Heroes in Business - Lee Jenkins, Pioneer of L to J School Operations Process, Author of over 30 books for children and educators

Episode Date: June 20, 2023

Lee Jenkins, Pioneer of L to J School Operations Process, Author of over 30 books for children and educators is interviewed by David Cogan of Eliances entrepreneur community and host of the Heroes Show.   

Welcome back to Alliances Heroes, where heroes in business align. To be part of our super community and find out more about Alliances, visit www.alliances.com. All right, so that's right. Welcome back. We're excited to have everybody back, whether you're watching or whether you're listening. Welcome back. We're excited to have everybody back, whether you're watching or whether you're listening. And thanks again, too, for the wonderful feedback we continue to have. When I had on General Wesley Clark, a four-star general.

Make sure that you check out those past episodes by going to alliances.com. That's E-L-I-A-N-C-S dot com and click on radio to view past segments. So with that, I'd like to welcome you all to Lee Jenkins. He is the pioneer of L2J School Operations Process. And are you ready for this? Author of over 30 books for children and educators. You can reach him at ltoj.net. So welcome to the show, Lee.

Gosh, 30 books. Yes, and there. Thank you. And there's more coming. Yes. That's a lot of books. So I guess let me jump in and ask you, does it get any easier from the first book to the 30th book? Yes, it gets a little easier, not necessarily the sitting down and the writing, but then the follow up things and you have to do get easier. Yes, it's somewhat easier. Great, great. Well, good. So tell me about now your background as far as education goes and what was the incentive to write the books for also for children the my background in education is in all the all the positions you could think of you know teacher principal school superintendent professor what's the impetus the impetus is comes from surveying 3 000 teachers and ask a simple question what grade level level do you teach? And what percent of the kids at your grade level love school? It's tragic. It starts at 95% in kindergarten. By the

end of kindergarten, love school, it gets worse every year. We tend to think it's an adolescent problem. It started, we have fewer kids in first grade love school than in kindergarten, and then fewer more in second grade, all the way down. It gets low at 90, at third grade, nine at 37%. This is just that they love school. They may love it just because of friends and the football team. Then I've asked further, well, how many of the kids and their juniors or seniors in high school have that same joy of learning they once had in kindergarten?

It's five to eight percent. And you know what? The teachers aren't doing this on purpose. They're frustrated with it. So something's causing it. That's the impetus. What is the root cause of that huge problem in our country and what can we do about it? huge problem in our country and what can we do about it? That's the motivating force. Yeah. I mean, I believe the stats, they're just hard to believe. They are hard to believe. And you ask people who teach in kindergarten, they'll say, why are you choosing to teach kindergarten? Because the kids still love school. That's the answer you get. Wow. Wow. So, you know so tell me about uh with these books what what's the latest book then that you've come out with okay the latest book is how to create a perfect home

school i've written how to create a perfect school which is for classrooms and now how to create a perfect homeschool. And the same problems that plague the classrooms can seep very easily into the homeschool. So that's the latest one. It's that research and what do we do to make sure this does not happen in the families that are homeschooling, in addition for teachers and administrators to not let it happen in their system. Lee, what was the first book that you wrote? The first book I wrote was Improving Student Learning. It was years ago. The same ideas. What can we do? But I didn't have that research to follow. That was the first book. And then I've written the children's books I've written are based on my friend Bill Martin Jr.

He wrote over 300 books for children. Many of your listeners would have read Chicka Chicka Boom Boom and Brown Bear, Brown Bear and other books of their children. He was a close friend in the impetus. And I wanted to write books following his leadership that were based on Aesop fables and based on Bible stories. And by the way, Eric Carle, who wrote the very hungry counterclerk was a good friend of Bill. And he's followed his leadership also. And I'm following that in a niche with the Bible and the Aesop readers.

Yeah, I mean, that's just, it's phenomenal. It's phenomenal. Again, we have with us Lee Jenkins, pioneer of L2J school operations process, author of over 30 books for children and educators. Go to his website, ltoj.net. Now, Lee, can we also find these on Amazon? Yes, they are on Amazon.

Yes, and they're also sold wholesale through other distributions. So they're at Barnes & Noble and other Walmart, et cetera. Yes. That's great. Now, what do you see? I mean, I think, again, tell us a few more of the various titles and stuff, because I'm very intrigued by this, and I know our audience would be too. Okay, if we take the Bible stories, let's take that for example. One is A Day with Jesus, the story of Zacchaeus. There is Five Years Protecting Jesus, a Christmas story.

Five Years Protecting Jesus, a Christmas story. There's Three Days with Jonah, a whale of a story. They're all early readers for children that are learning to read at ages four, five, and six. Those are the children's books that I've written. And there are lots of great early readers out there on the market, a lot of them. But the uniqueness of mine is the stories are worth remembering some of the stories out there for early reading they might be successful

in reading but the story has no lasting value and that's what i want and then there's the latest aesop fable one was sour grapes it's aesop's fool in yourself fable grapes. It's Aesop's Fool in Yourself Fable. There is the Thirsty Crow, Aesop's Step-by-Step Fable. So they're worth remembering, but the art is unbelievably good, and the storyline is easy enough for the children to read it. Think about it. Go ahead. No, no. continue, please. Eric Carle, people know his book, The Very Hungry Caterpillar. Kids love that, and they can read it. But some of the reading experts say, oh, no, they can't read that. Caterpillar has four syllables. It's too big for them when they're age five. No, it's not. And Zacchaeus, they say, well, no, they couldn't read that when they're learning to read.

Of course you can. So the words on every page, of course they can. Yeah. Wow. Now, Lee, with again, over 30 books that you've written for children and educators, by the way, you can find them at ltoj.net, N-E-T. You're listening, watching me, David Kogan, host of the E-Liances Hero Show, the only place where entrepreneurs align. So make sure you go to E-Liances.com. That's E-L-I-A-N-C-E-S.com. When you go about now, you know, writing these books, and I'm sure you're going to be coming out with more books in that. Where does it come from? Do you start taking notes of things that you're thinking about? Are you writing, Do you start taking notes of things that you're thinking about?

Are you writing, typing at the same time? Is it like, I mean, how do you do it? I usually write in pencil first, and the first edit is when I sit down at the computer. The ideas, I don't know where to say they all come from. But of course, if you just look at Aesop fables, you read them and then you say, well, which one can easily be written into a pattern? Because the Very Hungry Caterpillar, Brown Bear, Brown Bear, there's a pattern. And then that's what the kids need is to do that, hang on to it and to read. So I'm looking for patterns. Then there's another set of my books that are in mathematics. Mathematics is a struggle in elementary school because we're teaching tricks and not real deep understanding

in so many places. So those come from, okay, what tools can we give educators so that the math truly makes sense? And maybe the biggest one is infractions. We get out materials to show kids what it looks like. And then we put them all away to teach the formulas. So when I was a math coordinator for a school district, just before I arrived, 90% of the grade six students missed the question one half divided by one fourth

because they never were taught what it meant they all knew there were two fourths and a half the answer is two but they missed it so i want it to make sense there's so much of what needs to happen it just just makes sense the brain learns instantly as soon as it makes sense and if a kid is struggling to learn they're struggling because it doesn't make sense to them. That's great. I love the field that you're in and stuff. So I went to your website, but I got to ask you about this one. This one kind of, this one stood out different from the other various titles that you have.

All About Henry, The Rich Witter, The Van of Hell. What's up with that? That was a fun one. And to help people. You see, my wife died two years ago this month. So I was a fun one. And to help people. You see, my wife died two years ago this month. So I was a widower. So I wanted to write a book about that experience of being a widower. I didn't expect it.

And there we are. And so it's all about Henry, the rich widower of Savannah Valley. And he's a good guy. That's his story. His license plate is BYKOTA, which stands for Be Kind One to Another. He's a good guy who found himself as a widower in a retirement community. And that's his story. All About Henry is a great read. Nice. So we have some questions from our audience, and one of those is, which was the most difficult book to write? The most difficult book was How to Create a Perfect School.

The reason, and of course, perfect is a crazy word to use. You have to say, why are you using that word perfect? Well, it's because in any organization, if you know what perfect is, then you can get closer and closer. If you have no idea what perfect is, then you're just grab bag at random items. So what is perfect school? It's that love of learning.

We talked about it earlier, David, that love of learning children have in kindergarten is maintained for the next 12 years. That would be perfect. And that's a hard one to write, to get people to think, of course we're not gonna be perfect. Of course not.

But if you don't know what it is, you're never gonna get closer. And all your listeners are in different fields. Whatever field they're in, what would perfect be, define it, and then work as a team to get closer to it. For young children, here's the next question we also got from audience member is listener. Is it better for the child to read to the adult or the adult to read to the

child when they're very young? It's both. You start by the adult reading to the child. And the reason you want pattern books is because after a while, the kids pick up the pattern and they start reading parts of the book back to the, and that's exactly what you want. The most important reading skill is for the kid to think, I can make a go of this. I can learn to read. When the kid says, oh, I can't read, then it's a downhill battle. It's hard. So that is part. And people know that reading their children is so important. That's number one. They don't know number two. Number two is taking dictation from your children. As soon as they can talk, when they scribble a

picture out, get a pen and say, well, tell me about your picture and write down what they say. They need to know that the words they speak are the same words that are in a book. And somebody can write down what I said. And probably the most popular book that I've written recently is a wordless book for young authors. It's what will bear, rabbit and chipmunk do next.

It's only art, but there's space at the bottom. And the children from four years up, maybe even three, they tell you the words and you write the words and they're so proud. They wrote a whole book and they're only four years old. And it's, you know, seven, eight, nine years old. They can write the words themselves. They have that ability. They love it. It's that joy that has to be there if we're going to keep

enthusiasm, keep education alive all the way before they're launched away from the home. When we started this interview, you were talking about the decline of children having interest or being excited about school. What are some of the secrets that parents can do now with young ones to keep them motivated, keeping them wanting to go to school, keeping them wanting to learn? Okay, well, let's talk what's causing about, what's causing kids to not want to be in the school system. One is that it's bribery. There are not very few things that make learning go backwards and bribery is one of them. We don't use that word. We call it incentives. It's bribery. There are not very few things that make learning go backwards and bribery is one of them. We don't use that word. We call it incentives. It's bribery. And so if you have to bribe the

kids to do the work, then something's wrong with the education that you're asking them to use. So we don't have bribery. What we have is a celebration, a thank you celebration for success. Kids at four years old know if they're being bribed or if they're being thanked. So that's one of the issues. Another one, we have to avoid all of this cram, get a grade, forget. It starts in first grade spelling. And two MDs have told me recently, that's how you get through medical school. You cram and you give the professor what they want, then you can forget it. Then you cram, get a grade, forget. Help the kids avoid that stupid system. I often ask people, it's a rhetorical question, who has the most control over education in America? And by the way, the person who has this control has the same control over public schools and

private schools. Who is it? It's the person that created these weekly quizzes that you only have to know for Friday and you're good to go. So all of it, starting about a month into first grade, they know you don't have to learn it. What a terrible thing to teach kids. You don't have to learn it. You just have to do it for Friday. All right, we've got time for one more question. And this is, I think, an interesting one from your, would be an interesting one from your perspective. And that is, what advice do you have for children, how they can make a difference in the world around them,

like you've been and like you continue to do with being author, being, you know, various roles in education and over 30 books for children and educators that you've authored. I would say to them to have influence, you have to say what's in your heart and your heart what's in your heart is helping people. Now there's some side benefits. You can make good money. You can live in a nice neighborhood.

There's some side benefits, but that's not the aim. The aim is helping other people with their life. And then other benefits come along, the secondary. Excellent. Well, Lee, you have dedicated your career to improving schools and the education system. That's a hero. Lee Jenkins, pioneer of L to J school operations process, author of over 30 books for children and educators. Go to LTOJ.net. This has been David

Kogan with the Alliance's Hero Show, E-L-I-A-N-C-E-S.com. Thank you very much again, Lee, for being here today. This has been great. Thank you, David. Thank you. This is a joy.