. I'm investigative journalist Becky Milligan and I'm following the trail of King Boris III of Bulgaria, a ruler caught between Hitler and Stalin and the shocking secrets behind his sudden death. If it's 1943 and you want to kill a head of state and you have access to a whole stock of sophisticated synthetic weapons, why wouldn't you use them? A royal mystery, unlike anything you've heard before. The entire series is available now.

Listen to The Butterfly King on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm I'm Ida Gomerga. And on our podcast, Hungry for History, we mix two of our favorite things, food and history. Ancient Athenians used to scratch names onto oyster shells, and they called these Oster Khan. to vote politicians into exile. So our word ostracize is related to the word oyster. No way. Bring back the OsterCon.

And because we've got a very Mikaasa is Su Casa kind of vibe on our show, friends always stop by. Pretty much every entry into this side of the planet was through the Gulf of Mexico. No, the America. No, the America. The Gulf of Mexico, continue to be it forever and ever. It blows me away how progressive Mexico was in this moment. They had land reform, they had labor rights, they had education rights.

Mustard seeds were so valuable to the ancient Egyptians that they used to place them in their tombs for the afterlife. Listen to Hungry for History as part of the My Cultura Podcast Network, available on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Michael Lewis here. My book, The Big Short, tells the story of the buildup, burst of the U.S. housing market back in 2008. It follows a few unlikely, but lucky people who saw the real estate market for the black hole it would become, and eventually made billions of dollars from that perception. It was like feeding the monster, said Eisman.

We fed the monster until it blew up. The monster was exploding. Yet on the streets of Manhattan, there was no sign anything important had just happened. Now, 15 years after the Big Short's original release, and a decade after it became an Academy Award-winning movie, I've recorded an audiobook edition for the very first time. The Big Short Story, what it means when people start betting against the market, and who really pays for an unchecked financial system, is as relevant today as it's ever been, offering invaluable insight into the current economy and also today's politics.

Get the Big Short now at Pushkin.fm. slash audiobooks, or wherever audiobooks are sold. And your identity shifts, you're not just a teacher, right? You're a STEM teacher, you're an engineering teacher, you're someone who works alongside industry. You've been in an internship with IBM, and you feel really upskilled in AI. Like, it changes who you are as a teacher. One of our programs, when you're through it about 75% of the program, you are salary doubles as a teacher. Closing opportunity gaps, which is a big one for me, I'm not, I don't believe everybody deserves happiness.

I believe everybody deserves the pursuit of it. I know that's old school, but that's how I feel. I bet Bob would agree with me. But I do believe that the barriers to opportunity in a lot of situations exist. I think it's a real thing. It is a real thing. And so closing games. gaps is one thing. Closing the opportunity gaps, I think, is just a requirement of a civil

society. I'm a Christian. I think it's the requirement of my faith to close a gap in just opportunity. If the opportunity is equal and the gap exists, well, then that's a different conversation, talk about. And that may be more than one-sided. But typically, an opportunity gap is closed by the people with the power. So it's a one-sided thing. Correct. That's how I feel. And I feel we have to get rid of those.

And one of the things, and it's one of my big pet peeves, and I was toward the end of Alex's prep when I saw this, and I really wanted you to talk about it. Closing opportunity gaps, for example, within Todd County and South Dakota, which I have no earthly clue where that is, our work with the Lakota Sengson It's a first person nation

It's a first person's nation It is Native community Lifted students from three grade levels Below the national average To 63% performing Above the district average That's all about an opportunity gap Because if that doesn't happen

Those kids don't even have the opportunity To be a part of a civil society. Correct. How'd you do that? Problem-based learning. So we got a small grant to go to one of the largest reservations in South Dakota. Is that what it is?

It's a huge reservation. It is. And schools are generally kind of hundreds of miles apart. So geography, even geographically is challenging. Geographic, it's massive. It's expansive, yeah. I mean, it's a nation, Native American nation. Indigenous community, yeah.

And when we got there, it was actually. actually kind of right on the heels of COVID. And so we got in there thinking. So we went in with the premise of, again, an industry partner had an interest in this community. We went in with the premise of getting more girls excited about STEM opportunities and entering the workforce because they don't typically do that in this community.

When we got there, no running water. Electricity was scarce. You mean in the school? In the community. In the community. Lots, tons of houses with no running water. Tons of houses with very little access to like electricity and Wi-Fi, and just some basic human-need pieces.

And so we went back to the partner and said, okay, girls in STEM is cool. I believe in my whole heart. That's not what we're going to do. We're going to start working with schools. We're going to bring in problem-based learning, and kids and teachers are going to start tackling access to clean water, access to Wi-Fi, food sovereignty, housing security. See, I wouldn't have even thought of it that way, but you said, okay, we'll have our kids fix the basic problems first.

Yes. Because when you're part of the system, you have an obligation and a right and a privilege to solve the problems in your system. And you would be very interested in that work. It's not sustainable if I come in and solve it for you. That's not sustainable. When I walk away, you're not going to, you're going to go back to doing what you're doing. Bottom up solutions, too. All this screams that.

Bottom up solutions. People closest to the problem. I mean, it's these global problems, but they're locally sourced, right? I mean, every time I hear from a community, oh, we have this, we have this wrong. I'm like, you're not special. That's the problems we see everywhere we go. but the way you solve it with your people is what's going to matter. And that's what they did.

So kids tackled. So one of their biggest problems was a lot of students were not staying within their culture. So their language was dying out. A lot of like their heritage and their traditions were not being sort of captured by the next generation because they saw it as something not tied to their identity. And so through problem-based learning, again, we spent several years with them, two years with them. we just started working on problems grade level by grade level tackling what I just said. Food sovereignty, right?

How do we get healthy food here? How do you start growing your own food? How do you go back to this sort of culture you have around ag? What are jobs that we can sort of then start bringing in the tie to that? This idea of revitalizing the Lakota language and culture. What does that look like? What are kids going to care about? So it just started there and that's it.

And then that the kids performing better at reading Duh. It's a byproduct. They have to perform better reading. That wasn't the goal, right? Like, I didn't come and say I'm going to increase your literacy scores. So that's a byproduct of, again, being authentically engaged in learning. It's phenomenal.

Before we go to kind of wrapping this up, you're going to have to suffer me for five minutes. I'm in the hardwood lumber business. I'm going to have to do this quickly with you. I wish we had an hour. I really do. The difference in hardwoods and softwoods are scientifically hardwoods are deciduous. And each tree that loses its leaves during the winter is a hardwood that keeps us comfort during the winter as softwood. It has nothing to do with the texture of the wood.

in terms of use, practicalities, think of it this way. Softwoods build a structure, hardwoods furnish it. Hardwoods going to flooring and cabinets, molding, millwork, things like that. The hardwood industry is a robust industry. The hardwood log is really a two-piece thing. The outside of the log, the outside half of the log, creates the lumber in a lower grade, a middle grade, and a higher grade that make all the things I talk about. But the inside of the log is very important for industrial uses. It is what you make railroad ties on it.

It is what you make crane, mat, and board road out of for oil and gas exploration. It is where tractor-trailer flooring comes from. It is where it's got all kinds of really important industrial and really economic and national security uses. And there's really no substitute for it other than if you get into really expensive plastics. but it's not there. Because housing's gotten so expensive, people have started using substitutes for things like flooring, doors. The very floor you're looking at right now is not hardwoods.

That's LVL. It's plastic. It's horrible for the environment. It's not biodegradable when it goes on a landfill, and you can't refinish it. But it's 30% cheaper. So the advent of these substitutes, if you'll think of linoleum, like your grandmother's linoleum countertops, it used to be that shiny green. Yes. Well, that very product, that very plastic product, which is a petroleum-based, mercury-based product, excluded through plastic machines, then glued on top of glued up rustboard.

Back in the 70s, people knew exactly what that was with a little hard squared edge around a corner of. is very ugly. Science has evolved to a place that they can now make that stuff to look just like textured hardwoods and all kinds of different colors with everything else. And so now people are making flooring and cabinets and everything out of it. And it's smoke in my industry because it's 30% cheaper and people trying to build houses cheaper. And now even architects that used to snub their nose that these things are now specking them for cost issues.

As a result, the hardwood industry, my industry, is getting absolutely smoked. As a result, how are we going to build our railroads from the middle of a log if we can't use the outside? How are we going to do oil and gas exploration? There's a lot of downside to all of this. One other thing is, there's three times more lightning strikes east of the Mississippi River, as they are west of the Mississippi River, but the west seems to us forest fires all the time. the east of you know why because we log a logging road is a natural firebreak and when you take mature trees and you selective cut and use the little ones we actually have 70% more harvestable

timber east of the mississippi river than we did 100 years ago because of sustainable forestry practices okay i've gone on that's i could do this forever but the point is we're going to start having forest fires and losing timber and losing industry because if we're not taking these logs and and cultivating for the use, look what happens to the forest. And then you get the advent of beetles and all kinds of things that kill the forest. And at any rate, here's a problem. How does the solid hardwood industry compete with cheap, or sit in a one, cheap, knock-off plastics and substitute products that are bad for the environment and all of the problems?

How does this and, you know, understand why it's important that it does remain a vital industry in the United States? How does it compete with largely foreign-made, environmentally infirm, imported, plastic, mellamine imitation knock-off products? My question is, as a business industry person, is that the kind of question I would bring to your kids and they would figure it out. A thousand percent. My answer to you is going to be you let kids figure that out, right? Yes, you bring it to kids. Yep.

Okay, well, good. I'll just call me in the next week or so after they figured out. So five-year-olds, yeah. Because we've been working on it for the last three years and have not come up with the solution. We'll be right back. When news broke earlier this year that baby KJ, a newborn in Philadelphia, had successfully received the world's first personalized gene editing treatment, it represented a milestone for both researchers and patients. But there's a gripping tale of discovery behind this accomplishment and its creators.

I'm Evan Ratliff, and together with biographer Walter Isaacson, we're delving into the story of Nobel Prize winner Jennifer Dowdna, the woman who's helped change the trajectory of humanity. Listen to Aunt CRISPR, the story of Jennifer Dowdna with Walter Isaacson on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your pie. us. When you're high, you feel different. You think different, you talk different, you draw different, you listen to music different, but you probably knew that. Problem is, you also drive different and not in a good way. That's why driving high is illegal everywhere.

So if you're high, just don't drive. Make a plan to get a sober ride. Because if you feel different, you drive different. Brought to you by NHTSA and the Ad Council. In the chaos of World War II, a king dies under mysterious circumstances and his children never stop searching for the truth. There's no nice way to put this. Times running out for Simeon and Maria Louisa to find answers to the question that haunts them.

The Butterfly King is a historical true crime podcast from Exactly Right and Blanchard House. I'm investigative journalist Becky Milligan and I'm following the trail of King Boris I third of Bulgaria, a ruler caught between Hitler and Stalin and the shocking secrets behind his sudden death. If it's 1943 and you want to kill a head of state and you have access to a whole stock of sophisticated synthetic weapons, why wouldn't you use them? A royal mystery unlike anything you've heard before. The entire series is available now. Listen to the Butterfly King on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Michael Lewis here.

My book The Big Short tells the story of the buildup and burst of the U.S. housing market back in 2008. It follows a few unlikely but lucky people who saw the real estate market for the black hole it would become and eventually made billions of dollars from that perception. It was like feeding the monster, said Eisman. We fed the monster until it blew up. The monster was exploding. Yet on the streets of Manhattan, there was no signs. anything important had just happened.

Now, 15 years after the Big Short's original release, and a decade after it became an Academy Award-winning movie, I've recorded an audiobook edition for the very first time. The Big Short Story, what it means when people start betting against the market, and who really pays for an unchecked financial system, it is relevant today as it's ever been, offering invaluable insight into the current economy and also today's politics. Get the big short now at Pushkin.fm.fm slash audiobooks or wherever audiobooks are sold.

I'm I Belongoria and I'm Maite Gomesri Juan. And on our podcast, Hungry for History, we mix two of our favorite things, food and history. Ancient Athenians used to scratch names onto oyster shells and they called these OsterCon to vote politicians into exile. So our word ostracize is related to the word oyster shells. No way. Bring back the OsterCon. And because we've got a very My Casa is Su Casa kind of vibe on our show,

friends always stop by. Pretty much every entry into this side of the planet was through the Gulf of Mexico. No, the America. The Gulf of Mexico, continue to be it forever and ever. It blows me away how progressive Mexico was in this moment.

They had land reform. They had labor rights. They had education rights. Mustard seeds were so valuable to the ancient Egyptians that they used to place them in their tombs for the afterlife. Listen to Hungry for History as part of the My Cultura podcast network, available on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. But I mean, that's this part of what we've been talking about this whole time is you get kids to care about this, right? This is a problem that everyone should care about, but we get kids to. care about it, and it changes the community.

So really quick... This changes half of the United States. Exactly. So this is a really small example of this in a microcosm. So in Colorado, we have a huge issue with invasive species, right? We have a big issue, and it's everywhere. It's a beetle, isn't it? We have the beetle. We've got all kinds of things. And so...

That are eating up trees probably? Yeah. I mean, you have this huge thing. So when you get first graders, second graders, third graders, high schoolers, whatever, involved in this problem, and you get them to care, they influence their entire family. You see decision-making improve, you see buying practices change, you see consumer activities change. Did they fix the Biddle problem in Colorado? So they're working on it, and we have second graders tackle that problem alongside industry, and we have two patents pending out of that work from second graders.

Are you kidding? Again, they're so, they're naive. They're just looking at a simple problem and saying, why don't you try this? And then industry's like, I don't know why we did try that. Right, because we're overthinking. Because we don't understand rocket surgery. But the thing is, is that you influence an entire. community. You actually change the outcomes for families and communities by getting kids excited

and getting kids to tackle this. Like you take, so I hear all the time, especially in poor communities that we work with, like, we can't recycle. It's too expensive. We can't, we can't get a part of that program. It's too expensive. That doesn't really pertain to us. They don't care about us. They don't care about how we engage in that. You get a second grader to set up a recycling program in their community and all the adults follow along. Like this is the thing. You can change this by getting kids to care about this and getting involved. And they influence. They have great influence. Mine was not a metaphorical example just to fill a few minutes of a podcast. I'm dead. So excited why you were talking because I was like, that is the perfect problem.

I am dead ass serious. No, it's a perfect problem. That I would love to talk with you later about setting every one of your schools absolutely loose on this idea. There needs to be a solution. There are so many reasons. There are so many reasons to care. There's environmental, there's self-defense, there's national security, there's economic reasons, and I wish we'd have had your schools back when the furniture industry left the Carolinas in the 80s and the textiles left it in the 90s and all those blue-collar jobs left all those cool little towns up and down the eastern seaboard vacant. Well, that's about what's going to happen to the American logging and lumber industry. If we don't figure this out,

And so far, none of my contemporaries, including Beers Truly, has come up with a solution. And as I read through all of this and listened to you, I'm like, I want an army of normal third graders to figure this out because clearly it works. It does. It does. Plus, it would be a really great learning experience for kids. Their mind would explode. The perfect problem. Because I always say you want it to not be something you can Google, but you want it to be rich and medium and messy and ill. defined, ill-structured, but at the same time, you wanted to have all these different perspectives

that they have to vet it through. My fourth graders tackled nuclear power recently, and they had to really, they talked to experts on all sides of the fence, people who are madly against it to everyone who loves it, and they have to decide within all of that research and information where their solution's going to lie. And that's the beauty of this. And what you just described spans, you know, all of these sort of different... It's geopolitical. It is, right? It spans, like you said, environmental, clear to scientific. It's cultural. It's all the things. It's the perfect problem. Well, I don't think of it as a very great problem, but I knew you'd be excited about it. And so we'll have a follow-up interview with you one year from now when you fix our industry's issues.

How's that? Sounds great. So let's end with this. Three impacts. First, your teachers. Let us know really what that evolutionists look like. Second, the kids. And third, you. So, I mean, I think with teachers, you know, they are community superheroes.

And I know that sounds a little bit cliche, but they're underpaid, underappreciated, all those things. And they spend the most time with kids and deeply, you know, usually understand what they need and where they're headed. And so I think just investing them, and I don't mean a ton of money. I just mean some time and some effort goes a long ways. Even a little appreciation. A little bit of appreciation, a little bit of investment. And we've seen it completely change teachers' lives.

They stay in the profession longer. It changes their identity. They go on to do really incredible things themselves. So that's a huge impact. And it's very understated when we think about education. And we always want to go straight to the student. I get it. But if we don't take care of the adults in the system, then our student solutions aren't going to be viable.

Second, kids, I mean, it's emotional for me, and I could tell you a bazillion stories. I currently have a brilliant student who now works for me. She was a middle schooler when I was her principal, and she started out maybe not the strongest student. I saw her a lot more in my office than I did in the classroom. But over the years, we remained close and she went on to CSU. She graduated with a degree in math and physics. She should not be working for me. She should be working for a defense contractor.

She's brilliant. So working with me, I'm hoping to help her with some confidence and some different things that she needs to work on and then introduce her to some of our partners. But we've seen it change the entire trajectory of a family's economic outcome. It's not about academics. It's really about social structures. It's about the, you know, that like you said, just access an opportunity for kids.

And when we work along someone like yourself and they see a different type of role model than maybe they have in their lives, even just that small interaction opens up so many doors for them that they didn't really think was possible before. So I cannot understand that. Before we get to you, I heard you put it elsewhere that the most profound impact has been on narrative change. and like these students would think, hey, my mom's a hairdresser. That's the only thing I could possibly do in getting them to think beyond that. Not that there's anything wrong with that, but they should have every opportunity before them and not only that.

We had a student, her mom, that's what was thinking of her mom was worked in, she was a hairdresser and she always said to her, what do you want to be? And she's like, oh, I'll probably do something like my mom. And I always said, yeah, there's nothing wrong with that, right? Like, we need all jobs. And she spent a couple years in the first school. that we were part of, and she has now gone on to be a neurologist. What?

Yes. She's studying neurology in college. Well, I mean, she and her mom are both working on people above the night. Perfect. They are doing the same thing. One's on the outside, one's on the inside. What are they're a head family. Or, I mean, I had a little first-grade boy that just said, you know, my dad works on the roads.

I'm going to be in construction. I'm going to work on roads, which, again, very normal. And I said, but what if you got to design different types of roads? What if you could be an engineer and design types of things? And just, you know, it's just that. This is, again, this is not that big. But students have really shifted, you know, when you meet our kids, it's not I'm a student or I'm, it's like, I'm an engineer, I'm a scientist, I'm an artist, you know, I'm a

creator, I'm a business owner. So it makes a big difference. I think for me, yeah, I mean, I feel I love what I do. And I think that's the greatest gift that you can have. And I think profoundly for me, it's made me realize truly what a difference, you know, individuals can make. But it's really, really taught me that it is just about people at the end of the day, right? It's about hearing their story, approaching with a little bit of empathy, and that the very core of my DNA. solving problems and I think that there's nobody better to do that than kids.

I cannot help but summarize all of what's happened and all that's been accomplished and all that you've done and this problem-based learning and all that you're going to continue to do and the lives you and your approach is going to affect, I cannot help but just think about Bob telling you to figure out that horse. It just feels like that mentality,

that old school ranched working in the oil fields tough but empathetic truly understanding the perspective of another being, whether it's a human or a horse

and seeing in another person an ability that they don't even see in themselves and requiring them to both metaphorically and literally get their ass back on that horse. Yes. I can't. I just really this thing should be called Bob Spark. It should be called. But, yeah, he drives me crazy.

We were just recently there for the summer. He had a whole pile of gravel. He needed move. and heavy equipment would do it in two seconds. And we got shovels and wheelbarrows. I love Bob. I want to hang out with Bob. I want to have a beer with Bob.

Yeah, it's a good guy. Kelly, just phenomenal story. Thank you for sharing it. Thank you for the work that you do. Folks hearing us that want to find out about MindSpark, how do they do that? So website's easy. So it's just MindSpark.org. Or you can also email me if you want.

How do you email you? So first name, K-E-L-L-I-E, Kelly at Minespark.org. That's good enough. Alex, you got anything else? We're good. How about you, Kelly? Anything we miss that you want to cover? No, it's wonderful.

When do you and Bobby, you married a dad, Robert and married to Robert? I know. Do you Bobby stay tonight or you're headed out? We stay tonight meeting with a few more. He's got some business meetings that I'm going to meet with some of the schools. Good. We'll enjoy our fair city. Thank you.

And I hope you have a safe trip. home and I will follow up with you in six months two years after your children have figured out my big problem. I know. Thanks for being here. Thank you. Thank you so much.

And thank you for joining us this week. If Kelly Loth has inspired you in general or better yet to take action by engaging your community schools about MindSpark, engaging your company, about becoming one of their partners implementing problem-based learning with your own kids or something else entirely, please let me know.

I'd love to hear about it. You can write me anytime at bill at normalfolks.us, and I guarantee you this, I'll respond. If you enjoyed this episode, I'm begging you, share it with friends and on social, subscribe to the podcast, rate and review it. Join the army at normalfolks. Us, any and all of these things that will help us grow, an army of normal folks. I'm Bill Courtney. Until next time, do what you can do. In the heat of battle, your squad relies on you.

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