Welcome to Cultural Connections Lab. I'm your host Dr. Kelly Forbes. We are here to talk with educational professionals around the world to impact and influence the education system as we focus on cultural connections and the education of multilingual, diverse students.
We're excited to have you join us today. We sincerely hope that you enjoy the show.
Are you ready to take your school district to new heights? Introducing EDGE Skills, the leading software as a service platform for Title III and multilingual support in education.
At EDGE Skills, we understand the importance of equitable education and empowering multilingual learners to thrive in today's classrooms.
Our cutting edge technology provides school districts across the nation with the tools they need to enhance language acquisition, foster inclusivity, and improve academic outcomes.
With seamless implementation and comprehensive support, EDGE Skills ensures a smooth transition for your district, empowering educators to provide targeted instruction and personalized support.
So why wait? Unlock the potential of your school district today with EDGE Skills. Visit our website at edgyskillsllc.com or call us now at 405-879-9898 to schedule a demo. EDGE Skills, transforming education, one student at a time.
Welcome to another episode of Cultural Connections Lab. I'm Dr. Jeffrey Taylor-Tribble, co-host, standing in today for our main host, Dr. Kelly Forbes, who unfortunately is not able to be with us today.
I'm happy to stand in for Dr. Forbes, and I'm excited to be here today with Akash Patel.
Akash Patel, originally from India, began his teaching career in a very small rural community within Oklahoma, where he had never, where they had never seen or met.
A brown Indian guy who spoke five languages and had traveled to over 50 countries. He used his travel experiences to design all his lessons.
For example, he's experienced working with elephants in South Asia to teach children to make elephant poo poo paper and map elephant DNA to study poaching patterns.
He currently teaches ESL with Oklahoma City Community College and serves as EPIC Charter School's math instructor and EL liaison.
Patel previously taught Spanish with Dallas Independent School District and fourth grade at Hayes Elementary School in Oklahoma City.
In both schools, his students have come from very difficult backgrounds and have included gang members, drug addicts, and juvenile delinquents.
The majority of his students at both schools have never traveled outside the United States.
Patel has received many recognitions and awards throughout his illustrious career, including in 2015, receiving the Oklahoma State Department of Education and Multicultural Institute Multicultural Teacher of the Year Award.
And in December 2017, Patel was selected from over 30,000 nominees as one of the top 50 teachers around the world in shortlisted as a final for the Varka Foundation's Global Teacher Prize.
In 2021, Patel was inducted in the International Literacy Association's 30 under 30 list and in 2022 was elected as the first ever immigrant president of American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages Actful.
In June of 2022, Patel was elected vice chair of National Council of United Nations Association of the United States of America and Patel was also featured in 2022 as Time Magazine's Innovative Educator of the Year.
And I do know the list goes on and on. It's just a short list of all the awards that you have received.
Akash also connects classrooms with people and professionals worldwide using virtual platforms in a way that I would call kind of the modern day pen pal program.
Patel has mobilized over 1000 volunteers from over 150 countries to join his Global Connect database at the Happy World Foundation, a Texas based global education nonprofit he founded after the passing of his brother
and his brother, Happy Patel. Patel frequently speaks at regional, national and international conferences about his classroom experience.
He has also trained over 100,000 teachers to use a Global Connect database and other multicultural programs.
Today, thousands of American children travel to countries worldwide through Happy World Foundation global education programs.
To learn more, visit www.happyworldfoundation.us.
So with that, I'm excited to be with you, my friend Akash.
You know, I think we have known each other at least 10 years. Absolutely. I think we were connected by a mutual friend, former student at the University of Central Oklahoma.
I'm not sure if he still works in the international program there at the University of Central Oklahoma, but I believe that he was the one that put us in touch when you were running what you used to call World Experiences Foundation.
And I believe changed the name. It's still essentially conceptually the same thing. Right. Yes.
So very happy to be with you today. I love seeing you out on social media all over the place. I'm just always interested to hear about what you've been doing and the connections you've been making.
Know you're a passionate supporter of multilingual students and just intrigued. I know our listeners will be as well with your background.
If you don't mind kind of starting maybe before I knew you and maybe some stories that I don't know about.
You may have mentioned briefly, but I don't really I don't have a recollection of some of the details about what brought you from India.
Tell me maybe a little bit, just even if you're upbringing in India where you were and how kind of briefly update us on to the point before I knew you 10 years ago.
Just very briefly, Taylor. It's such a pleasure to be here with you after having known you for almost a decade.
So before I came to the United States, you know, I was a teenager, 18 years old in India, finished high school and applied to the SAT and TOEFL. And I was like, hey, I want to go to the United States.
And for a young Indian man, you can imagine the stereotype is you can either be an engineer, a lawyer, a doctor, or quite frankly, a disgrace to the family.
So, you know, I was like, hey, let me just go with, you know, give in to the societal and parental pressure.
Right. And I was good at math. I was good at physics. I was good at chemistry and the sciences.
So I was like, hey, I'll try engineering. And I got a scholarship in the mechanical and nuclear engineering program and I was taking university.
And my first. So how did you just if you don't mind me interrupting, like, what's that process like being in India, like searching for universities? Yeah.
And I have all places. I applied to five or six schools.
And then because I got this great scholarship here at Iowa State and they made me an international student ambassador for the program, I was like, I'm not going to spend any money at all if I go to school here.
So my brother and I both he got a scholarship to study computer engineering and both of us moved from Nashik, which is the capital of India, west of Mumbai, a city of millions of people to a town of 50,000.
The more in the middle of, you know, further south of Des Moines in Ames, Iowa.
Yeah. So, you know, we were in a really surrounded by mostly corn fields.
You know, a small university town. So my first semester there, I got an internship to travel with the chair of the American Nuclear Society, Dr.
Carolyn Heising, who was a visiting professor from MIT at Iowa State.
And she met me at the Diwali night, which is the Festival of Lights for India. And she's like, oh gosh, I need an intern, a clean energy policy intern, because back in 2008, there was a push for taking nuclear energy as a clean source of sustainable
source of energy. And the countries that were leading the way in using thorium compared to uranium, which is what we use in the United States.
So thorium was a lot better nuclear material to use in nuclear reactors, and she hadn't done much research on that in the United States.
So she wanted to go to India, which is where they use lots of thorium based fuel cycles. And she says, I need somebody who's really good at speaking the language down there and plus travel with me as a clean energy policy intern and I'll pay for your travels.
So I got to go there with her. I visited the US Embassy in India, went to the Baba Atomic Research Center in India. We traveled to some of the top notch universities in India.
And when I saw this, this was while you were in the US, but traveling back to India through the first six months, I was here.
When I come back, Dr. Carolyn Heising writes a recommendation letter for me and she says, Akash, you have great leadership skills and you know, public speaking skills.
I said, Dr. Heising, what do public speaking skills have to do with nuclear reactors? So she said, maybe you want to work on these.
So I took her advice and my brother and I bought a car on Craigslist. You know, we bought a SUV because we didn't have very much money.
We saved a little bit up, $3,000, a red SUV, I still remember, and two Indian guys that had never had the experience of driving on snow in the winter of 2009.
We drove from Iowa to Oklahoma. And can you imagine our Indian parents? Because we wanted to give up our scholarship.
We didn't want to do this. Both of us knew engineering was not for us. We were both people persons.
We were very outgoing, extra words, and we knew we had a greater calling. So we moved to Oklahoma.
And why Oklahoma? Well, because we had an uncle in Oklahoma.
An uncle who's an entrepreneur, a businessman. So we're like, hey, if we give up this scholarship, at least we know we have an uncle who's going to give us a job, a part time job to work while we pay for school.
So we went to Oklahoma City Community College, crashed at his house for a few months until we could find our place.
And then we got my associates in liberal studies and my brother got his associates in business.
And then we went on to get a bachelor's degree at USO in Chickasha, Oklahoma, in the middle of nowhere.
Because that's where I got a scholarship. They said, hey, we need to recruit candidates of color to teach students.
And I was like, wow, I never thought maybe I like math. Maybe I can become a high school math teacher.
So I went to school in Chickasha, Oklahoma. My brother went to school at USO in Edmond, Oklahoma to get his bachelor's in business.
And I became certified to be a high school math teacher, high school Spanish teacher, high school ESL teacher, and then, of course, elementary and middle school teacher.
So what, did you just line up the tests and be like, oh, I want to get certified.
I was taking all those tests and I was like, hey, I can get certified. And Spanish, who would have thought?
We don't speak Spanish in India. So while I was in college, I had lost this scholarship for nuclear engineering.
And I was like, what am I going to do with my life? So I started backpacking during college while saving up money while working part time jobs in Oklahoma.
I backpacked from Mexico all the way down to Costa Rica. And while backpacking, I picked up Spanish.
Yeah, so similar to myself. Yeah. I know you've told me your backpacking experiences, including in India, right?
In India, in Central America. Yeah, I hitchhiked all the way from Oklahoma City to Panama and back.
Oh, wow. That's quite an adventure. I hitchhiked a few times, but not all the way.
So that's why I'm somewhat curious to kind of push you to rewind just because the fact that I did spend about six months in India.
And the time there was one of the most life changing experiences that I've ever had just because so different from the United States and just kind of the way of life.
And I just learned so much from the people there. So I'm curious, what was your life like in India? You say you were west of Mumbai.
Yeah, that's of Mumbai. I actually was very fortunate. My parents both had college degrees.
So very privileged to have grown in a family, though we were not as financially well off.
But they gave me a quality world class education. We had only one. What is it?
Catholic school, private Catholic school in the city. You would be it was funny because the tuition at the college was like six dollars a month at the high school.
So that's what my parents paid to make sure we got through high school where English was the medium of communication at the school.
Well, again, there's many English medium schools because India was a former British colony.
But that doesn't mean necessarily the majority of our population speaks English. Right. So I was fortunate to go to this Catholic school.
So how many languages did you speak while growing up?
Well, I spoke four. I spoke my mother tongue, which is Gujarati, which is the state from the state of Gujarat, spoken by about 60 million people, spoke Hindi, which is spoken by almost half a billion people.
Marathi, another state language from the state of Maharashtra, where Mumbai is located, spoken by 80 million people and then English.
So I already had, you know, we were required in India to learn multiple languages. So you're tested in multiple languages to be able to graduate from high school.
Yeah, that's fascinating. That's what was what made me start scratching my head a little bit about our kind of monolingual culture here within the United States is in India.
Just buying a banana from a guy on the side of the road, just not not wealthy in any sense of the word, speaking like five, six languages.
Like, how is this? He hasn't even been to school. Yeah. And he's picked it up.
The street, you know, through his profession, through his vocation, he's come across so many people that speak so many different languages.
And he knows that to be able to sell as many bananas, he's going to be able to have to communicate with people.
Because when you talk to a person, you know, in their language, you're reaching their hearts.
Of course, people are going to want to talk to you. People are going to want to buy from you.
People are going to want to have, you know, a relationship, a professional working relationship, whether it's a business or in day to day life.
So I have seen firsthand the power of language in communicating and connecting people in today's polarized world that we live in.
Right. So you were probably you were raised in that environment where it was common to speak multiple languages.
Did you spend much time traveling around India before you came to the US?
Absolutely. I had the privilege of traveling from north, south, east, west.
And while I was a teenager, fascinating enough, apart from my passion for sciences and STEM, I was a motivational speaker.
I had spoken at tens of schools. And plus I was picked as one of the 12 teenagers from across India to serve as a young opinion journalist for India's largest newspaper, The Times of India in English.
So I was one of those 12 teenagers that were picked at the age of 15 to write for the newspaper, to represent the newspaper, to travel across the country and feature stories.
So I think public service was in my blood, but I had some speaking and speaking, but I had succumbed to that societal pressure that I've got to become a doctor or an engineer.
But today, look, fast forward 10, 12 years, 14 years now, you know, since 2009, my parents are so proud.
They don't think I'm a disgrace to the family. And they go tell other South Asian parents that you should allow your young, you know, your young kids to pursue their passions.
Because you want them to be happy ultimately. And you want them to be happy doing what they're going to do.
I don't think I would have been happy working for 30 years with nuclear reactors.
The kind of energy I've got, I don't think I would be working with nuclear reactors.
I mean, I think based on your energy, you probably have worked with nuclear reactors quite a bit.
That's where you get all your energy, right? Yeah, I think that's what we have. You are a nuclear reactor.
So you come to the US, though, speaking multiple languages.
What do you feel like, like other than family and your school environment?
Like what kind of before coming to the US?
What are some of the things you feel like had a major impact on who you are today? What being from India?
No, I think just our multilingual upbringing in India and the work ethic that we as Indian Americans bring.
I mean, look at the statistic in the United States. Indian Americans are probably the most, they are the most, you know, well to do minority in the United States.
Because they come with that work ethic, they come with that drive, with that zeal and that passion to succeed.
Because that's the expectation that our families have of us.
That, hey, we could do so much, we sacrifice this so you could come to the United States, so you could do something for yourself.
But we were not those stereotypical kids, as I told you.
You know, we did not want to. And then we had quite some time that our parents were disappointed in us.
They're like, hey, you gave up all this money to study engineering. You're going to a community college. What are you going to do with your lives?
So it took some time to be able to get where I am today to get my parents to be like, hey, champions for, hey, your kids can do whatever.
They could be carpenters, they could be plumbers, they could be, you know, they could be Amazon drivers. Who cares?
But let them be the best possible one out there. Let them be happy doing what they do.
It's similar in a way to myself. You know, when I was traveling around my family, I was wondering what the heck are you doing?
With your life.
Yeah. My grandmother a few years back told me she was so proud of me and was wondering what I was doing wandering around the world in my pajamas.
But you know, sometimes you've got to get lost to be able to find yourself. And that's what happened to me.
I got lost not knowing what I was going to do with my life or not knowing. But I found myself. I found my calling.
I found my passion. And I am so grateful for that experience of getting lost.
Yeah.
And that adventure. It's not just an experience. It was an adventure.
Yeah. It's life changing and something you can't recreate or go back and do over again.
Exactly.
It's like you got a certain window where that's possible, you know, in your 20s before you have kids.
So remind me, am I correct in remembering that your parents were here before you were?
Yes.
So how did your parents find your way here?
So my grandparents were the first ones to come to the United States because their siblings lived in the United States in Dallas, Texas.
Really?
And then through the family migration chain system, they sponsored my parents. But by the time they sponsored my parents, we were too old.
So we had to make our way to the United States using student visas to come to America and then, of course, get, you know, naturalized as US citizens over the years, over 11 years.
That's what I was wondering. So it took you 11 years.
It took 11 years to get an Einstein green card, which is one of the toughest green cards to get in the United States.
So I got that. And then it just...
So you take people that are unaware of the process, the challenges, trials, tribulations, but then obviously positive too.
But 11 years, that's a long time. Tell me about like kind of details for the listeners who don't understand the immigration process.
So I came on a student visa, which is five years, to study my undergraduate coursework.
And then I got a work permit to work for a year, which is when I worked in Oklahoma City Public Schools.
After that, I got another student visa to study my master's at UCL.
And then I got a work permit for another year, which is when I went to Dallas ISD to work as a Spanish, Spanish and mathematics teacher.
And they liked my work. So they sponsored me on an H1B visa, which is specialty occupation visa.
The only way you can get into the United States other than, of course, marrying an American.
You know, so I got my H1B visa, but being an Indian or a Chinese national, you're not lucky because Congress has allocated a specific number of green cards per year to each nationality equitably,
which is not very equitable for Indians or Chinese because they're the most populated countries on earth.
So if you're allocating, let's say, five thousand to Costa Rica and five thousand to India, it does not make very, very much sense.
What do you know the approximate numbers? Yeah, I think it's not as low as five thousand for sure.
But it's annually. The United States gives out about a million green cards.
But those million majority of them, over half of them go through the family migration system or through spouses of American nationals or American citizens.
So less than half of those million go to, you know, folks who are being sponsored to employees.
Now, for Indians, of course, there's a wait. Right now, they're probably educating green cards for folks who applied 10 years ago.
So if somebody was to sponsor me as an employer right now, I would have to wait 30 to 35 years to get a green card.
The only way I jumped the line is because I applied for a self petition, the hardest green card to get, which is the Einstein Green Card or EB1A exceptional talent.
You've got to be exceptionally gifted in your profession. You have to show to the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services that you're in the top 10 percent of your profession.
So after 11 years of working in education and through all these accolades that I had received, I put together a package of 400 pages.
I felt like I was writing my dissertation for my doctorate. Right.
And this was before ChatGDP came out. ChatGDP came out, yes. So I had to write it myself. Otherwise, I would be like ChatGDP, can you please write my life story?
400 page document for me. And I submitted that. And even after that, I was not sure if I was going to get it.
And if not, I would have still been working on an H1B visa and not have as many opportunities to move around employers or do what I'm doing today.
I get to work for anybody I want. I get to maybe someday as I have the ambition to run for public office. I could do that too.
So I have to wait 35 years to have the dream of running for public office.
And how long has it been since you've had the visa?
That's been 2000 and what was it 2003, three years ago. OK. Yeah.
Official three years officially. Congratulations. That's really exciting. Obviously a lot of work, a lot of hoops to jump through that you no longer have to jump through.
No, not at all. So take me back now to you. You'd mentioned your US AO finishing your degree.
Did you get a degree in education at that time? Elementary education. OK. And so I'm certified in high school.
You know, as I said, I took all the tests as Oklahoma allows you to test in multiple subjects and added to your certification.
So I started low with elementary education, a degree, but I got all my certificates up through 12, K through 12.
And right then I had opportunities to student teach in Ninnecar, Rushwings.
You know, Rushwings is the town where they hold the annual watermelon festival.
You can imagine I'm in a group of people. Nobody's ever seen somebody like me.
So, you know, but I can't go home. I can't go home. I had stereotypes.
I was like, I was going to be seeing cowboys outside my airplane window.
And I was like, I didn't see any cowboys. But not the kind of cowboys in India.
It's different kind of cowboys. That's the stereotype that people have based on media, based on what you read and consume, especially if you've never been to Oklahoma.
And I was shocked. That was not true. And then I met cowboys at local diners in Chickasha. And I'm very friendly.
I talk to people. So they're like, hey, I'm actually from India. I bet you can see elephants in the streets in India.
And I would often joke, you sure can't depends on how much you've been drinking.
And I feel like I've seen you before wearing cowboy hat.
Oh, yes. You know, the full get up. That was my students.
I would never forget that. It was in Washington, Oklahoma, a small town.
And my students invited me to a rodeo and they gave me their parents cowboy boots and cowboy hat.
And they said, just Mr. Patel, bring a pair of jeans. We're going to give you all the clothes. We're going to take you to the rodeo.
And they gave me a rosary because they were Hispanic students. So I put on a rosary and I'm a dark guy.
So when I go to the rodeo, everybody thought I was a Mexican cowboy because I spoke Spanish, too.
Oh, too funny. So where was you were doing like you were doing substitute teaching for some time.
Yes. Yes. Not substitute teaching, but I was student teaching students in small towns.
And then I think I thought like part of the requirement for your program.
Yeah. Back then it was called co-teaching. I don't know what it's called now.
It's been a few years, 2014. It's almost 10 years since I graduated.
So, yeah, it was one of the best experiences I had because I met so many students that brought me into their homes and their cultures,
mostly kids of farmers and ranchers. And they got to hear from me of my experiences and my travels.
And they were always these light bulbs. These kids would come to school.
They're like, Mr. Patel, what other story are you going to tell us about? Tell us about your adventure in Africa adventure.
So very slowly, I realized, Taylor, that these kids, they had not traveled to Ghana or India.
These stories you're telling me about, are those related to your Iowa state travels?
Like, were you traveling around the world before you started school in the US?
Yes. How did you have those opportunities?
So fortunately, as I told you, both my parents are college educated. My dad was a pharmacist.
So, you know, he had opportunities to travel and he would always take us to travel.
So, you know, in elementary school, I remember we went to Europe or in middle school, we went to Australia.
And then we went to Africa and Asia and, you know, Southeast Asia. So we're like, wow.
So you're telling the students about these experiences that you had with your family growing up.
Yes. And they were fascinated.
We were all fascinated. And plus, you know, my experience is working with elephants for a very long time.
How did that happen? How did you end up working with elephants?
No, because I have family members who are mahouts or caretakers of elephants on the border of India and Nepal, the Chitwan National Park.
And they're still there today?
They're still there today.
Let's go.
So my cousin says, let's go. I always, you know, the thing is so funny.
I go back to 2014 when I just finished graduating and I was like, I don't want to teach a full time job.
These kids, you know, I was student teaching. They loved my stories of elephants so much.
Why don't I just spend five months traveling to elementary, middle and high schools, teaching them through these presentations that I have with hundreds of pictures.
I have a baby elephants, adult elephants and videos.
I can talk to elephants in the local Taru language.
You know, these elephants are owned by the government of Nepal to patrol the forest, to look for poaching incidents or to look for any other, you know, things that usually cops cannot get through in the middle of a jungle.
So kids love those stories.
So I went and shared those with stories with students all across the state of Oklahoma.
Pro bono. I just went around and my parents were like, what are you doing?
You're not making anybody.
But during that time, I collaborated with the world's largest poo poo paper company, which is in Chiang Mai, Thailand.
I love that guy and his story.
He was an engineer in Canada and he gave up his job and he started the world's largest sustainable poo poo paper company made from elephant poo poo.
I must still have to ask if you're the largest, are you the only or are there many companies?
There are many, but they're the largest and he has a warehouse in Texas.
Really? I sent him my presentation and I told them I'm going around Oklahoma.
You won't believe it, Taylor.
Back in 2014 to my parents garage, he sent a hundred thousand pieces of poo poo paper for free.
And his name, I will never forget.
Michael Flankman, the CEO of Poo Poo Paper Inc. in Chiang Mai, Thailand. And I took those papers and gave it to kids across the state of Oklahoma while presenting to them.
And till date, I will remember many times when I will be at the Penn Square Mall or Sooner Mall, students will walk up and be like, Mom, that's the poo poo paper teacher.
So for the listeners, they've got to be wondering, I mean, does this paper smell like poo poo?
No, absolutely not.
I tell students in a funny manner.
Have you been to see the process to make the paper?
Yes, we've made the paper.
How?
Elephants don't eat Chick-fil-A or raising canes like us.
So elephants eat, all they eat is grass, 500 pounds of grass every day.
So they poop a lot and they're very poor digesters of their food.
So that poop doesn't stink, it doesn't smell.
All you got to do is wash it and then it turns it into 200 pieces of paper per elephant per day.
You're kidding.
Yeah.
Wash it and then, you know, there's a process of making the paper, roll it into equal weight fiber balls and then spread it out and sand the paper and put it on trays and let it dry.
So you've seen this whole process.
I've made the paper.
Where?
In Chiang Mai, Thailand.
With your family?
No, not my family.
My family's not in Thailand.
My family is in Nepal and India.
So, yes, I've made some paper there too.
But because we don't have the resources to do it the large scale way that they do in Chiang Mai, Thailand, they've got a larger group of elephants and the manpower and they've got the resources.
And this man came with capital that he's created the company from Canada.
He was an engineer and then he created it.
Have you met him?
I have met him in person in Chiang Mai.
Okay.
But that was years after I had communicated with him on email, after he had sent me 100,000 pieces of paper.
I'm sure he's a fascinating guy.
100,000 pieces of pooboo paper.
Yeah.
I mean, I think that, were any of the students like afraid to touch this paper?
Absolutely not.
You can imagine the young kids, they were so thrilled and excited and having fun with the paper.
They used it to write notes.
It's art paper.
It looks like art paper and colorful.
You can change it in different colors through natural coloring that we use.
So that truly gave me the gateway to the work I do today.
Young children were so fascinated by my stories that I was like, I'm only in one school sharing these stories and these kids are already excited.
And I can only share some stories of some of my travels.
I've not been to the Kiribati Islands.
I've not been to Swaziland or Lesotho or I've not been to Chile.
How do I bring those stories to my classroom?
So back then when I took my full time teaching job at Oklahoma City Public Schools,
I back then in 2014, Zoom was not a thing.
Maybe it was there, but I don't know.
We use Skype.
And I was like, I have all these friends in the 50 something countries I've been to by 2014.
Let me invite these friends from Facebook and social media handles to come on Skype and talk to my students and what I call them back, the mystery hangouts.
So that students could take a map and an atlas or a globe and ask questions to solve the mystery of where the person is from.
What are the colors of your flag?
Are you north or south of the equator?
Are you close to an ocean?
So it fosters that critical thinking, problem solving.
And at the same time, it really opens this world of opportunities for students who have never been outside their state or their communities in many cases.
So that opened this idea that, hey, I can't go around physically being every school teaching kids about elephant poo poo paper,
but I can bring people from different countries to short 20 minute video calls.
So that's when Global Connect was created in 2014 in my classroom.
Closer around the time that I met you, I think.
Yeah.
Because had you created a World Experiences Foundation?
It was not a foundation then.
It was just a project.
So still just a little bit.
A little bit.
Very small initiative that I have personally created.
And I was like, I started thinking, I was like, maybe what if I turned this into a database of people, of humans, of John Lennon's,
what I call them today, that are almost 1500 something volunteers we have.
I call them out John Lennon's because they give so selflessly of their 20 minutes of their time.
They could be in their kitchen.
They could be out on the beach.
And they would be like, hey, kids, look, I'm right here.
Let's play mystery hang out and then talk a little bit and share about our countries and cultures.
So you can use it in any grade level and you can scaffold that activity for any grade level.
If you think about the Bloom's taxonomy and what you expect students to do on a higher order thinking, we can make students do that.
You have students comparing and contrasting types of government or you have young elementary school students
simply asking questions to solve the mystery of where the person is from and getting lots of fun facts and information about that particular country.
And correct me if I'm wrong.
You actually have like a curriculum to help guide.
This process. Yes. Today. Yes.
So you didn't see we were just experimenting, figuring it out.
And then back then we were just in Oklahoma.
Today we're in almost every state in the United States.
We have small farming communities in Idaho or we have small, small communities in Alaska and remote Alaska.
Thanks to Internet, thanks to high high speed Internet in the United States.
Today you can connect with people anywhere around the globe.
And thanks to COVID-19, a lot of teachers who said they were not tech savvy.
Right. They can't make that excuse anymore.
It got to the point where they were forced to use technology.
It's definitely changed.
Obviously there were challenges, but made changes for the positive as well.
And we will be right back.
Are you ready to take your K through 12 multilingual programs to new heights?
Look no further than the experts at Kelly B's Consulting.
We're not just consultants. We're partners in education.
With a passion for empowering students and enriching your classrooms.
At Kelly B's Consulting, we understand the unique cultural and linguistic needs of your diverse student population.
Our team of experienced educators will work alongside you, tailoring strategies that transform your multilingual programs.
Don't miss out on this opportunity.
Visit www.kellybisconsultingllc.com today to learn more and schedule your consultation.
Kelly B's Consulting, shaping the future of K through 12 multilingual education across the nation.
Your success is our commitment.
Contact us now and let's start building a brighter tomorrow together.
And now back to the show.
So tell me a little bit about the process of, so you were doing this in your own classroom and then you thought,
hey, I'm going to create a nonprofit.
Tell me, at that time you were not a citizen.
No.
What were the challenges, if any?
Yeah, I had to, because you know, to start a company and to be able to run it, you have to have American stakeholders.
So, you know, I got together a board of mostly American citizens.
And of course, I still serve on the board as a volunteer.
So we created the nonprofit.
But, you know, I couldn't do anything.
I mean, I couldn't do anything legally in terms of earning an income or even paying for my expenses to go speak to teachers at a conference in Wisconsin or a conference in another state.
I couldn't do that.
So I had to wait for until 11 years to be able to even accept honorariums for my speaking engagements,
which I do these days because that's the only way we earn income at a nonprofit.
Our database is 100% free.
Because that was the idea I had.
Because if we start charging teachers for hosting video calls with people around the globe,
the ones that are going to be most affected are the schools that don't have the money,
the students that don't have the resources.
And the whole idea of this was that we want to provide access to global experiences to students who don't have access.
So if I start charging for it, that's limiting access.
So we will never charge as long as we continue to run this nonprofit.
This is going to be a 100% free platform.
So gratefully, we have been able to raise lots of money through our fundraising gala or through corporate sponsorships or through now,
you know, speaking engagements where I speak around the country or train teachers in school districts across the country.
That's one way I can continue to make money and make sure that the nonprofit can function where we can provide free services to the students.
That's amazing. Thank you for doing all the work that you have been doing.
So, yeah, when was it that you officially founded World Experiences?
2015. One year after I started working for Oklahoma City Public Schools.
And then you've navigated to now calling based on the tragic loss of your brother.
Yeah. 2018, I was in a classroom administering a test with the state star test in Texas.
They're called the star examination for middle school students.
So I didn't even have my device on me. But I remember I recall that morning, April the 10th, 2018, April 9th night, my brother had passed away.
But we didn't find out until the next morning. And I had given up my phone and I was ready to administer tests.
And the school resource officer knocked at the door and there's like, Mr. Patel, we've got somebody who's going to suffer.
And I was like, I'm in trouble. I've done something that I may have done something.
Why are they pulling me out? And they pulled me out and they broke the news that, hey, we've just got news that your brother passed away in a plane crash last night.
So it's the most devastating thing that happened to me in my life.
I can imagine the tragedy and the passing of my brother took him.
He was a twin brother. Yes. Yeah. Full of energy and charisma in his own field.
He was an entrepreneur. If you will, just to honor him, tell us a little bit about your brother.
My brother was polar opposite, not in education, but he was into EDM.
But he had the same energy and the same passion for life.
The same energy that he used with college students in hosting what were called EDM festivals and aid parties for college students across the country.
So very funny. The guy was very successful, did really well for himself and will always be finding these tiny jets across the country.
And he was flying from Scottsdale, Arizona, the TPC golf course where he had just finished hosting the Phoenix Lights Festival again for young college students and party.
And there are these six young, amazing people, two pilots and the four young folks in their 20s.
They were flying from the Phoenix Lights Festival in Scottsdale, Arizona to Las Vegas and eight minutes into taking off, the plane crashed.
And I think a year or two years later after the NTSB concluded their investigations, I think several factors were against them that day,
including the weather, including maybe they may have not done the right weight balance for the plane.
And I mean, there's nothing we can do at this point except for avoid these tragedies based on findings of the NTSB to make sure that other planes and other tragedies similar to these ones do not occur anywhere in the United States.
So after the passing of your brother, you decided to honor him. You changed the name of the organization for World Experiences Foundation.
To Happy World Foundation. Happy was my brother's name.
And during his passing, while I was gone from my school, I recall my students of Title I Turnaround School that I was working for in Dallas ISD for four years,
where they fired all teachers and brought in teachers to turn around the campus from an F school to B school. And we did it.
So the 30 I was there, that's when my brother passed in 2018. While I was gone from my brother's funeral, the students at my school had fundraised $1,500 to give to my family for the funeral.
There's no way I'm going to take this kind of money from students at a Title I school. I know their backgrounds. I know where they come from.
So when I came to school, I said, I'm not taking this money. I gave it back. You'd be surprised.
I came on a Friday. On the Monday when I came back to school, I gave that money back to the students. On Monday, the cafeteria and the library was full of hundreds of Happy Meals for the Homeless.
Really? Students have packed these paper bags that have happy signs on them. And they're like, Mr. Patel, you didn't take our money, but here's something we want to do in your brother's memory.
How sweet. And that was the sweetest thing I thought they had done.
And then ever since, since 2018, we've given out over 25,000 Happy Meals to the homeless, thanks to the volunteerism and generosity of young children in communities across the country.
So that's an additional program that we have at the nonprofit.
Out of curiosity, logistically speaking, were there any challenges to changing the name of the company or is it just like submit a form?
No, no, I think we dissolved the first one. We created a totally new entity so that it's run with the mission of my brother.
Because it just makes sense to not have two entities with the same mission.
So we dissolved the first entity and we created a new one with my brother's happy glasses because he would wear sunglasses and pop the lenses out of them because he thought it was cool.
And I thought that was the lamest thing you could do. So I took his happy glasses, put them on a globe, and we called it the Happy World Foundation.
Because the ultimate goal of global experiences or world experiences, as you refer to, is that Americans live and not just Americans, we as people of this planet live in a happy world free of bigotry and prejudice.
There's so much polarization today. There's so many. Just look at the United States.
How many culture wars we lived through and lived through ever since through the, you know, these last few presidential elections.
Things have changed since I came to this country in 2009. Things are a lot more divided.
So the mission of our organization is to show American children that we as humans are a lot more alike than we are different.
Too many people are trying to divide us in this country.
And if young children realize that we as humans are a lot more alike than we are different, it's a game changer in conflict resolution and peace building.
So those global experiences lead to a happy world for all of us. A peaceful world for all of us.
Yes. So that's, I mean, again, incredible work that you're doing.
Amazing to see over the past 10 years how much your organization has grown. Just seeing you all over the place on social media and the connections that you've made.
One one that I remember that I'm curious about that I never really got detailed feedback on is I remember you had mentioned that you were going to Argentina to present to what?
Over 30,000 teachers at a stadium in UNESCO where UNESCO each year hosts what's called the Congress International de la Educación in their smallest province in the country in Tucumán,
where the independence was drafted for the country of Republic of Argentina.
Thirty thousand teachers. I felt like I was a football player.
So they pick teachers. Fortunately, as you mentioned in my bio, I was picked as a finalist out of 30,000 teachers, one of the top 50 for a million dollar teacher price while I was working at the turnaround school.
And guess what? This happened three weeks before my brother died. I was picked as a finalist to go to Dubai. I was with heads of states, with actors and actresses.
That particular organization opened so many doors. And I think they do such incredible work of elevating the status of the teaching profession. They show teachers as true rock stars.
They hosted a ceremony that was like the Oscars for teachers. We felt like royalty and VIPs with heads of states and actors and actresses and concerts in honor and in honor of teachers.
I didn't win the million dollars, but let me tell you, just being in the top 50 was like winning a million dollars. Open opportunities for me to speak at G20, at the International Congress in Argentina, to speak at the United Nations.
Ultimately, my election to the United Nations Association of the United States and now as their chair. So I think it opened a lot of doors for me.
They recognized the work I was doing locally in Oklahoma and Texas and gave me a huge boost as one of the finalists. And over the years, they've given me paid opportunities to speak in countries around the globe.
And it was before you went to Argentina, right? That you were a finalist. But they were selected also for time.
No, that was after Argentina. So time came in 2022, just two years ago. And that was because at the end of the pandemic, Taylor, during the pandemic alone, you know the challenges, you know, children faced across this country, mental health issues.
Of course, think about it. Students are more isolated. They don't have the opportunities because of the lockdowns. So we thought, what better way to bring to bridge that gap and allow young children to experience countries and places around the globe.
During the pandemic alone, we facilitated over 30,000 video calls just in the United States. So the Time magazine, I think there was a reporter who may have had a child in one of the schools that was experiencing this.
And she reached out. She's like, hey, after the pandemic, I'm working on finding some of the most innovative educators in the country. And I think they picked 10 or 11 educators for a special feature, one time feature for the Time magazine.
And they said, we want to feature you and your twin brother, because she read up the story. She went on our website and she read up the story and she's like, hey, I want to feature some of what you're doing.
And she came out to my school in Dallas, Texas. And she came out and she did some stories about all the video calls we were facilitating during the pandemic. To me, that was truly the coolest thing that had ever happened.
Because being in the Time magazine as a young child, I was like, when will I ever make that?
That's what I'm saying. Every now and then on social media, it's like we haven't talked for a while. And it's like all of a sudden, it's a cosh patel in Time magazine.
It's like, how the hell did that happen? You are amazing. But it's like, oh, I got another backstory. How did you end up getting there?
So it's always fun just kind of following what you've been doing. And as you know, our organization, Edgeskills, we definitely focus on supporting multilingual students and educators.
And I've been involved with the Oakland Association of Bilingual Education, have a passion for much of the work that you're doing to help promote multilingualism, multiculturalism in the US and abroad.
So I'm thinking, you know, just practically speaking for the listeners that we have, educators that you have, what are some, do you have one or a few recommendations that they might be able to think about doing that may be a little bit of a change or a shift in how they have been doing things to liven up their classroom, to make it more exciting,
and to kind of leverage technology in ways that you've talked about to make a bigger impact? Because as I'm sure you are fully aware, educators are having a lot of challenges right now.
So how can, what are some recommendations that you might have to help flip the script? Just bring some light, even in some of these dark times, into the classroom.
Absolutely. And first of all, thank you, Taylor, because you too served on the board of World Experiences Foundation. I appreciate that service, even before Edgeskills was as big as it was.
So I appreciate your passion for multilingualism, for cross-cultural connections. And just as podcast, what an incredible way to give educators and your listeners the opportunities to bring about some innovative teaching practices in their classroom.
So since you mentioned that, I think one of the easiest and fastest ways teachers today can implement some of what I did in my classroom, and I continue to do in my classrooms now in Oklahoma City Community College or Epic Charter Schools,
is they can simply, as you said, go on our website, happyworldfoundation.us, or there's many teachers that use Instagram these days, so at Happy World, Inc. or Twitter, you can simply send us a DM and say,
Hey, this Wednesday, I'm studying or my students are reading a unit on Argentina. And we want somebody from Argentina to come and talk to our students. So we have what we call the global ambassadors for our nonprofit in each continent.
So when you DM our social media profiles and give them a certain time, especially a week in advance, I usually tell teachers, give us a one week notice, because each week we facilitate 500 to 1000 calls.
Not right now because it's summer, but each week we'll literally facilitate 500 calls through these social media people to people connections. So it's an incredibly, incredibly grown network of people.
So teachers can simply send us a direct message and say, Hey, I'm reading a unit about a story about an immigrant child from Nicaragua. And I want to get somebody from Nicaragua to talk to my students.
Or I teach in a bilingual classroom where we do French and English, and we want to study some Francophone countries and we want somebody from Senegal or from Cameroon to come talk to our students.
We will pair you with the volunteer via email. You send them the Zoom link or the Teams link or the Google Meet, whatever your school district uses. The person shows up and you have fun with those persons.
You don't have to do anything. We give you the resources.
We even give...
I know he can cut it. Yep. That's why I'm just stopping and...
Oh, see?
Edit here. Yeah, edit right here.
So I'll go back and just repeat a little bit of it. Sure. I don't know. Yeah, yeah. Because you were saying, we'll give them resources.
Yeah, I forgot where I was. So you were just describing the process. If they DM you, then you'll help set that up.
Yes. So yeah, if they simply send us a direct message, we will pair them with the volunteer via email, introduce them to the volunteer, provide them the resources for facilitating the mystery hangout.
But teachers can think outside the box because we don't just facilitate mystery hangouts. We have a room. I mean, we have a plethora, a wide group of experts. These are humans that are not just going to share about their countries, but these are humans with their career bound humans who are probably in university, have graduated from university, who are doctors, lawyers, technicians.
You know, they are experts in their professions. So you could use their expertise in your classroom to talk about something that you're studying in the classroom. So it's as easy as sending us a direct message with the time and the time zone.
It's all free. 100% free. I'm not trying to sell a product here. The reason why I created it is so that my twin brother continues to live and his memory continues to live.
There's very few people who do things so selflessly. But now, you know, the kind of John Lennon's I have in my nonprofit, it gives me hope for our planet. It gives me hope for this truly divided world that we live in today.
There are good Samaritans. There's good people that believe in the power of human connection and that believe that if we as humans, you know, just honor our humanities, we may prevent the next world war.
And despite all the wars we still have that are still continuing to rage months later in Ukraine or in Middle East, what's going on.
So I still have hope that if humans cherish the humanity of each other, like we do in these video calls in our classrooms and communities, and especially if we start young and we inspire this generation of global solutionaries, I call them, global citizen solutionaries.
We are going to, you know, it's going to be a game changer in conflict resolution and peace building for the future of our planet.
Absolutely. Yeah, it is important to highlight the fact there are good people out there and that it is okay to have differing opinions and to learn how to disagree but disagree peacefully.
Doesn't happen very often in the United States. Not in our government, but locally it does. And being from India, you probably saw a fair amount of the violent disagreements as well, unfortunately.
India is so much more diverse. If you look at it, it is a country with 22 official languages, over 150 languages and 10,000 dialects and a billion people. And we still try to get along.
And here in the United States, we have one language, though we have no official language in this country.
We still have so much bickering and fighting and polarization of our politics and day to day life.
So, getting closer to kind of wrapping up. Now, you've taken us from your upbringing in India, experience in college, and over the past 10 years.
Now, tell us a little bit about your role within the UN. What is that and what do you do for the organization?
I've been with the UN Association of the United States for now six years. I was first selected as a National Council member to represent the Southern States.
It's a membership organization. It's a campaign of the United Nations Foundation. So, it's one of the organizations of the UN Foundation that was created through an endowment of a billion dollars by Ted Turner.
So, the United Nations Association of the United States was also founded around the same time of the UN with the same mission after World War II.
Hey, we want to prevent war and we want to find ways for people of this planet to come together and work towards peace. So, now the UN Association of the United States,
because the United States is one of the leading contributors to the UN. And of course, we should be. I think it makes common sense, bipartisan sense.
And I'll tell you why. There's of course need for reform, but our job as an organization is to lobby members of Congress and the United States to continue supporting the UN,
to continue standing for the UN so that the UN can continue standing for communities around the world.
Now, there's a few reasons why that's a good strategy for the United States to continue to support it. Because we've always been leaders of the free world.
And if you think about it, if we stop giving them money and if we stop being part of these global organizations, there's other not so friendly countries that would fill the gap.
And I'll just give you a couple examples. That's China and Russia. You do not want these countries to be influencing global politics.
And you know that they're already trying to influence right here in Oklahoma. If you look at what's happening in Oklahoma, the Chinese trying to buy farmland.
And Oklahoma is now having to legislate to not allow Chinese nationals from buying farmland in the state of Oklahoma.
But they've tried to what they're doing these days is modern day imperialism in countries like Africa and Asia and other parts of the globe.
So my job is to make sure the United States continues to lead on that front.
And secondly, investing in the UN is very good for the United States because we're the largest spender. We spend the largest amount of money on military.
However, if we invest in the UN and UN peacekeeping, it costs us a fraction of what it would cost to put American boots on the ground in conflict regions.
It makes bipartisan sense. Anybody I speak to in Congress will tell me they do not want American lives or American troops on the ground in conflict and war-torn regions.
So it makes more sense for the United States to spend a fraction of that money of our foreign aid spending, which is a fraction. We spend a very small fraction towards the UN to make sure that the UN can continue standing and continue, you know, maintaining peace in regions where the United States can't be, including countries like Sudan and Afghanistan right now where United States actually withdrew their troops from Afghanistan.
So even today, the United Nations has presence in Afghanistan where they provide food and other aid to communities very remote in the mountains of Afghanistan.
So my job now as chair of the UN Association of USA is to continue making sure that the United States leads on that front as you know, because we want our values, you know, our values of freedom, our values that we hold so close.
And you know, so many countries, imperialistic countries around the globe, look at Iran, look at China, look at North Korea or Russia for that matter. They don't hold our morals. They don't hold our values.
And if we want a truly peaceful world, the United States has to continue leading and make sure that we continue leading on that front.
So apart from doing that in my role as chair, I engaged over 25,000 members from across the country in the work of the United Nations of peace building and conflict resolution and on the sustainable development goals, which are also very important to many educators.
They want to teach the sustainable development goals through the classroom, which is the agenda that the world and the leaders and the people of this planet have come together and said these are the goals we hold dear to ourselves.
No poverty, no hunger, zero hunger or you know, quality education is some of the sustainable development goals that we can all agree on.
They're not partisan, they're not political. So we work on those sustainable development goals and we have multiple programs within the organization that we lead, like the United States Youth Observer to the UN, where we pick one young person from this country to shadow the United States Ambassador to the UN, which is a program sponsored through our organization, the UN Foundation and the State Department.
We have global goals ambassador program that any of your listeners who are interested and passionate about global goals or the sustainable development goals, they could pick a goal and that they're working on locally in their community.
They could apply to become one of our global goals ambassador at the UN Foundation, or we have our global engagement summit, which takes place each year in February at the United Nations headquarters where we invite young students, teachers, diplomats, people, global citizens, anybody who's interested in global policy and international policy.
And international relations to come and sit in the seats of the diplomats in the General Assembly Hall of the United Nations each year.
We have our global leadership summit, which I just came back from that I ran into you in DC, which is where our members from across the country, they lobby their members of Congress to continue fully supporting institutions like the United Nations so that they can stand up for vulnerable communities around the globe.
Amazing. So the our listeners could get engaged through happy world. They also have opportunities really unassociated United States. Yes.
So that sounds like that multiple opportunities throughout the year to engage.
Wow. Yeah, many, many opportunities. So also you guys, your listeners can reach out to me on my personal email, which is speaker sbakrakash.com. So I'm going to give you guys my personal email.
Reach out anytime. Anything I can do for your communities, for your classrooms, for your students. I'm an email away.
Awesome. Lastly, I know you have your first beautiful child on the way. Congratulations. Tell us very briefly. How did you meet your wife?
So, you know, last year I was so incredibly honored to receive about a hundred thousand dollars in funding for study abroad trips. And we sent over 60 actress students, teachers and volunteers with tens of not even tens, hundreds of pounds of humanitarian aid to Cuba.
And while I was on one of the trips to Cuba, I met my wife now who was visiting her grandmother in Havana. And we hit it off and we were like, hey, we need to meet again. So I met her again a couple of weeks later in Miami.
And we flew back again to Cuba with some of our volunteers and teachers and students that I was taking on study abroad trips to Cuba. And we kept meeting and then she moved over to Oklahoma. So I think it's a story that we're expecting a baby.
That's so exciting. Congratulations. Do you guys speak? What language you speak most in the home?
So at home with my parents, we've got to speak English because she doesn't speak any Indian languages. But between her and me, I think we hit it off in Spanish because that's like my I feel like it's become my mother tug now.
That's so exciting. It'll be fun to learn what your baby, how many languages your baby is not speaking. Because that's another thing that we are so passionate about, Taylor, language revitalization, because it only takes one generation to lose a language.
And it takes three generations to re-wildlize that language. So it's very critical. So many languages are endangered and they're at the threat of extinction these days. So it's so critical that parents inspire that love for speaking their native language or their mother tongue.
What language is going to come first for your child? I think it's going to be Spanish. I'm going to be like, no, they got to speak Spanish. They're going to learn English in school. Why should we speak so Spanish?
Well, because grandparents are around. So hopefully I'm keeping my fingers crossed the child's going to speak Gujarati.
Okay. That's amazing. Yeah. I'm continually continuing. I'm always impressed with all the work that you do. Amazed with everything you do. Seeing on social media all the different places you are and how you make the connections that you do and just inspired by your passion and excitement for helping people and the free work that you were doing at Happy World Foundation.
So thank you for joining us today and thank you for sharing your story and sharing opportunities that educators and listeners can become involved in.
I look forward to continuing our friendship and figuring out ways that we can collaborate and help each other out. For all the listeners out there, thank you for listening.
Have anything that you would like to say in closing? Thank you. Thank you for having me, Taylor, and for all the work that you've been leading over the years with EduSkills and especially with this incredible platform you've created with this podcast because I know as an educator, even today, I listen to podcasts all the time while I'm on my way to school.
I want new ideas. I want to be that reflective, constantly lifelong learner and educator who's constantly looking for opportunities to better the teaching practice. And you are one that exemplifies that. You have plenty of new ideas that you implement and you're making a huge difference.
Thank you for all that you do for our community and again thank you for joining us today. And lastly, I would like to thank our producer, Mike Olverhove. Thank you for all the work that you do and it's been fun being here with you today and I look forward to having our main host, Kelly Forbes, back next time. Sorry he was not able to be with us today.
So with that, we'll be signing off. Thank you guys so much. Have a wonderful day.
Thank you for joining us today. Don't forget to like, follow and subscribe. Adios!