The Rich Roll Podcast - Stephen Ritz On Transforming The Bronx & Generations of Kids By Turning His Classroom Into A Farm

Episode Date: July 13, 2015

Insurgent educator Stephen Ritz is truly one of the most inspiring game changers I have ever met. A South Bronx elementary school teacher and administrator, he has faced and overcome tremendous bureaucratic, political, and socio-economic odds to catapult generations of young, underprivileged at-risk students to unimaginable academic success and upwardly mobile employment — all while simultaneously reclaiming and rebuilding the Bronx from the inside out. The modality leveraged to serve this end? Food. Specifically, growing food. The personification of triple bottom line values and a staunch advocate of project-based, experiential learning, it all began when Stephen accidentally began growing plants in his classroom. The unexpected result was a level of student engagement even this maverick educator could not have predicted. So what began by fluke soon became Stephen's passion. It wasn't long before his Bronx classroom featured the first indoor edible wall in the entire New York City Department of Education — a wall that routinely generates enough produce to feed healthy meals to 450 students while also training the youngest nationally certified workforce in America. Stephen's classroom farm would soon expand, both in the classroom and out, spreading across a community in desperate need for healthy food options. Under his spirited leadership and the tireless efforts of his student and community growers, vacant lots and rooftops across the Bronx — fairly characterized as an urban food desert — have been literally transformed, now boasting bountiful gardens that have produced more than 30,000 pounds of vegetables. Food that feeds his students and the greater borough at large. In the Bronx public school system, student attendance and graduation rates are historically abysmal. But Stephen's passion and engagement with his students resulted in attendance skyrocketing from a mere 40 percent to 93 percent daily. Not to mention it helped create 2,200 youth jobs. And now he is committed to building the first ever independently financed National Health, Wellness and Biodiversity Center in a 100+ year old reclaimed Bronx public school library. The staggering success of Stephen's non-traditional teaching methods have captured the world's attention. His work has been featured in Forbes, The Wall Street Journal, The Guardian, ABC, CNN, NBC, NPR and beyond. Accolades include being one of three Americans named a 2015 Top Ten Finalist for the prestigious Global Teacher Prize– teaching's Nobel Prize. He received the United States EPA Award for transforming mindsets and landscapes in New York City. And in 2014 he and his 4th and 5th grade students were invited to, and fêted by, none other than the White House. After viewing Stephen's super inspiring TEDxManhattan Talk, ranked in the Top 25 Food / Education TED Talks of all time, I knew I had to have him on the show. Stephen followed this up with another stunning TEDx Talk: And if that's not enough, this beautiful Upworthy short on Stephen and his work is sure to bring a tear to your eye: Stephen Ritz is the teacher you wish you had. The teacher every kid deserves. A true paradigm breaker,

We've got a nutritional crisis. I think most of the food that we eat is what I call a mess, a manufactured edible synthetic substance that is packaged for single use with infinite shelf life designed to sit there forever and seduce and smell wonderful and taste incredible and dissolve and get you to buy one bag more. That's educator Stephen Ritz, this week on the Rich Roll Podcast. The Rich Roll Podcast.

Hey, everybody. How you doing? What's going on? What's the news? It's Rich Roll here, your host on this little podcast. Thanks for tuning in. As you most likely know at this point, each week I engage the best, most pioneering, paradigm-breaking, and often revolutionary minds and personalities. Today I've got a huge personality for you guys that span the full spectrum of health, wellness, fitness, medicine, nutrition, spirituality, psychology, athletic performance, inspiration, and excellence. and nutrition, spirituality, psychology, athletic performance, inspiration, and excellence. These are not interviews. They are conversations. The purpose of which is to leverage the insights provoked to simply help you live and be better, to help all of us unlock and unleash our best, most authentic selves. So thanks for subscribing to the show on iTunes. Thank you for spreading

the word on social media and telling your friends. And thank you for always clicking through the Amazon banner ad at richroll.com for all your Amazon purchases. It's a great free way to support the mission. So why don't you go ahead, bookmark the link from the banner ad on my site. Why don't you? Make it easy. And it's a win-win for all of us. So one of the biggest contributors to our epidemic of childhood obesity and the rising incidence of type 2 diabetes in young people is unhealthy school food, right? Huge problem.

I talk about it on the podcast all the time. So I'm so pleased to offer a microphone today to Stephen Ritz, who is an educator and an administrator in the South Bronx, who is working very diligently and very passionately to combat and overcome this problem. He's one of the most inspiring game changers I've ever met. He's an elementary school teacher who is catalyzing generations of young, underprivileged, at-risk students to incredible academic successes while also simultaneously reclaiming and rebuilding his community, the Bronx. So how is he doing this? Well, he's doing it through food, specifically growing food. His Bronx classroom featured the very first indoor edible wall in the entire New York City Department of Education. And that wall routinely

generates enough produce to feed healthy meals to 450 students, while also training the youngest nationally certified workforce in America. And now he's growing food both in his classroom as well as across urban gardens that are peppered throughout the Bronx. And to date, Stephen's extended student and community family have grown more than 30,000 pounds of vegetables that feed his students and his community at large. And these endeavors have moved his students' attendance from 40%, which is really low, right, to 93% daily. That's incredible. He's also helped create 2,200 youth jobs in the Bronx. And now he's building the very first independently financed National Health, Wellness, and Biodiversity Center in a 100-year-old reclaimed school library.

This guy's work has been featured everywhere, everything from Forbes to the Wall Street Journal, The Guardian, ABC, CNN, NBC, NPR. He was recently named a 2015 top 10 finalist for the prestigious Global Teacher Prize. And in 2014, he and his fourth and fifth grade students were invited to and feted by none other than the White House. His accomplishments and his accolades are many, many, many, too many to list. I first came across his message by way of his incredibly inspiring TEDx Manhattan Talk, which is ranked in the top 25 food and education TED Talks of all time. And it's used for teacher training and workforce development globally, which is amazing. I'll embed this talk as well as a second TED talk that he did and a recent,

very cool short documentary on his work that premiered on Upworthy. It's a very cool piece. I'll put all of that on the episode page at richroll.com. And also, and quite impressively, Stephen recently lost more than 100 pounds. So how did he do this? Well, he did it by modeling positive behavior and simply eating what he and his students grow in school. All right, you guys, Stephen Ritz. This guy is the teacher you wish you had, the teacher every kid deserves. A true paradigm breaker. This is a guy who sets the pace for future generations of teachers to come. So get ready because this guy's got enough energy to power a city.

So I guess that's why they call him the Green Bronx Machine. Enjoy. Yeah, from watching all the interviews and everything like that and the TED Talks, Yeah, from watching all the interviews and everything like that and the TED Talks, you're looking trim. How much weight did you lose? You lost like 100 pounds, yeah? Yeah, a little over 100 pounds. That's amazing. Yep.

But now I have two new friends, Zeus and Apollo, but I want to work on them. Coming in as biceps. Yeah, yeah. So how did you do it? Basically, it got smart. Smaller portions. Less soda for sure. Less soda for sure. That was a killer. But literally just reducing the size of my portions, less salt, less sugar, and knowing when to say when. The first thing I did is I got rid of that big bagel in the morning because the

bagel in the morning was the killer with the huge coffee. When I learned that a bagel is like six or seven slices of bread and I'm having that at six o'clock in the morning with a 24 ounce coffee, six ounces of which is probably sugar. I went to a real small coffee, got rid of the bagel, went with protein.

And that was it. I dropped like 20 pounds in the first two weeks. People told me I look good and the rest I was off to the races. Yeah, well, you do look amazing. So congrats on that. Well, thank you kindly. And I'm so sorry that I missed this wonderful event yesterday.

I'm kicking myself and I'm bummed, so I want to hear what went down. Well, yesterday I was just honored to host the former White House chef Bill Yassas up at our school. Bill and I are working on a series of science STEM education programs because I grow food all year indoors, and Bill loves to cook, but he also loves the science of cooking, the STEM, the technology, all the vocabulary around food, the crystallization of food, the emulsification, the different densities of oils and stuff. So we are going to partner together to build a very robust program endorsed by the New York City Department of Education. Wow. And to think that I am in a community that has limited means and limited access to healthy fresh food and that we are going to be growing it 365 days a year

in the middle of the housing projects is kind of exciting. Yeah, it's crazy. Yeah, it's absolutely crazy. So let's get into that. I mean, I think a good place to start is to, I mean, there's people that listen to this from all over the world. Most people are familiar with the Bronx, the South Bronx, but why don't you indulge us by just painting a picture of what this community is all about? Well, first of all, I love my community. So there is no place like home and there is no place like the South Bronx. But I believe that the borough that gave birth to baggy pants and funky fresh beets can now be home to organically grown red ones. And now you're just crazy talking. No, I'm not crazy talking. You

know, we have slowly but surely become the home of local agriculture, local urban agriculture. And why not? We are a community with limited means and limited access to healthy, fresh food. So the fact that we can grow it ourselves and grow it with 90% less water indoors all year round, and for me, most importantly, aligned to outstanding academic performance is what it's all about. But classroom by classroom, block by block, school by school, we are changing the landscape and the mindset of the South Bronx. And I like to say the Bronx can change attitudes now. And you are, you are a shining, bright example of that. And we're going to get into all the amazing work that you're doing. But

let's, let's, let's like have a little sort of statistics class on like, step it back to when before all of this began. Okay, so statistically, the South Bronx is the poorest congressional district in America. We have some of the highest rates of single-parent homes, some of the highest rates of homeless children. You know, Bronx County is the 62nd rated county of all 62 in New York State for health outcomes and income. So there are some real health and wealth disparities in my borough. Right. And at the time, prior to all of the things that you've been doing, I think attendance rates were something like 43 percent. and well oh okay so what i'm talking about like yeah sure so for like kids and kind of like you know what it's like to you know live below the poverty line and be faced with you know sort of

this nutritional desert you know scenario where it's just bodegas you know pushing fast food and cigarettes and malt liquor essentially you are 100 right i mean there are a lot of wonderful shopkeepers in the bronx so i don't want to disparage anyone. But I think if a visitor from another planet came to the South Bronx, they would think that, like, McDonald's and Dunkin' Donuts are the chief, you know, places of congregation and social interface for the community. People are there for breakfast, for lunch, for dinner. They're open 24 hours. We have weddings in McDonald's, for God's sake. Is that right, really? I mean, they practically stalk us. You know, if you look at the highest densities of where kids go to school,

there's usually a McDonald's, you know, within walking distance, on the way, with happy smiles and happy meals, but, you know. And cheap. And cheap, but cheap food is so damn expensive. And eating across the rainbow is not a bag of Skittles, damn it. It is healthy, fresh food, and my kids need it. 75% of the kids who I see label learning disabled would not be if their parents had access to good prenatal nutrition.

And to think that's in the Bronx, to think that's America, is crazy. In some of my classes, 8 out of 10 kids know someone with diabetes. Awful. 8 out of 10. 8 out of 10. I mean, I have 200-pound sixth graders. We have a championship basketball team, but most of them don't look like athletes. They look more like the ball than the athlete.

I mean, we're very talented, but we've got a nutritional crisis. I think most of the food that we eat is what I call a mess, a manufactured edible synthetic substance that is packaged for single use with infinite shelf life, designed to sit there forever and seduce and smell wonderful and taste incredible and dissolve and get you to buy one bag more. Yeah, absolutely. Frankenfoods that are highly, highly addictive. Yeah, that's a good, I've never heard that term. No, you haven't? I like mess. I'm going to take that. Yeah, okay. And I'll steal frankenfoods. That's cool. Yeah. It's definitely frankenfood in the

South Bronx. And how did you end up there? You were playing basketball in Europe, yeah? Well, I'm from the Bronx, so I am a Bronx native. But I was playing basketball. Well, you did your homework. I did play basketball in Europe, got hurt, and before I left, took a test to become a teacher. And in the 80s, there was a tremendous exodus of teaching, and a tremendous educational crisis in New York City, particularly in the Bronx and in certain communities. So lo and behold, I passed the test. And when I came back, I came back in a cast and I wound up taking a job. You got injured playing basketball? Yeah, I blew out something and, you know, it just, I needed to come home. And I wound up taking a job at South Bronx High School in 1983.

I think it was the only standing building in like an eight block radius. Hip hop was taking off. Crack was everywhere. And at that point, the Bronx was burnt. It was toast. Make no doubt about it. I mean, it was just awful. But I kind of believed in kids and found my niche teaching. And for a long time,

I was still playing ball. I was the best athlete in the school. I won the slam dunk championship, you know, even as a teacher back then. And then did you go off and play college ball? No, this was after I played college. This was after I played college. But I got the bug for teaching. But the Bronx was just really a tough place to be then. And I left. I wound up going out to Arizona for a while and got a scholarship to go on for my master's at ASU, where I pursued a master's in special ed, started teaching there and came back home and have not looked back since. Had some stints in the restaurant business and some other stuff in service industries. But really, my love is teaching,

and I haven't looked back. And then a few years ago, I found that about gardening, because I'm not a farmer. I mean, you've done your homework. You're a farmer of humans. Yes. I'm a people farmer, I like to say. The kids are my seeds. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But when you first began, did you have this revolutionary spark? Or did you become frustrated with the daily grind of it? Or where did the birth of this idea of really trying to transform the community, like where did that arise from? I guess it's that Pee Wee Herman line, I'm a rebel. I mean, I've always been kind of that rebel insurgent teacher from day one. So in the age of hip hop, I was really

into the power of pen. And even though back then I was of hip hop, I was really into the power of pen. And even though back then I was a tremendous athlete, I was more into the power of words than I was into, you know, the power of being an athlete, because I knew there was always another better athlete out there. You know, there was always someone stronger, faster, but I really felt that if we gave kids a voice, particularly a voice in the South Bronx Bronx that was a unified voice and a positive voice, that they could grow something greater. I started an academic Olympic team. I had a bunch of math champions.

I was really doing nutty stuff with the most marginalized kids because I felt if we can move those who are apart from to becoming a part of, together we can all prosper. And we literally grew something greater way before we were ever growing plants in the South Bronx. Yeah, and the growing plants in the classroom occurred almost accidentally. Yeah, 20 years later, literally 20 years later. I had a lot of incarnations in between. I mean, I had a Special Olympics athletic team. We were the first team to compete in the five-barrel bike tour.

Wow. olympics athletic team we were the first team to compete in the five borough bike tour wow um i at one point i was that nutty teacher when we had um tokens that had kids creating algorithms to use one token to go into the subway and never come out and hit every single stop and you know closed loop systems uh-huh uh we won science fairs we won writing competitions we took on big projects we had graffiti contests we had poetryests. Anything and everything that brought the classroom into the community and the community into the classroom that had a positive kind of multiplier effect, concentric circles. This was way before food. I mean, way before I even knew. Right, right, right, right. And one of the things that you said, I can't remember where I read it, but I thought it was really kind of illustrative of

where you're coming from and your style is this idea. You said something like, I'm not interested in incremental change. I'm interested in transformative change or exponential change. Oh, absolutely. I am not yet. So it's the idea of like just trying to – well, yeah, we're in a difficult situation up here, but let's try to make it 10% better. No, I don't want to push the needle. I want to flip the script.

I believe that my kids, you know, that the Bronx, we are poised, ready, willing, and able to export our talent diversity. We are ready. The vast market of human capital there is insane. Hell, we brought the world hip hop. But you're like a one-man cyclone. So how is this working, you know, within a system that probably has a certain way that it likes to do things and maybe isn't so interested in somebody coming in and ruffling a bunch of feathers.

Well, I've skinned my knees and had a few bloody noses along the way. I'm not going to say I haven't, but I've also built up a lot of momentum. And I'm not the only one. There are a lot of heroes. So I am one of many. And I think the more people like you acknowledge people like me, the more we can create a whole systemic change. Because for far too long, this system has really perpetuated the status quo. Yeah.

And, you know, neither jail nor retail is a living wage in the South Bronx. Yeah. So we've got to flip that script. We've got to move kids into spheres of success they've never imagined. Yeah. And we've got to move them from being consumers to producers. Right. To writing their own story, telling their own story. And that's got to move them from being consumers to producers, writing their own story,

telling their own story. And that's what you've done. And that's what makes your story so profound, because you've done it under the most difficult circumstances. And when you kind of canvas across America, across the United States, and you look at kind of the systemic problems in public education, even private education, with school lunches and all kinds of, you know, issues that sort of plague and affect schools across the country. You know, in affluent suburban communities, they're having difficulty making even incremental change. And under these, you know, extraordinary circumstances, you've been able to kind of, you know, 10x the whole thing. Yeah, I mean, listen, everybody's challenged these days, you know, particularly around health, particularly around nutrition.

You know, you have kids who are so disconnected from things, from people, from places, you know, even wealthy kids who are getting tons of money and just eating themselves to death or internetting themselves to death. To my kids who are also nickel and diming themselves to death. But we've really got to look at certain realities. The reality is this is the first generation of children that are not going to outlive their parents largely because of what they're eating. I'm looking at kids going through puberty in elementary school now.

That didn't happen 30 years ago. It's got to be the food. You know, I'm looking at what a portion is, and I come from a family where food is love. But when you look at what portions of cheap food are today compared to what they were 20 or 30 years ago, Jesus Christ. Yeah, it's crazy. You know, make that spoon a little smaller, a little less rice and a whole lot more love, please. All right. So 20 years into your teaching career,

and you happen to leave some daffodil bulbs on the heater one day, right? Crazy daffodil story. And a whole movement is born. So walk me through how this transpired. Well, it wasn't, I mean, there's a lot of tragedy. So, you know, there was some tragedy in my life. For years I had been doing middle school crisis intervention, real troubled kids in middle schools. We had a tragedy in my family, and I wound up moving closer to where I was living and taking a job very close to the

immediate high school in my community. Little did I know the immediate high school in my community had a 17% graduation rate, you know, had 48 security agents, 18 armed police officers, and over 200 felonies a year. Like the metal detectors at the front door and the whole thing. They were macing kids in school on a daily basis. They were bringing kids out in handcuffs. I mean, it was a classically failing school. Add to that kids coming out of jail and being put into this school and some

assertion that schools were being targeted for certain kids to kind of make them explode and implode, if you will. There were some real problems. But the beauty of my situation is after all those years in middle school, both of those kids I knew, you know, years later. And I was happy to see them and they were happy to see me. So I went from being a teacher to a dean, to a lead dean, literally in a matter of months and was able to affect some change and was blessed to come across 17 kids, a bulk of whom came with a variety of baggage from special needs to special accommodations, to special housing, to previous other housing, so to speak. But they believed in me and they knew I believed in them. And I had a certain amount of street credibility with them. And they knew that my job was to love them until they

learned to love themselves. Lo and behold, someone did send us a box of these crazy daffodil bulbs. I didn't know what the hell they were. They looked like garlic, but to me, they were really projectiles. And I was mortified that they were. They looked like garlic, but to me they were really projectiles, and I was mortified that they were going to be going at each other. So I just hid them one day behind the, you know, got this box and hid it behind this huge radiator and kind of forgot about it. One day there was a fight in class,

and a kid went behind the radiator to look for a weapon, and there were hundreds of flowers coming out of this box. Beautiful, bright yellow flowers, and it was like an aha moment. And the boys wanted to give them to the girls for sex, and the girls wanted to give them to the parents, and people thought we could sell them and do this. And it kind of diffused this insanely kind of really crazed moment in class.

You know, the beauty of a flower. So it was like this light bulb moment. Yeah, it was like a light bulb moment. I was also constantly being asked by kids who were going back and forth to probation why plants were growing out of the side of the buildings. And, you know, nature happens. Seeds, if they take root, will, you know, will germinate and will grow. And that was what this was about. So that year, lo and behold, I planted 25,000 daffodils bulbs across New York City with gang kids. And the program was to take kids and go into neighborhoods that they would never want to

go into to do something greater and to kind of create this beauty. And the kids loved it. They loved seeing the daffodil sprout. They loved getting out there. They loved getting dirty. And at that time, there were still so many abandoned lots that we specialized in taking kind of unproductive, ugly places and turning them into aspirational, inspirational, productive places where people wanted to aggregate and kind of came together. And it was great. That's cool.

So the city is permissive? Do you have to jump through a bunch of hoops in order to access all those lots and all of that? Asking for permission is begging for denial. So you just go do it. Go do it and give everybody else credit and say thank you and credit the one you know is going to be your biggest. I can't let my secret out. But asking for permission is begging for denial. It's a different city now, too, than it was then.

This was before Bloomberg. So there was a lot going on. And now, listen, the Bronx is a totally new place. Not to say we don't have our issues. Of course we do. But back then, there were so many places. And people wanted us, which was also great. People were like, hey, Steve, we've got a place for you.

And it was great for my kids to be a part of. And quite frankly, there were a lot of teachers there who have since moved on who were thrilled to see my kids not in their classes and spending time with me. But my job was to love them until they learned to love themselves. And I went the distance. I had my daughter with me. So my daughter grew up with them and they saw what parenting looked like and what love looked like and what concern and commitment looked like. And lo and behold, all those 17 kids went on to graduate.

A bulk went on to work with Majora Carter at Sustainable South Bronx. I just met Majora last week. Majora is a what? Yay, Majora. We both spoke at this event, and I got to hear her give a talk. It was very inspirational. We put in the first green roof. It was her vision and my kids, and that was awesome.

And that's about as locally grown as locally can happen. Right. And these kids are, I i mean the typical kid i mean they're coming from single-parent families perhaps occasionally homeless even in certain situations or in shelters for sure um living in the projects etc i mean what are you know learning disabled i mean what are some of the kind of conditions that you're having to you know navigate with with sort of the typical i mean the amount of violence in my community is saying the amount of conditions that you're having to navigate with sort of the typical. I mean, the amount of violence in my community is insane. The amount of environmental constraints in my community are insane.

So when you look, I always wonder how many kids really are labeled, who are labeled learning disabled, really are just responding to life crises. You know, shelters, homelessness, alcohol. I mean, you know, drugs, that kind of stuff. And the fact that a lot of parents themselves don't have, you know, a high school education, much less college. So there are a lot of things at root in our society. It's not a part of anybody's culture to sit on a corner and drink wine and go to jail. But sadly, statistically, it tends to happen more in communities like mine.

And I'm out to change that. Yeah. And what is the gang culture like? I mean, back then, I suppose. Oh, back then it was awful. I mean, back then drugs were just everywhere. You know, I mean, now the drug problem is still very much a problem. It hasn't gone away. So don't think we've solved it because we haven't, America. Own up to it. But it's kind of gone behind closed doors. Cell phones and technology and also real estate values have changed that. But, you know, one only needs to walk into certain neighborhoods and say that, hmm, something isn't right. But, you know, the open-air drug supermarkets

of the 90s and the millennium are long since gone, and thank God. But in some ways, that's a different problem, too, because it's behind closed doors, now it's prescription yeah or it also becomes harder to kind of know what's going on right i suppose right but also the proliferation since then of fast food i mean i'm seeing kids expand on a weekly basis you know cheap food is now everywhere and um you know franchise food fast food bulletproof restaurants it's everywhere so you're combating simultaneously sort of starvation because they're nutritionally deficient and yet obesity. Exactly. At the same time. I mean, my big thing is, you know, if an America's listening, you know, we've got to address this. Civilized nations feed people. And we still want to believe in the food drive, in the

canned food drive, like kind of like the bucket brigade. Oh, let's put out the fire one bucket at a time. We can grow food. We can change lives. We just have to commit to do that. And civilized nations feed their children. Civilized nations educate their children. We've got to stop this cradle to prison pipeline. I mean, it works for some people. So some people want to see it keep happening. But we got to change that and that's my job to flip the script so you go and you plant these daffodils and these flowers and these vacant lots and and you're giving these these kids a very tactile experience of of seeing you know this process from you know seed literally to you know to to flowering right and and and giving them you know kind of an outlet outside to uh you know to

to have a different kind of experience right and so i take you know i would assume that that the result of that is that you're seeing a change in these kids i mean you're you're i mean you're you're like this hyperkinetic guy right like so And these kids are starving for somebody to emotionally invest in them, right? And so here you are saying, okay, I'm here. Let's do this. Yeah, my job, I mean, you hit the nail on the head. It's an emotional thing. My job is to love children and people until they learn to love themselves.

Yes, I'm a teacher. Yes, I'm an educator. You can give me a million and one titles. But my job is to love people until they learn to love themselves and to be the power of example. And so you have these vacant lots and you're growing flowers. And then you're like, oh, well, here's something. What can I do next? Well, it got interesting.

How does it go from there? Because these kids were really a great labor force. And we were in communities where people needed labor um and we're willing to pay for it whether it's demolition work or yard work or landscaping work you know tree pruning and i who knew you could make fifty thousand dollars a year being a tree pruner who knew you know mayor bloomberg was talking about all these parks that we were going to have and every person should be five minutes from a park or Well, someone needs to take care of them, and why not my kids? So we started looking at that. We started looking at golf course maintenance, and our proximity to Westchester,

New Jersey, and Long Island was really beneficial to my kids who were willing to work and go to work daily and kind of put down the tools of their past trade and embrace tools of a new one, so to speak, because they were going to get paid and get paid living wage. A lot of these and son businesses need labor. And kids feel good. The nice thing about outdoor gardening, for better or for worse, you show up, it's very reinforcing. You show up and the lot looks like crap. 20 minutes later, you see the progress of your work. And that builds a sense of self-esteem, a sense of accomplishment. Yes, I did that. I took something ugly and I made it beautiful. You take it a step further, you put a seed in the ground, you come back a week later and say, wow, I'm somehow responsible for that. So there was short-term benefit, mid-term benefit,

and long-term benefit that kept kids coming back. And all along, no matter where we go, people were very polite. They were very welcoming to us. They wanted us there. We were doing something great. So it wasn't adversarial. We went to places we never expected to be and were embraced with open arms. Right. And left flowers. How cool is that? And left flowers.

And giving these kids a trade where they can go out and make money, earn a living wage, and be employed. Right. The big myth. Because the big myth is like these kids need hard skills. I say the soft skills are really the hard skills. Kids understand technology. They understand tools. Listen, kids farm better than me.

They use the internet better than me. They do everything better than me. I just get all the credit. It's a great system. But what these kids need practice is in showing up, managing their money, talking to people, not taking your paycheck and going out and buying a tattoo and a new set of gold teeth, that kind of showing up at the job and not trying to pick up the homeowner's wife, those kinds of things, you know, putting your swag to the side. Those are the real hard skills. And those don't show up on the standardized tests. And that's not part of the curriculum.

Right. But it can be. And my kind of, I guess my, listen, I could cure cancer. I could cure AIDS. I could roll back the tsunami. And I work in assistance. That's great, Steve. What about test scores and attendance? So when you figure out how to get test scores and attendance by getting kids to show up and grow up, it's awesome. And the cool thing about plants and nature is that it really responds. We're part of a bigger living ecosystem and kids get that. You know, I always say I like to see kids pollinating plants instead of each other. But when they learn about pollinating plants, they wind up passing the standardized tests. You know, those science regions. I'm not claiming I've produced Nobel

scientists. So please, I'm not. But I am saying it is possible to teach to the test by doing stuff that's fun. So the kids get that experience. You know, nothing is more thrilling for a kid to pass a standardized test that they never thought they could by learning about life and having fun in the process. And that's the amazing thing because basically by implementing these programs, and we're going to get into more of how that evolved, but you were able to take a population of kids that literally weren't showing up for school half the time and raise attendance rates up to like 93%. 93%. We went from 40% to 93%. We're targeted kids. We're targeted kids. And it's kind of a leap of faith, I think, if you're looking at this through the lens of conventional wisdom, that growing plants either in the classroom or on these lots has any connection to academic performance in the

classroom. And yet, it's undeniable that that's what's transpiring here, and that's your experience. Yeah, without a doubt. Without a doubt. I mean, the thing about plant seed is that they're living, breathing things, and kids don't realize that. But you can't make them fight, and they don't speak back. So like, you know, in my neighborhood, everyone has a dog. They're either really cute and adorable and two pounds, or they're the biggest dog with the biggest teeth in the world. There's no middle ground. But plants, they need you. Actually, they really don't. But don't tell the kids that, because I've been lying for a long time. But as long as you give them water and love,

they're going to grow. And kids need to see that. You can't put plants to fight. You can't have them attack each other. But as a good educator, I can invent all these scenarios that happen to plants. I can't kill Fluffy the rabbit, but if the kids come to class and they fart too much

or they listen to too much Little Wayne, I say, put Little Wayne on. I can go when the kids leave and I'll kill the plant. I'll pour bleach on the plant. See, that music is toxic. I can't do that to the dog. I can't ethically do that to fish. But you know, I'll kill the plant. I'll pour bleach on the plant. See, that music is toxic. I can't do that to the dog. I can't ethically do that to fish.

But to plants, I can. So you create all this kind of dialogue around what you're doing. And if you're a smart teacher, you realize that there's a lens, if you will, a point of entry that ties to common core, that ties to content area, that ties to subject matter that can be related to in a test. And if you make it fun, kids don't get up to fail. And no one rises to low expectations, damn it, now that I'm thinking about it. You know, people rise to high expectations.

So I've got to set them for them, and that's what I do. But we can have a lot of fun and grow a lot of vegetables and flowers along the way. Right, right. It's cheaper than therapy, you know. Yeah. I wish you were my therapist. Oh, I don't know. I mean, you get a lot of fruit and, you know. Yeah. I wish you were my therapist. Oh, I don't know. I mean, you get a lot of fruit and vegetables with me.

Right. So at what point do you start bringing this into the classroom and start creating kind of more structured, I guess, for lack of a better word, curriculum around it? Okay, cool question. So it was a lot of fun doing stuff outdoors, except I really don't like being outdoors. You know, to me, the world would be better if it was all dark and indoors, like a club or a good restaurant, that's

how, or the gym. And the problem is that you're limited by seasonality. Plus, you know, try getting on the plane with, you know, 20 big black kids and a bunch of pitchforks in the South Bronx, you know, thank God for my wife and, you know, the police verification, you know, what are you farming for? Thank God for my wife and the police verification. What are you farming for? So I wanted kids in school. I didn't want them just with me. I wanted them in school.

So when I learned about vertical farming and indoor farming, I was like, wow. I could take all of that, not have water fights, not have hose fights, not need a bunch of tools, and put it in a classroom. And then link it to jobs and employment and opportunity. And guess where the kids were? In school. And it also held my colleagues accountable because they had to treat those kids differently because they couldn't just behave for me or not behave for me. So it gave everybody more, like I like to say, more bats at the plate, more steps to the plate. And that's what kids need.

They need more at-bats. Was that difficult to kind of pitch that idea to the administration because it's sort of out of the box? I didn't pitch it. I just did it. You just started doing it. Don't ask for permission.

I just started doing it. I mean, now I've learned a lot since. You know, my program got huge and I probably clipped my own wings a little bit and I understand that in the process. But, you know, it's been a learning curve and I'm willing to share that. You know, my experience should be everyone's experience. And, you know, I hope people in the process. But it's been a learning curve and I'm willing to share that. My experience should be everyone's experience

and I hope people learn from me. My job is to blaze the way for others. But there are tons of Herculean teachers out there. So take that big leap. Do something bold. Do something great. Now, the thing is, don't forget the mandate of your day job

because there are a lot of teachers that want to get out there and change the world and I'm one of them. But remember what you paid for and remember what your principal is going to evaluate you for because that will help you have longer legs. And they're evaluating you based on standardized test results? Well, sometimes standardized tests. But, you know, listen, you've got to be true to your day job. Autonomy is not the freedom for me to do whatever the hell I want on someone else's time with someone else's money. Autonomy is my responsibility to get the job done for what

I'm paid for the most efficacious way possible. So I'm somewhat of a rebel, but I like to play by rules. But asking for permission is begging for denial. So get in there, build what you got to do, but do it within the mandate of your day job. Make it fun. Make it sexy. Make it creative. And that's why I love project-based learning. But, you know, I was just a little bit ahead of my time because now project-based learning is all the rage. Right. I mean, project-based learning, I mean, basically define that for people that might not be familiar exactly with what you're talking about.

So project-based learning involves, well, it involves a lot less of what I'm doing, which is way too much talking, but that's what we're here to do today. It involves the kids doing. It involves cooperation, collaboration, problem solving, not me teaching you facts, but me teaching you and working you through a process so you can substantiate your opinions with facts and you can get information. You know, the reality is we're preparing kids for a future we know very little about. But if they don't know how to cooperate, if they don't know how to collaborate, if they don't know how to communicate, all of it is not. But my kids, they're hacking their way into their future. So problem solving is just that, looking at the problem, understanding what the issues are,

and then looking at an end goal and how do you get there. Right. This idea of providing an experience that they're innately already interested in and then using that as a foundation or a template to teach all sorts of other things that are related to the in-classroom stuff that we all need to learn or whatever to pass these tests, but they're engaged. That's the difference, right? It's not you talking down to them. It's them participating in something that they're into, that they want to show up for, right? There's one word to all of this. Engagement. You've got to meet kids where they're at and continually move them to the zone

of proximal development. So what does that mean? It means I got to do some assessment. I hate to say it, but what's the next next step how can i get you rich roll in 20 minutes to the next step of proximal development academically socially emotionally and physically and that's what it's about it's about a continuous cycle of self-assessment you know i call it very recursive i mean i'm very metacognitive but i'm also very detail-oriented you know um i'm not right i'm not right so if my wife if you're listening you're right i'm not right. I'm not right. So if my wife, if you're listening, you're right. I'm not right, but I'm committed to getting it right, and the kids know that. So I'm not there to talk at them.

I'm here to learn with them. Right. I think the key seems to be to have a kid who is curious, interested, and like you said, engaged. And the job, at least know i've got four kids and you know it's like how can on some level i feel like they're either curious or they're not you know i can't i can't instill curiosity in them but when i find something that they're interested in then you gravitate towards that and you support that and you fan that flame absolutely through that you can do all kinds of different

things. Through that, anything is possible. As opposed to trying to, you know, jam a square peg into a round hole and get them interested in something they're just not interested in. You know, in this crazy data-driven society and all the metrics about tests and data, there's one fact that remains true. The biggest prognosticator to a child's success is having one kind, caring adult accessible in their life. And that's my role, to be that kind, caring, accessible adult. I mean, I bring my A-game daily. I come to class prepared, but I come to be that kind, caring. I'm the conductor of an orchestra I can't play an instrument of. The kids are better farmers than me. They're better

scientists than me. They're better on the internet than me. They do all the work. I get all the credit. It's a wonderful system. All right. So you're growing food in the classroom and you start to grow these. No, it wasn't food. It wasn't food. It was still ornamental. So when do we get to the food? How do we get to the food part? Well, we didn't even know what the hell food was. I mean, you know, for me, food was, you know, a two liter soda and a bag of salt and vinegar chips and some flaming Cheetos in the morning with a burrito. You know, I mean, I was eating four or five quarter pounders a day. Understand? It was crazy. I love the fact that this is as much a learning experience for you as it is for the kids. You've taken this journey with them and

you've transformed yourself as well as the kids and the community in the process. Well, yeah. I mean, that's what it's about. It's not do as I say, you know, it's do as I do, do as we do. We're all in this together, you know, and that's it. Together we can all prosper, you know, each one teach one. Let's do this together. But we didn't know too much about vegetables. What was interesting is my first foray into vegetables, quite frankly, was we had read this small story about doctors without borders and how kids in Jalisco, Mexico were going blind simply because

they had vitamin deficiencies. And these vitamins, literally, if kids were growing leafy greens, that they would be able to not go blind or not need all this surgery. So my kids just wanted to provide them these grow boxes for leafy greens. And then we found out leafy greens are something that like most of my African-American kids like to eat or the grandparents like to eat, collard greens. So we started growing collard greens and we started growing what we call the hood vegetables. You know, the stuff you get through the bulletproof window. Green peppers, you know, kind of like the stuff that has a longer shelf life. We didn't know much about it and it was cool. The flip side is a lot of my kids were also getting their second or third meal a day in soup kitchens, so they also knew something about nutrition elsewhere. But it wasn't until

we went to Whole Foods and really learned about what was out there, you know, and then all the white people buying that stuff, which was crazy. We had no idea. You do like a field trip to Whole Foods? Yeah. I remember my first field trip to Whole Foods. I couldn't believe it. I was just adding up all the miles on the vegetables. They all should have gotten free flights somewhere. And there they were just waiting to be eaten by all these wealthy white people.

And, you know, the kids, we saw green peppers for $1.99 a pound. And we saw red peppers and orange peppers. And it was very poignant. The kids said, man, you know, food is like people. It comes in.99 a pound, and we saw red peppers and orange peppers, and it was very poignant. The kids said, man, you know, food is like people. It comes in all shapes, sizes, and colors. But, you know, I had some real entrepreneurs of very interesting sorts who said, yo, check out the white people. They're buying red peppers and orange peppers and, you know, yellow peppers for $6.99 a

pound instead of the green ones for $1.99. The kids said, Ritz, you screwed us. And they actually used more graphic language than that. I said, what did I do? They said, you should have had us grow on the good shiznit. You know, and there we were. We started growing the good stuff. And Whole Foods was very kind.

They started letting us sell it to them. Oh, wow. That's cool. And we started learning about this whole, you know, the whole local vor movement, local food movement, food movement took off. And we started learning. and it was cool. I mean, I learned about arugula. Man, I love arugula.

You know, we didn't know. Most of our thing was like, you know, lettuce that came on a quarter pounder with cheese. And you're growing this in the classroom in like boxes? So we started growing. I started with basically sub-irrigated planting containers in classrooms. Then I moved to vertical walls. And I learned that I could grow vertically. You're talking to the oldest sixth grader in the world. And I just thought, wow, this was cool. And the thought of taking a half an acre and condensing

it into my classroom with some grow lights was just the coolest thing in the world. I didn't know how much work it was going to be, but I was determined to do it. But the kids loved it. It was like green graffiti. We were putting logos on walls. We were doing all kinds of stuff. That's what's so cool. I've seen a bunch of the walls that you guys have done, and they're art pieces. They are like living works of art. They are living, breathing art. They're beautiful. Yeah. And it really is like this sort of urban growing graffiti. It's really cool stuff.

It is cool stuff. Exactly. But five, know, five, six years later, you know, I realized that I can't ask every teacher to do that. So now I'm really focused on replicable, scalable technology and things that, so that's been my, you know, and also things that are far more cost effective, you know, and just easier to use in a classroom. I'm into scale now. I'm into scale replication and, you know, an easier application. I'm also working with little kids now because one of the things that I learned is I had kids who were 18, 19, 20 years old with children of their own

who were reading on second and third grade reading level and they were really little kids and they have so much to unpack. But when I learned about little kids, that was the game changer. It is easier to raise healthy children than fix broken men. And the little kids, they're just adorable. It is easier to raise healthy children than fix broken men. And the little kids, they're just adorable.

It's easier to build good habits around planting lima beans and fun stuff in classrooms. And hopefully I won't have to have so many bigger problems at a later stage. So I'm still very much into the older kids. Don't get me wrong. And that's where my first love is and will always be. But if I can problem solve this at a younger age

and get these kids eating healthy and growing healthy and most importantly learning healthy and performing well in school at a young age, it changes. You're setting them up for success. Whereas I'm thrilled to have been part and parcel to 2,200 local jobs,

nothing will thrill me more than to send a cohort of kids to the Bronx High School of Science because that will be a far greater game change for their generation and all their children as well. Yeah, the ripple effect. Right, the ripple effect. The multiplier effect. Yeah, it just will transform the community. And I want to get into the scalable stuff, but still I'm trying to understand how this whole thing begins to blossom.

So you're growing food and then this starts to expand, right? You have tower gardens and at some point the food finds its way into the cafeteria of the school. Oh, so we started growing so much food in school. So I started, to your point, you know, asking for permission is begging for denial, but I started looking at some of the programs that were existing in the DOE, Department of Ed, for those who don't know. And they had this great program called School Garden to School Cafe. You know, they'd come and you'd build a garden, you know, and you'd get food and put it into the cafeteria.

So I just decided I was going to have the best School Garden to School Cafe program ever. And I might as well do it year-round. And, you know, they had the program, so I gave them the credit. I had the kids and the resources to do it, and so we did it. We gave them credit, and it was a beautiful thing, and the kids loved eating it. But then I aligned it to, like, research because, like, the kids really liked the crunch factor. So we started, like, researching Department of Ed menu options, and literally the kids thought they were, like, picking their menu.

But, no, they were aggregating data. They were doing the science. They were doing the kind of stuff that they needed to do that they would see six months later on the test, just not realizing it. Oh, I did that for Ritz when we were talking. They were talking. They were looking at it, but they also started loving eating it.

And then along the way, my kids became activists because we realized about how many people don't have food and some of the larger issues in the world. And to think, I'm so proud of my kids and I want to shout them out. You know, that first cohort of kids that raised money for the tsunami victims and in Haiti, you know,

when my kids, when the poorest congressional did, we did a food and clothing drive. It had 17 vans of clothes and sneakers. My kids hit up local drug dealers for stuff to donate to victims of natural disasters. And to think, if my kids in the South Bronx can do it, you know, kids on the Upper East Side, West Side, Beverly Hills, across this country, everybody, give up one pair of sneakers and donate it to someone who needs it. Your life will be better and so will theirs. So it was a game changer.

We gave birth to the Green Bronx Machine. Green Bronx Machine. Yeah, so explain what the Green Bronx Machine is. Okay, so it's a work in progress for sure. But what happened is at that time, my kids and I were doing such nutty stuff, people wanted to support us. And they wanted to donate money, which was great. But we didn't have a vehicle to accept that. And I wanted to do it legally. So people suggested that we open up a non-for-profit. But I never like things that start with a non. I like to say instead of a non-for-profit, we are a for-purpose organization with charitable status. If you define yourself by not and non, you're doomed. So that's part of the problem, I think, right there. Because no one should be a not and nothing should be a non. We should all be a for something. So we are a for-purpose

organization. And people wanted to donate scholarship money for some of my kids who wanted to go to college and actually got in, but we didn't have a vehicle to do it and do it legally. So we cobbled together this 501c3, which we are. And by the time we got that thing established, those big donors moved on. And we're learning. And what we were, we were dedicated at that time primarily to workforce development and community development. You know, getting kids, those who are apart from becoming a part of and generating jobs. And we were very good at that. We always said that, well, my wife's name is Lizette.

And we always said kids who went through Camp Lizette were ready to go to work. And so the kids knew that if they put up with me and put up with my wife and gave me six months and got their life together, and they actually found that their lives were coming together by spending time with me and Lizette, that, you know, things got better. Their drama went away. They were getting credits. They were closer to graduation. They were happy.

They weren't, you know. We gave a lot of boyfriend-girlfriend advice, too. You know, all that stuff. Life advice. So it became a workforce development program. But then we started also realizing academic success and community development. So we continued to evolve. Then I found out about elementary school education and just became in love with that.

So Green Bronx Machine believes that healthy students are at the heart of healthy schools, and healthy schools are at the heart of healthy, resilient communities, and that together we can grow something greater. And then, of course, I found Tower Garden Technology, and that was the biggest game changer for me ever. Tower Gardens changed everything for me. How I got there is a funny story. So tell that story. Okay, that story is crazy.

My kids and I won the National Indoor Gardening Championship. And we get invited to this show in another state. And my kids, the bulk of them never left the Bronx. So we get invited to this state. And I was so naive. I didn't realize what they were growing in this state. And we get out there. And everyone's like, you know, the kids are going. They thought I was a, we're growing too, buddy.

Loved your TED Talk, dude. So the kids thought I was the coolest teacher in the world. You know, the first interview they wanted was me in high times, and I had to run. That's not what you want to do on a school trip. But we started looking at the technology. And lo and behold, you know, I came across tower garden technology. It was affordable. It was practical. It was scalable. It was small. It was precise. It was concise. And it worked. And I said, all the things that I've always wanted to do with plants, I could do with this thing

and not get dirty and do it in class and do it year round and put it on wheels and that was a game changer for me so how many tower gardens do you have functioning now in the school in schools we have them across america i mean i put tower gardens in school systems in wisconsin in california in florida um i'm now in the process of building the National Health and Wellness and Learning Center at PS55. So if you haven't seen our TED Talk, that's the TED Talk I'm really proud of, the most recent one, the National Health and Wellness Center. I've seen both. There's two, right? There's a couple, but there's two that are very well-known and some that aren't well-known.

The one that's viral is long ago where I was big and fat that seems to haunt me everywhere. But the one I'm most proud of. It's great, though. Well, the funny thing about that TED Talk. I love that TED Talk. Believe it or not. I'll link it in the show notes

for people that are listening. Well, put the new one. Put the new one in. The old one is funny. The new one where you're wearing the hat? Yeah, the new one where the kids come out on stage.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I want to celebrate the kids and talk about my vision for the future. The old talk was really, I talked about what I did and that about my vision for the future. The old talk was really, I talked about what I did and that was great and people got excited, but where can we take this? How can we flip the script on public education and public nutrition? That's the game changer and we can do that. And Tower Gardens allows for that. Right. I mean, then this kind

of naturally dovetails into scalability, right? So how do we take like, you know, just to kind of paint the picture, I mean, you've, you've, you've trained, you literally have transformed your community, you've transformed the lives of these kids who have now gone, we haven't even got into, you know, sort of the productive lives that they've been able to craft as a result of this experience of being in your classroom and learning these skills. I mean, you're taking, you know, this skill set, these kids who are growing in all these lots and on rooftops across the South Bronx, and then getting hired to go out to the Hamptons

and do rooftop gardens on people's really fancy second homes or what have you. How cool was that? It was our version of the Jeffersons, I like to say, from South Bronx to South Hampton. That's right, our version of the Jeffersons, I like to say, from South Bronx to Southampton. That's right, our version of the Jeffersons. And, you know, pictures of kids holding up checks and getting paid, you know, well to do something that they know how to do to create something beautiful and sustainable that's enriching the lives of the people that are paying for it. I mean, you know, across the board, pillar to post, it's like a win-win for everybody, right? You're seeing this tremendous, you know, not incremental but exponential change in your community and kids going out into the world empowered with skill sets that will serve them their whole life.

Not to mention, you know, teaching them how to be healthy also. A lot of vegetables. A lot of flowers and vegetables, man. Yeah, exactly. And so the idea being, okay, how do we scale this? How do we create this in other school systems? I mean, the one thing you can't scale is you, right? No, I believe I can scale. There's not a Stephen Ritz.

I mean, you are a very unique individual, right? So you can't rely on there being a guy like you in every school system. There should be. But you can have systems. They're coming. They're coming. Right? And it reminds me of a couple things.

They are. They're coming. They're coming. Right? And it reminds me of a couple things. First thing is, two years ago, I went and visited PS244 in Queens. 242? Wait, is it? 244. They were the first school to implement a vegetarian school launch. Oh, I've heard of them. They're awesome. It's great. That got a lot of press because it's vegetarian. But in truth, you know, after visiting them and meeting the kids and the teachers and the administrators, it's really a wellness focused school.

Like it's infused into the DNA of what they've created. It's really cool. That's exactly. It has to be in your DNA. And they worked with an organization that I'm probably going to butcher it. I think it's called the New York Coalition for Healthy School Lunch or something like that. And it sounds like it's probably something similar to this sort of, what was the organization you referenced that allowed you to feed the kids the food that you grew in the cafeteria? The Department of Education School Garden to School Cafe Program. Right,

which is great because there are political and social and economic barriers to letting kids eat the food that they grow. I mean, there's a lot of money that goes into school lunch and a lot of politics. So to penetrate that in the slightest is like a huge victory. And it reminds me, the second example that I was thinking of is when Jamie Oliver did his Food Revolution show, and he tried to do it in Los Angeles. And he was trying to kind of address and overhaul the Los Angeles Unified School District's school lunch program, and he just got shut down. Like, he just couldn't do it.

Well, I'm looking for Jamie. He could partner with me. Jamie, if you're listening, I've been writing to you. You just don't write back. He's a tough guy to get to, right? I know, he's a tough guy to reach. But I think, you know, being able to impact school lunch in any way whatsoever is difficult, but to the extent that you've been able to do that, that's a huge victory.

We have lunch and learn with the principal every week, and the kids grow the food in school. It's amazing. And that's the coolest thing. And there's all this fear around it, like, oh, well, what if somebody gets sick? But they're feeding kids this terrible food, right? So the right questions aren't being asked. Well, the big question I like to ask the kids is, how many nuggets will me see a chicken?

Because even though they like eating chicken and they like eating meat and they like eating hamburgers, they don't realize that came from a cow or a real chicken. Oh, it's a fake chicken. You know, it comes from the food factory. It's in the basement of Costco. Kids don't. So I always show them a chicken and say, how many nuggets? Like, what do you mean? Like, well, how many nuggets are you going to get out of that? I mean, what do you mean? So kids don't know. But to your point, this has to be in their DNA. When it's in their DNA, they get it and it transcends everything. There's culture. So this health,

wellness, and learning culture is critical if we're going to teach kids how to change their lives. So you have scaled it, right? There's been programs in other cities with other schools. So let's get into that a little bit. I mean, it's cuckoo. In two weeks, I'm headed down to Columbia, South America, to think a kid from the South Bronx could make it to the front page of the Columbia newspaper, given the relationship between Columbia and South Bronx in the 70s 80s and 90s when everything was crazy omg as the kids would say but that's the beauty of this I mean in Colombia has a lot of challenges but they really turned around their inner cities and now they're looking at ways to scale workforce development along with healthy eating because food is a

non-negotiable no matter where where you go, people got to eat. So if you learn that you can grow food and that essentially all food is grown, you know, without farmers, we'd all be naked and hungry. So that's just the sad reality of it all. And that farming, well, we need to restore dignity of farmers first and foremost. So we need to restore dignity. is first and foremost. So we need to restore dignity. Food needs to become less of this thing that is cheap and inexpensive

and more of this thing that we respect and adore and kind of tell a story about in romance and respect. So that's part of it. And ironically, my kids learn about kids in other countries who tend to look like them who are doing it as slave labor. So that gets them upset. And that's a good thing

because that's a whole entry point into human rights and self-respect and dignity and equal rights for all. And those are the issues that matter to me. And I'm thrilled that they're eating healthy, too. There's nothing better than seeing kids who are well-fueled for a day of academic performance instead of some kids who are just hopped up on bad chemicals. I'll never forget. How did I learn about organic food? A bunch of gang kids talked to me about

organic blunt wrap. I was like, what the hell is organic blunt wrap? And they're like, Whatever your entry point. Yeah, whatever your entry point. And they're like, yo, Ritz,

you don't want any chemicals messing with your weed. And I'm like, what is this organic thing that you're talking about? You have to grow these things without chemicals. And I'm like,

so you guys get smoked out and you sit in McDonald's and White Castle all night and come to school on six cans of Red Bull and you tell them you don't want chemicals because you want organic, but understanding what these things are. And then again, you know, in my lifetime, I've seen the onset of puberty in kids at a much younger age. And I really believe it has to do with what we're eating and how we're eating. And has this program been replicated in other school systems in the U.S.? Yeah, I've done a bunch of schools in California. It's amazing that one man in a bowtie on a mission can get out there and really create this kind of change, but I think the world is hungry for it.

You're like the Bill Nye the Science Guy version of urban gardening. Yeah, I like to say I'm Mr. Cotter. I'm Mr. Cotter, I guess. I'm a modern day Mr. Cotter. But yeah, but really what I want to do is grow teachers because I believe the next generation of teachers who can change lives is right out there. You know, it's not about being when I was young, the big voice or the stronger or faster than the kids. It's just really about living a healthy life and empowering them to make decisions that are going to change them. Right. It seems that the kind of conventional narrative is that, you know, teachers go in idealistically into underprivileged communities and they get beaten down by the system and they burn out or they just sort of fall into line.

So how can somebody model what you've done? There's some of that, but there's also another aspect too, quite frankly, and here's the ugly truth. A lot of teachers go into these communities because it's real easy for them to be there. They can't cut their weight in their own community. And because these communities have such challenges, they believe there's more money. So, you know, when we start prognosticating

summer school in October and November because, you know, teachers want to send their kids to day camps, I'm like, no, you need to teach harder for eight months and come see me in June. Because you're going to tell me that you can't teach in 10 months what you can in six weeks because you want some extra money for your family? That's not happening. So we've got to break the status quo. So some teachers do get beat down. Listen, for sure, the challenges are tough, but I believe that by creating healthy, vibrant, aspirational classrooms, verdant, green, inspirational, aspirational places, we're taking the edge off that. And more importantly, you get a lot of vegetables too. You can have a healthy lunch with your kids and the principal and me. So if there's a teacher out there who's listening to this who's inspired by your example,

I mean, how does one begin to implement some of this wisdom into their classroom? Cool question. Start small. I know that sounds weird coming from me, but start small. Exclusivity. But don't ask for permission. Yeah, don't. Get a good mentor.

Find a good mentor for sure. But now it's much more permissive. I really believe we have pushed the needle in that regard where it's okay to do these things. We realize we've got to change. We realize that. I mean, here in New York City, I'm a big fan of the new chancellor. You know, she's wonderful. She's talking about community schools, you know, whole school communities. And that's what it's about. Nothing thrilled me more than to hear Chancellor Farina talk about her role as chancellor and abuela, you know, and how do you, and how do you, but it's really bringing community and parents and people together. Schools are at the heart of healthy communities and particularly resilient communities. So we've got to look at those high-needs communities to get them what they need, and that's really whole community education.

And that's what's great about food now more than ever, because good food, respectful food, also offers living wage employment. And that's great in addition to the health benefit. What are some of the success stories with the kids? Are there any that stand out? I've got kids who are coming to my house asking me, do you think it's okay if I get married? I mean, how cool is that?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I feel like you're like this, in your neighborhood, in your community, you're like old school, like what the kind of priest would have been like back in the 1970s who knew all the kids in the neighborhood. Well, I do try and know to you for advice. I do try. You're the one guy who knows what everybody's doing. I know. Sometimes I think I know too much, but I feel I never know enough.

I, um, but my job used to be the mayor, you know, I'm CEO, chief eternal optimist. And, you know, and I'm going to forever scream si se puede, but I want to mentor teachers. What does that mean? Yes, we can. You know, we are Americans. Mexicans.

Dominicans. African Americans. And this is our moment. And I believe that no matter what community you're in, you're saying, I can't build you a new school, but I can put a plant in your classroom.

And I believe having a plant in a classroom is a good start. It leads to a whole lot of other things. Yeah. I loved in, it was, I think it was the urban gardening video where it's the kids and they're, they're, they have all of their, the shovels and everything like that. And they're getting on the subway and people are like, what's going on? And then you have the picture of the, the kid who he's wearing a tie and he's like using an ATM machine. He's the first person in his family to use an ATM machine. Like these are like huge, you know, transformative things. I know exactly what story you're talking about. I mean, I have a young man and that's, what's interesting too, see, because America is still

the land of opportunity. And I'm in a community where a lot of parents came here from another place because they were hungry literally hungry for food or they were walking six miles a day to get water for subsistence farming and couldn't go to school so when you give these kind of opportunities for kids who come from that they love it and when you grow culturally relevant food and you give it away for free in a community that has limited means and limited access to it and this is what these parents came to america for oh my god that's a game changer and that's the purpose behind my national health and wellness learning center because we're going to also do job development we're going to have parents in after school we're going to be open early so we're going to do workforce development job training i'm going to teach people how to

grow food and give it away and grow culturally relevant food so we're going to connect kids and parents around science around around learning, around literacy. When parents are in school, you know, you bring the body, the brain follows. We're going to sign them up. We're going to make them voters. We're going to get them registered. We're going to give them health care. These are the critical things and teach them how to be proactive and move into spheres of self-care as opposed to dependent health care.

Right. And I would think that that begins with instilling them with a sense of self-esteem, that actually that is possible for them in their lives. When my kids hold up a bag of produce. They've never been told that before, or they're living in a world in which they don't think that that is possible for them. When my kids hold up a bag of produce, my little guys, and say, hey, I grew this and I'm bringing it home to my parents, that's awesome. When they have their favorite teacher and they bring them lettuce or tomatoes, that's awesome. The kids love it. And just like the mommy-mommy factor worked in the 60s and 70s for sugar-sweetened cereals, you know, the healthy fresh food works too.

Don't discount, you know, the mommy-mommy factor with kids and the cool factor. But more importantly with the older kids, there's a job factor. Listen, you're never going to get, you know, a great job working in a fast food restaurant. You may work your way up, but the reality is with gourmet culinary, you know, you could be a sweet chef and make a good living. You could work as a prep cook and a line cook in a fancy restaurant and have a decent life. And if you made some mistakes in the past, as long as you're showing up clean and sober, you're going to have a good life. I don't care if someone got arrested five years ago for drug possession when I'm out to eat. I want my food fresh and I want it the way I like it. You know, I don't want something that's homogenized, pasteurized and, you know, I mean, not anymore. I know better.

I still have my moments of weakness and, you know, but for the most part, I want healthy food. I got to nourish myself. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And the kids are fine then. There's no greater demand for culinary than here in New York City. So five short miles and six long degrees of separation is between my kids and

Manhattan. But Manhattan and Brooklyn is becoming the new proving ground for my kids and that's awesome. They think they're going there for something good to feed people. They show up and they put on their uniform. They can't wait. Well, and it's an amazing time for that right now, particularly in this city because the local food movement is so

big and there's so many restaurants that are looking to source locally. Exactly. I mean, even sort of economically and politically, you can tell a great story about food that was grown in the Bronx by these kids that's being served in these restaurants and restaurants that are employing these kids that have grown the food too. That's a really cool story. Bronx flavor, baby.

Yeah. Bronx flavor. Hood food is good food, I like to say, and good food is hood food. What are some of the things in the public education system that you think need to be addressed that are crisis issues, just sort of systemic issues that are not serving the kids? sort of systemic issues that are not serving the kids? Well, I think kids need more school. I hate to say it, but I think kids need more school.

So I'd like to see a shorter summer vacation. I'd like to see a reworking of the calendar. I think the calendar, the school calendar, in some ways is kind of counterintuitive to solid educational practice. And what I mean by that is we start school, we have a series of holidays, we can't really get it off the ground. As soon as you get it off the ground, you go to vacation. So I'd like to see a longer school day. I really would hate to say it, but it's true. My kids need more school. I'd like to see a shorter summer break. And I think that would be a good start right there. I'd like to see more emphasis on health and wellness. I'd like to see a greater emphasis on STEM and STEAM,

and for those of you who don't know, STEM is just STEM with A for arts, advocacy, and aspiration. I'm a huge believer in arts, no matter what form it is, including sports, so getting those carrots into schools that make kids want to be there and then, you know, keeping that carrot in front of the kids so that the body continues to come and you continue to access the brain. But I think, you know, technology is the way and not necessarily only iPads or, you know, digital technology, but food technology, tinkering,

you know, projects, collaboration, coalition. You know, we just need to have a more engaged and active student participatory model. Yeah, because, I mean, project-based education really just isn't the model at all. I mean, it's about, like, surface-level learning, you know, get the facts that you need to know to take the test, to pass the test, and it's moving on to the next thing. And it's just very, you know, boom, boom boom and it's the train is moving very very quickly so there isn't a lot of opportunity to really go in depth into any given thing and so the the i would imagine that the devil's advocate point of view would be we love what you're doing but like not every classroom can be project based in the way that you and do things the way that you're doing but like not every classroom can be project based in the way that you and do

things the way that you're doing because we'd never get anything done well right wouldn't that be like i don't think every classroom should i think every classroom should have an element of everything um so to be entirely anything is is not good but kids are learning differently i mean i'm a very i want to teach empathy you know an ecology of the mind and ecology of the planet. These are some of the critical things that are really going to affect these kids long after you and I are gone. You know, the world is getting hotter, crowded, you know, more crowded. There are real issues going on, and the ability to communicate in real time is insane, or miscommunicate is insane. So teaching kids those critical skills is absolutely important.

And problem solving, you know, we've created quite a mess. Yeah. Empathy. Yeah, there's no course for that. There's no course for that. But we are human beings. You know, Mother Nature has no mercy. But, you know, we as human beings do. We need to to look at that we need to understand what it means to be compassionate what it means to be civilized what it means to walk erect and upright um and treat all kids with dignity you know you look around what's going on in this country you know the biggest issue around the world still remains civil rights and if you strand it out it's education and the environment and And, you know,

and zip code and skin color shouldn't determine one's destiny in life, damn it. But sadly, that seems to be the biggest prognosticator. We need to change that. And we need to change the way we teach kids to get along with each other. Yeah. So what kind of, you know, what kind of things do you do in your daily teaching to kind of instill those ideals? I do a whole lot of hugging, a whole lot of hand-holding, a whole lot of nose-wiping. And those are things that matter. Those are things that matter. But I bring my A-game daily. I do a lot of due diligence in terms of preparation of lessons.

I always, yeah, you want to be the teacher, but I always imagine myself as the student. I do a lot of observations. I do a lot of teacher support. So I'll go in, I try and find great things that teachers are doing. And I celebrate, you got to celebrate, you know, celebrate the small successes. One celebration leads to another. And the more you celebrate, the more you show up. And that's critical. You just got to celebrate properly. Yeah. I think that you're, you know, you're living, you're very, obviously extremely passionate about what you're doing exactly what you're supposed to be doing.

Like you're, you know, you are in the right place at the right time. Right. But you hear a lot like, oh, we're not getting the best people to be teachers because we don't pay them enough. And, you know, the people that are going into teaching are it's not what it used to be. It's not what it used to be. I mean, how can we address that issue of trying to inspire bright young minds to get into teaching and to be able to, you know, because I think people listening to you will say, you know, I'd like to be like that guy. Like, this sounds like a life worth living, right? It is. My life is a life worth living.

And my teacher's life is a teacher's life worth living. right? It is. My life is a life worth living. Yes, well, certainly it is. And my teacher's life is a teacher's life worth living. Teachers change lives. So if you're listening, teachers change lives. If you're getting into it to change your own life, you're probably going to crap out really quickly. But if you get into it to change lives, listen, behind every successful person, there is a teacher. Whether it's a mentor, an elder, a family member, there is someone who

taught you something. Every person listening, you know, remember that teacher you hated? I'm not that guy or I'm not that woman. But remember that teacher you loved? Remember that teacher that you wish your child could have one day or that you saw on TV? Be that person. Be kind. Be firm, but be kind, you know, and learn the meaning of the word no. You know, you can still say yes, you can still say no. Well, I mean, you've had to, you know, you're from the community where you teach. So was there a process of, you know, how do you gain the respect of your students? Because I think, you know, a lot of people who go into teaching into areas where

they're not from there, they struggle with that, right? Like, that's a great point. So you see, when I first started, this is I started teaching before the internet, you know, I mean, like, whoa, I tell the kids, you know, Jesus was was one of. And literally in the old days, all you had to do was be like the big, loud voice in the room. Today, I find the most effective teachers are those distinct voices, the soft voice, the, you know, the unique voice. You know, the Internet has changed all that. Now, as administrators and systems, we need to find and create systems where those unique individuals can flourish. You know, the nutty teacher with the kids love nerds.

Some of my most effective teachers in the inner city are these tiny pipsqueak people who are really passionate about what they do and can convey that passion, whether it's through their voice, their artwork, or their laptop. So bring your A-game, damn it. But administratively and systemically, we've got to create systems where these professionals succeed. Right. Teaching changes lives, man. Get out there and be a teacher, please. If you were secretary of education then, what kind of systems would you change to make that more possible? So I believe that some of the data stuff, like there are schools that I see that have data managers

that are letting teachers do what they need to do. And they're effective. And they're far more effective. I think we're, look, I think, you know, this is a great, it's a crisis time in public education, but I believe out of every crisis comes a victory. And we're starting to get it right. We are starting, I want to see it happen more.

And I want to see it happen more substantially. But I think that we are getting it right. We are starting. I want to see it happen more and I want to see it happen more substantially, but I think that we are getting it right. But the bottom line is everyone needs to work harder. So roll up your sleeves, get a little dirty and plant something in the ground and realize some days it's seeds and some days it's kids, but you know, you got to keep planting those seeds and bring your A game. I love the fact that you didn't, you know, you didn't come from this place of knowing a lot about gardening or growing food, and this is not part of your life experience, and you figured it out. And you figured it out for the kids and for yourself. I haven't figured it out.

The kids have figured it out. I just get the credit. It's great. Because people will say, well, I love what you do, but I don't know anything. Like, how do I even start that? Like, I wouldn't even know where to begin. You know, it's funny. I get, like, a lot of email,

and I get these nutty questions from kids about, you know, they want to grow food in July. I mean, like, technical stuff. Man, thank God for Google. But that's the beauty of it. I really don't know that much, but I'm determined to get it right, and thank God I can assign kids to do it for me. And that's the beauty of the internet

age you know you could really get access to information and facetime and skype and learn from other people and i'd like to see a world where we're spreading seeds instead of dropping bombs and computers you know and facetime and you know and apple phones and all that cool stuff that i didn't have when i was a kid allow for that instead of sitting there and watching some stupid video about rihanna or some nonsense, you know, about that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, can you imagine as a child having to be able to hold a thing in your hand that basically could answer any question you ever had about anything? Well, you're going to laugh. So this is a true story. I was recently invited back to the South Bronx High School campus where I started teaching. And I remember when I started teaching in 1984,

there were textbooks in the building that said, one day man will go to the moon. And I remember taking them out, and the kids were so insulated, they didn't even know man had been to the moon. And I'd sit there, and I would read these books to the kids, and it was fiction. One day man will go to the moon, and we'd look outside the window and think, wow, Rich, that's cool. Do you think that'll ever happen? Meanwhile, it happened.

God knows how much way before they were born and then you know these cell phones came along and there's probably more technology in this thing in that you can put in your hand or in your pocket they never got people to the moon you know the kids marvel at me i have i wear cassette bow ties sometimes i still listen to cassettes they think i'm like broadcasting it's funny um but the internet age you know there are blessings and there are curses to it. You just got to learn how to be in control of it and use it to your advantage. And how is that a problem with kids in cell phones in the classroom? Like how has that impacted? Because, you know, the cell phone thing really hit its kind of nadir and only in the last couple of years,

really. I think we've just begun to look at how we could use them creatively i think it's still so novel and kids are so dependent on it um but i believe you know technology done right along with capitalism done right can change the world you know yeah i mean it's not going away it's a way it's your relationship to it right it's how you and how you're using it in your classroom. So how many kids are in your class? I see on a given day, I have a gardening club where 50 kids show up. Depends on my schedule. Any day I could have one class to four or five classes because I also try and push into classes to support teachers.

And that's a lot of what I wrestle with, because to create the next generation of me, which I believe is eminently possible. People, you know, you're giving me far too much credit. I believe greatness is everywhere. We've just got to unearth it and nourish it. So my job is to nourish greatness. Now, while I love being in front of a classroom and love being in front of kids and love being with kids and love being a kid, enabling a teacher to grow and grow X many more classes and X many more generations is a far better use of my time. Having a principal who I adore, who trusts me and values me and is able to reflect upon his practice and my practice together means we're going to govern a school better. And that's critical.

Right. So it's a time balance. I am a work in progress. I mean, on the evolutionary chart of men, I think i'm trying to get from the left side to the right but you know i'm trying to remain teachable and trying to figure it out i don't ever want to keep doing what i've just done so learning how to be most efficacious with my time um in this technological age i can't even catch up with all the stuff that i'm supposed to catch up with you know half the time yeah it's tough but i'm learning so all right so teaching the kids and then right now like through green bronx

machine like how much food is being produced and what's going on with that okay so i wish i mean i wish i could push i take the picture out of my phone and push it through the radiator right now at my little school in the south bronx and make note that we are in the heart of public housing, on our little stretch of cement, we have the most productive school garden that I know of, and I'm sure there's someone out there with more, but we have one of the most productive outdoor gardens per square foot of anywhere that I've ever seen.

We literally have 500 to 600 plants in a front yard that are going to generate thousands of pounds of food and already starting to. I mean, it's beautiful to see what's going on. You know, indoors, I've grown 30,000 pounds of vegetables and 30,000 pounds of vegetables later. I like to say my favorite crop is organically grown citizens, graduates and members of the middle class, kids who are going to college, but we're just getting started. My goal really is at the National Health and Wellness Center is to generate 100 bags of groceries per week, vegetables that kids are taking home, leafy greens, tomatoes, peppers, herbs, things that are dense in nutrition and robust in taste so that we can expand their palates and their vocabulary and their culinary experiences

and bring parents back to school. And the Health and Wellness Center is another thing. We didn't even really get into that. Like, that's another project that you've birthed, right? Right, yeah. That has its home inside PS55, is that right? Right, four stories up. It's coming soon.

If anybody wants to donate, please let me know. You can write us at the Green Bronx Machine website or check. The kids are on the Facebook page, so if you're listening, please like the kids on Facebook. I don't even know what the Facebook thing is. What is it? Well, I'll put all that in the show notes. I think it's just Facebook forward slash Green Bronx Machine. I don't know. I'm on Twitter. You can listen

to me on Twitter. I do Twitter not too much during school time, but Twitter's like Green BX Machine. That's me. I try to stay off it during school time, but I try to have fun with it. I do love Twitter. I think it's made me a better writer, a better effective communicator. It allows you to tell a story, so to speak, in a short kind of novel way. Yeah, you share lots of cool stuff in your feed.

I enjoy it. Yeah, the kids are cool on Facebook. We are redoing the website. We're going to try and do a TV show. So we've got things coming. Right. But the Health and Wellness Center is like, how is that different from Green Bronx Machine? Well, Green Bronx Machine is going to build it. But this National Health and Wellness Center and literally Green Bronx Machine is raising the money. Right. So that's the that's the for what are you calling it? Not nonprofit. That's That's the for-purpose organization with charitable status.

That's what's fueling the growth of this center, right? So tell me what this center is. What this center is will be a 21st century classroom. An epicenter of the school that is going to offer seven periods a day of instruction, have enough food to send

100 bags of groceries home per week, have a complete digital media center so kids can broadcast their success, have a teacher research center, have an interactive classroom, and a completely mobile medical kitchen, which is a teaching kitchen. So we'll be able to process food, teach food, teach food safety, teach food hygiene, have culinary club, but also learn all the science related to Common Core and content area about growing food, propagating food, storing food, selling food, eating food, and everything else about it.

Yeah. How much money do you have to raise for that? I'm trying to raise about $125,000, and I'm delighted to name it after anybody who writes me that check. So, please. That's not that much. It's not that much. From what you just described, I'm thinking, well, this is going to cost a couple million bucks. No.

And again, I am very frugal. I'm very efficacious. We do Herculean work with lots of quarters, nickels and dimes, but we could sure use a couple of $100 bills. Yeah, and just so people know. And we're 100% volunteer. For years and years and years, I mean, you self-funded this whole thing from the beginning. I have been self-funded for years. It all came out of your pocket to even make this happen.

And that was part of it, too. Kids saw I had skin self-funded for years. This all came out of your pocket to even make this happen. And that was part of it, too. Kids saw I had skin in the game. I just don't want to walk over bodies. I want to carry people on my shoulders. Right. And how many, can you estimate how many acres of the South Bronx, like just through sort of urban blight and open lots that have been transformed by your kids i would say oh all i mean like it's huge swaths of land yeah it's kind of cool i mean not even

including all the rooftops yeah we have a couple of we have like one farm that goes for six straight blocks um you know you talk about the kids maintain that who works on that yeah the kids are there i mean the kids are there. I mean, the kids are there. And now the community owns it, which is really cool, too. Right. And it's created this sort of—it's a school for entrepreneurship, too, because the kids tend to it, right? And then they sell it. This is like a business for them.

Is that how that works? That's part of it. But I just think, to your point,'s becoming their dna i mean the most touching thing is that my most productive workers are kids who have come back to from the program and have jobs elsewhere who just want to give back right um and that's beautiful you know the garden in front of ps55 that was built by my graduates who just want to afford the next generation the same opportunity that they had how cool was that um this is odd there is no one getting a salary at Green Bronx Machine. Kids are there volunteering. I'm there volunteering. My wife is there volunteering.

And we are just determined to grow something greater. Ideally, it's going to scale up. We will take on some employees, and that will be something in the future because that needs to happen. But this is really about as local as local gets. Yeah, it's beautiful. Well, we're getting close to closing it down, but there's a couple things I want to ask you before I'm going to let you leave. No worries.

And the first thing is, there's a lot of parents that listen to this show. And I'm wondering if a parent's listening and they're having a kid, a young person that they're struggling with connecting with, like they're trying to find a way emotionally in to connect with their kid. They can't seem to be able to find a common language or to kind of, you know, partner with the child to co-create something that the child is interested in. I mean, what are some tips or some strategies or some tools that, you know, somebody who's listening could kind of take with them and perhaps implement?

Even though this is a talk show, the magic word is listen. And then it's just being accessible. Sometimes the magic happens when you least expect it. You just got to be there. Nothing's going to happen if you don't show up. So you got to show up and you got to be consistent. And that's usually for a lot of difficult kids, the most important thing. I spend a lot of time with kids just spending a lot of time. They're doing their thing. I'm doing my thing, but creating a safe space. Kids need safe spaces. You know, we have this myth that everyone needs to be engaged 24 hours a day and we need to be doing these wonderful things and building pyramids and, you know, get, no. Sometimes you just need to feel safe. And when kids know that you're this beacon of safety, then the magic happens. And the other piece is, you know, listening. Sometimes you don't need to

ask questions. Let them ask you questions. I mean, you know, it's funny because I'm sitting here running my mouth endlessly, but you know, I think the best thing I ever do with my daughter is shut up and let her talk or just spend time together quietly. She's sitting back there right now. Yeah. Start laughing. You know, be a good partner. And that's, you know, the same thing in a marriage, be a good partner, you know, give the same thing in a marriage be a good partner you know give credit where credit's due i think kids benefit from acknowledgement too right everyone wants to be acknowledged make them a hero every kid should be a hero at least once a week once a

day once an hour whatever works the flip side of the question is is for uh you know educators out there who are similarly trying to connect with their kids or trying to find a way to inspire them. And I feel like you've tapped this vein with farming, and it's been enormously successful. But I feel because you're such a dynamic personality, if it was Woodshop, you probably could have created that same kind of engagement through another vehicle. Oh, I was a hell of a math teacher a math teacher man let me tell you i'm sure you were yeah i figure like

whatever you decided you could make anything interesting to these kids so and that's the point so can you bring your a-game bring passion kids respond to passion so bring passion but you can't manufacture passion. But everybody's passionate about something. And you have to share that. Right. You have to share that. And the other thing is to be organized. You know, I do come with an agenda. And, you know, I also tell kids this is perhaps OK, so this is a great thing. I always tell kids on a daily basis how they're going to hold me accountable. Every day, you know, I say, oh, we're going to hold you accountable for this. Well, I tell kids they're going to hold me accountable. Basically, I just flip the script on them.

And, you know, the funny thing is kids go out and they say, well, Mr. Ritz's class, you know, he says we could hold you accountable. And, you know, the teachers come to me, Ritz, what are you telling them? You know, it's my class. My name's on the door. Not theirs. I said, let them hold you accountable. You know, because that means they're asking you questions. So accountability is a two-way street. At the end of the day, I know which way the ball runs, you know, and it runs downhill. And, you know, I am not the boss either. You know, I'm part of a larger ecosystem.

But accountability is key. So be passionate and let the kids know you're going to hold them accountable, but they can hold you accountable and it's okay to ask questions. Yeah, I think that's the key thing too. And that means that the adult in the equation has to be perhaps a little bit more transparent and vulnerable than maybe they're used

to being. Listen, kids recognize the real. Now more than ever, kids recognize the real. It is perfectly okay to tell a child you don't know, and I'll get back to you. In fact, the chancellor did that the other night at a school meeting and I thought it was brilliant. You know, she got asked this question, you can't know everything all the time, and she was honest about it. And I thought that was brilliant. You know, like I say, I'm not always right. I'm just determined to get it right. And I'm not going to, you know, build my bays on your back. I believe that together we could, this is a us, this is a we, this is our moment, and I want our time together to be sacred. And I think when kids know that you hold their time sacred and you're going to hold your time sacred,

that time does become sacred. And you have to have expectations for it, and you need to lay them out there. So I love seeing classrooms with an agenda. I love seeing classrooms with schedules. Kids love checking off lists. Even the little kids don't pay much attention to it, but the big kids, oh, you know, you're five minutes behind on your agenda. You know, you missed your talking point.

You know, I love being held accountable. They want to be able to call you out. And that's fine. And be vulnerable. Be willing to be called out. If you're being called out for a greater common good, God bless everybody. They're paying attention. So enjoy it.

Yeah. Beautifully said. All right. Well, if it was up to me, and I'm sure you would agree with this, every school would be growing its own food. Yeah? Yeah. So how do we make this happen? Put a plant in every class. Celebrate food. Talk about food. Talk about diet. celebrate food, talk about food, talk about diet. The easiest way out, you know how I got kids to stop drinking soda? By testing the pH of the water.

We use liquid nutrients in water, so we're very pH dependent. And the kids love testing the pH because the color changes and it's a colored shark and they equate it to what's going on with the plant and they graph it for days. And then I go at them with the soda. Because the minute they test soda and they see the pH of soda, they're like, I can't put that in. It's toxic. Duh. You know, I can say don't drink soda my whole life.

You know, no one gives a damn. But when kids understand what it is in relationship to something else they love, that's what it's all about. Interesting. I love it. Now, is it possible to grow? Every school should be growing some food. Every kid needs to understand that plants are living, breathing things just like they are.

And that's a beautiful thing, you know, that we're all part of a greater ecosystem, that water, soil, these things, you know, these are valuable resources and we need to, you know, steward them. Yeah. We're so disconnected from where our food comes from. And dude, my food comes through a bulletproof window and three layers of plastic. Yeah. I mean, I can't imagine any place in America where there's more disconnect than where you live. And, you know, meanwhile, we're, you know, depleting the planet, planet's resources at an alarming rate, and our soil is becoming progressively more toxic. And all of these sort of things are happening very, very quickly.

So it's never been more important for us to understand what is actually at play. And it begins with teaching one kid how to put a seed in soil, right, and creating that connection and fostering that and fertilizing that. Well, this is, here's the deal. You know, my kids are traditionally, urban kids are traditionally disconnected from nature in a variety of ways, except for the nature channel or some kind of show on TV. But if you teach kids about nature, they learn to nurture. And when children learn to nurture,

we as a society collectively embrace our better nature. How we walk with the wounded speaks far greater than how we sit with the tall. So walk with the wounded. Walk with them the way you want to be walked with. That's the lesson here.

I think that's a great place to end it. Thank you so much. I want to ask you a question. I want that's a great place to end it. All righty. Thank you so much, Steven. Man, thanks. I want to ask you a question. I want you to train me, man. Go for it. You can ask me. We could talk about that.

Okay, yeah. I want to be trained, man. I want to look like you. I don't know. You look pretty good. No, no. I don't look that good. Trust me.

I've seen you without a shirt off on the website. What's your workout routine right now? I don't have one. You don't have one? Well, we got to change that. I do a lot of stairs because I live in a walk-up, and I'm up and down the stairs all day. I want to develop core. Yeah.

I went to a yoga class, you're going to laugh, and I was in this yoga class, and I kept thinking I'm going to fall over on one of these pregnant people because they put me in the beginner's class with the pregnant people. I couldn't balance myself. I would keep on sore. But it's been so long since I've really been physically active. I don't like running. And my knees are shot.

Right. But I really wanted to. Yoga's great. I would say keep going back to yoga. And I got a core routine that I'm going to send you. Yeah, send me a core. I got a PDF with a bunch of exercise on it. I want to look like you.

I want to do one of your events. And I want to give you credit. I want to do one of your events. I want to give you credit. I want to have your enthusiasm and vitality. So you're doing something right. To be doing what you're doing, the way you do it, it's got to be you too. And I mean, that's it. You find your passion. You go with it.

You nourish it. You feed it. My passion is really seeing smiling, happy kids in school. I love being called. Some of them can't even pronounce my name. They call me Mr. Rips. On the flip side, the happiest thing is when I see these older gang kids who are working and living respectful lives and treating themselves and their partners and their communities with respect. That's awesome.

Together, we can grow something greater, and it's time. That's a beautiful thing. Well, you are a true inspiration. You really are. And it's an honor and a privilege to talk to you thanks kindly like my kids on facebook otherwise they'll hate me if i don't plug it i need to plug it more like so you know what while we're sitting here i'm going to pull up the facebook page just so i make sure that i have it right i should have been tweeting while i'm here but um i'll But I want to do it. Hold on. Green Bronx Machine. I think it's there.

Hold on a second. Meanwhile, you're on Twitter at GreenBXMachine, and your website's Stephen with a PH, Ritz.com. Is it? I don't know. Yeah, I think so. You don't even know? Green Bronx Machine.

Yeah. And it's GreenBronxxmachine.org is the website for the organization, right? We have an Upworthy special coming out soon, and we're going to have a campaign aligned to that. But we are a for-purpose organization with charitable status. You are. All right, it's going to take too long for me to find this on Facebook right now, but I'll put it up in the show notes. I'm pretty sure it's— hold on, let me see. Let me just make sure.

Whoops, I misspelled it in my haste. Machine. That should be it. Facebook.com forward slash. No, that's not it. All right, I'm going to put it in the show notes. I don't know. Or I'll do it in the intro on the outro.

The daughter probably knows. Yeah, all right? All right, man. All right, thank you, man. Thanks so much. What an honor. What a pleasure. The honor is all mine.

Nah, so when are we going to get you up to the Bronx? We got to get you up to the Bronx. I know. Well, I'm leaving on Monday, but I'll be back in New York soon. You're doing a nutty event this weekend. Yeah, the seed. The seed thing. You're going to you up to the Bronx. I know. Well, I'm leaving on Monday, but I'll be back in New York soon. You're doing a nutty event this weekend. Yeah, the seed. The seed thing. You're going to come down to the seed? I'm flying to San Francisco tonight and jumping from here to a plane. Otherwise, I would

have been there. I just heard about it this weekend. They started tweeting it. Yeah, it should be. It's going to be a good event. I've done it before. It's cool. When you're in New York the next time, come on up. We'll have the kids make you a locally grown South Bronx salad. I love it. I love to go and meet the kids and talk to the kids, too. That's really for me what it's about when you validate them then you're validating me um and they like to they love meeting people they get very social yeah and it's cool you know

it's cool that people actually want to meet them now i mean we had the white house chef there he loves it he loves it he goes all over the world the kids went didn't you you went to the white house yeah my fourth graders and i we actually farmed our way to the White House, right into the White House kitchen. But the coolest thing is then we invited Bill to come, and we grew the food in school and grew it for him. He told us what to grow. We designed the recipe.

We grew it indoors and invited some of the wealthiest private schools. We had international charter schools all come right to the middle of housing projects to eat food four stories up. Beautiful. Yeah, it was an amazing day. Beautiful. That's what it's about. All right, man.

Keep doing what you're doing. Thanks kindly. Peace. Thank you. Plants. All right, we did it. That's our show. I hope you guys enjoyed it.

Let me know what you thought of the episode in the comment section on the episode page at richroll.com. And keep sending your questions for future Q&A podcasts to info at richroll.com. I am looking for a decent web-based way of cataloging the questions. Now that Google Moderator is defunct,

but until we figure that out, just keep sending those emails to info at richroll.com. For all your plant power needs, visit richroll.com. We got nutrition products, books, education products, 100% organic cotton garments. We got tech teas for running. We got meditation programs. We have signed copies of the Plant Power Way and also Finding Ultra. And now we have sticker packs.

Awesome. Plant power stickers. Piece and plant stickers. Temporary tattoos, all kinds of cool stuff. And also limited edition art prints that are either framed or unframed, signed and numbered from my friend, the esteemed artist, Andrew Pasquale, who is a premier upcoming talent making waves in the art and food movement. Check that out all on my website. Basically everything you need to take your health and your life to the next level. If you're into online courses, I got two of those at MindBodyGreen,

the ultimate guide to plant-based nutrition, three and a half hours of streaming video content. And also the art of living with purpose, which I think is about two and a half hours of streaming online content. It's all about setting goals and doing the inside work, getting your life on the right trajectory. It's really good stuff. I'm really proud of both of those courses. You can find them both at mindbodygreen.com. Just click on video courses. Thanks for supporting the show by telling

a friend, sharing it on social media, for using the Amazon banner ad at richroll.com for all your Amazon purchases. I love you guys. I'll see you in a few days and make it great, everybody. Have a good one. And we'll talk, everybody. Have a good one. And we'll talk more soon. All right? Cool. Peace. Plants.