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Pull up a chair and tell me your memory

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Why does it matter to you?

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I want to hear your story, your point of view

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Tell me what happened to you

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Hi and welcome back to Tell Me What Happened

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The podcast that features folks from all walks of life

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Telling us one true childhood experience

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And how that experience, that event, that circumstance

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Impacted who they are today

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I'm your host Jay Rehak

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And like you, I've had my share of childhood experiences that have stayed with me

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Some of them have been very painful

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Some of them beautiful

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Some of them profound maybe

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But all of them I'd like to think have helped make me a better person

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Now as I always say, they may not be true

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But that's what I'd like to think

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Alright!

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Today I have as my guest

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Eric Horvath

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Eric mobilizes resources for marginalized community across the country

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He does this as an investor and an educator

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Primarily as VP of community-engaged investments at early stone management

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And adjunct professor at the City College of New York

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Where he teaches impact investing to graduate students

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And one other side note, I actually met Eric through the trustee leadership forum at Harvard University

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Where he helps coordinate the program

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Welcome to the show, Eric Horvath

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Thanks Jay, thanks for having me

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Eric, I know a little bit about your story because you put it in the notes as you and I were going back and forth

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I'm really excited to hear your story because it's really profound at least in the abstract

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So are you ready to tell your story?

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Sure am

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So just Jay, thanks for all the collaboration and camaraderie that we've had with the trustee leadership forum

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I'm really glad that we've been able to meet

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And I'm happy to be on the podcast

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I've appreciated some of the previous episodes

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So just before I hop into my story, I think just to frame for the listeners

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It's very key to know that I am Korean American

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So I present as Asian and as male and I was adopted as a child from South Korea

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So the reason why that's important and why that will come up in my story

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Is that as I enrolled in things as a child, specifically literally baseball

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I always needed to furnish a birth certificate or I needed to furnish documentation to show where I was born

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Just proof of citizenship

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So the need for documentation around kind of my citizenship status has always been something keenly on my mind since I was very, very young

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So maybe to hop in, I'll say I grew up on Long Island

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I'm in my mid-30s, so I'll take you maybe back to suburban Long Island, which for folks that are not in the New York area

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This is just an offshoot of New York City

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I was in fifth grade, I grew up in the suburbs, went to public elementary school

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And as a 10-year-old in the morning, I remember just playing outside with my friends

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You know, at 8.30, 8.45 in the morning, before the bell would ring and we would line up to go into class

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So this was basically the entire ritual that we all look forward to playing soccer at 8.30 in the morning

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Running around, getting really sweaty and just having fun with our friends before we have to go sit and listen, basically

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So we just did that for years and I really remember this one morning in fifth grade as a however old I was

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We lined up for the bell ring at 9 in the morning, we lined up in our class lines like we always do

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And everything seemed the same until some of our teachers came out with a very stern kind of, like a pretty militant and very stern attitude

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It was unusual, it was definitely not the way it normally, normally how they came out

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And I think we were all trying to figure out why their posture was more tense and why they were not really addressing us the way they normally did

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They didn't really engage with those types of questions, they just told us like march inside

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So we walked into the building, instead of going straight into our classroom, they took us to our cafeteria

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Again, continuing this facade, essentially what was going to be a role play of immigration officers at Ellis Island

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In social studies or history class, we were probably trying to, we were probably learning about, you know, the history of Ellis Island, the Statue of Liberty, in the early 1900s

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And this was just a way for them to kind of have us experience it in a non textbook way

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So we're all pot sweaty, confused, why, we're not going to our classroom, they marked us to the cafeteria

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And then we look around and then the cafeteria is totally turned upside down

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I don't remember all of the exact details, but you know, if you've been into an elementary school cafeteria, it's just a bunch of long picnic tables

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But things had been moved around, there were barriers put up, there were desks, like teachers were sitting all over the place

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And we're all still very confused

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I don't know when we realized that this was a simulation, again, we're very young, so I don't know if we ever really realized it was a simulation

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But they kind of ordered us, again, without any context, to go through each of the stations and each of the checkpoints, trying to simulate what it would have been like for us to have immigrated through Ellis Island

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So, you know, the reason why I mentioned at the beginning about my appearance, the circumstances of my birth and being adopted is that when I was growing up, I often got very nervous

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That I had to provide some documentation around my birth, citizenship, and being a naturalized citizen

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I was always so nervous whenever I registered for sports or for things that I needed to have this documentation

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And my teacher didn't know that, and I grew up in a middle class, upper middle class, white suburb, where there's very little racial diversity

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So I definitely stood out quite a bit amongst my classmates

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And I got overwhelmingly nervous and anxious at every station throughout the cafeteria

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And I was unable to articulate why, or I was shameful or afraid

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I might have even said it to the teachers as I tried to go through, but they kept blocking me and saying, like, what do you mean you don't have this paperwork?

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What do you mean you don't know the answer to X, Y, and Z?

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Like, I don't know what time I was born

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So I got increasingly, increasingly anxious, and then everyone else, all my friends who identify as white, like, they were able to just be like, oh, I'm Irish, I'm German

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Like, they just went through everything very easily, and they didn't really have to think too much about it

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But I just really remember very distinctly at some point, like, and probably an hour into it

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I just gave up, I absolutely shut down, because I was so anxious and scared

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And I probably started crying in the corner and just wanted to, like, be removed

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And finally, after all of that time, one of the teachers, I don't even think I had her, she just noticed, like, what, you know, why you're upset

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And I explained it to her, and she finally revealed to me that it was a simulation

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Nothing was going to happen to me, and, like, it really wasn't a big deal

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But I always think about that a lot, because I think about how could that have been handled better from the adult perspective, from the teacher's perspective

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Even though they didn't understand my full context and, like, everything that I had grown up with

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How could that have just been handled with more care?

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And it really, to the point of this podcast, it really has stayed with me a lot

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And really has influenced a lot of how I approach things now with people that I don't fully know, their full, their backgrounds

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Well, Eric, you know, I was a high school and grade school teacher for 36 years

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So it makes me sad to hear that story in this sense of the poor little fifth grader, first of all

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And then I think about those teachers, like you said, almost, that what they could have done and what they should have done

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And what they didn't do sort of breaks my heart a little bit

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I am a school teacher, and I never throw other school teachers under the bus, I wasn't there, so I don't know

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But it seems kind of cruel to put anybody through that without letting them know what's going on

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You bring up a fantastic point, though, about not really understanding people's contexts or their backgrounds

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You know, where they're coming from and how it changes everything once you understand a little bit more about people, you know

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And I don't know, did the teacher ever apologize to you just before we get to how it's impacted you?

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I don't think so

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Growing up is difficult, I think, for everybody

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And I mentioned the context of being adopted, growing up in a majority white town, not identifying as white

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Like, you add these additional kind of marginalizing identities, and like it just makes growing up more difficult

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And I reflect a lot on, like, when I was an adolescent or when I was younger and how, you know, when you're young

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You just don't really know how to channel your angst or your emotions

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That's the case for any adolescent, but then when you add in these other layers

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I was not equipped to articulate why I was acting out, why I was kind of cranky or sarcastic

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And I also don't think my teachers were either, to be super honest

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I'm like, I'm an educator now, I'm an adjunct, I've also taught middle school, high school abroad

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I've done a lot of workshops, like, I very much have a teacher's bone in my body

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And I always try to think about this kind of, like, other people's perspectives

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I don't know if my public school teachers on Long Island, I don't know, I genuinely don't

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Because they dealt with a very homogenous population

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I don't know if they were thinking about what, what are, why is this student getting so upset?

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Why is he acting this way? Why is, you know, this is why diversity is so important

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Exposure to diverse experiences is so important just because it expands your empathy

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So I, I don't know, I don't think they apologize

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But I wouldn't be surprised if they thought that it was more of a me thing

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Instead of something that they could have improved on

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I don't know, I don't know whether it will or grudge towards them

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But I also don't know their contacts either

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That's a good point, I can't help, we were talking a little bit before

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But I can't help, whenever somebody tells me a story

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I do think of my own experiences and I, when I was in sixth grade

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I had a school teacher who was mad at me and he basically said

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I'm gonna go to the principal and get you kicked out of here

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For, you know, for being, whatever I was being a smart aleck

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He said unless you go into, back into the room, he took me out of the hall

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I said unless you go back in the room and apologize to the entire class

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For being such an arrogant little kid or whatever

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So I went back into the room and I'm crying my eyes out saying

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I'm really sorry, please don't kick me out, I'm sorry

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And the teacher looked and he started laughing and he said

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Get out of here, React, you think I was really gonna kick you out?

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And I mean, I'm in sixth grade, I don't know if the guy's gonna kick me out

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Totally

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You know, it threw me off for two years because the rest of the time I'm thinking

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I can't ever, no, I can't ask any, not that I was gonna ask anybody out in seventh or eighth grade

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But if I like somebody, it would be like, that's the kid who's crying in front of the class

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You know, not that everybody else necessarily remembers, but I certainly did

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And, Jay, how old are you now?

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You're right, I'm 67

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Right, and 60 years later, you still remember this thing

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And I think this just, there's so, this just goes to this point of like how impressionable youth are

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And like how deeply, how much responsibility as adults, people that youth are witnessing, watching

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Experiencing like how sincere that responsibility is

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Because you're always on display or always sitting in an example

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And you can leave an indelible memory that will last for 60, more than 60 years on children

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Well, amen to that, I mean, I will not preach after this, but I will say what I've been saying for years

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Which is, I think we should pay pre-K and kindergarten teachers the most

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And then grade school teachers the second most, and high school teachers the third most

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And professors the least most, because the earlier you impact these children, the more profoundly experienced

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You know what I'm saying? So like, for me, I was, I think, harmed in sixth grade, let's just say

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If I had had that, I'd have an experience in high school or college

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I would have brushed it off a little bit more, I think

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And it's like, the younger you are, the more important it is that you have teachers who can understand

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Different contexts and what their words mean, not telling a kid that he's going through a simulated

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Ellis Island, and you know, those poor people live on Ellis Island, what they had to go through

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I understand trying to get your fifth graders to understand that, but

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Traumatizing you to make a point doesn't seem like good pedagogy

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But that's just me, but

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So how do you think it's impacted your life? I think you've sort of articulated already, Eric, but

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And you are a teacher, so I suppose you can just talk to us about it

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Yeah, I think this is just one poignant example of a lot of things that I've gone through in my life

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That has really just expanded my perspective and empathy for other people

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But it's interesting about as you gain more perspective as it relates to understanding others

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The more perspective actually I think leads to you understanding less

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So what I mean is I work in what's called impact investing, so I invest in communities of color around the country

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In a variety of ways, through investing within also educational empowerment

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A lot of these people and communities are not my identities, they're not adopted, they're not immigrants

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They're not Asian Americans, they're not male, they're black, Hispanic, indigenous women

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There's just a variety of identities in communities, so it is impossible for me to fully understand where they're coming from

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But as I gain more and more experience working with more and more stakeholders and perspectives

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I think I'm more and more realizing that the goal is not to fully understand anyone, that's not possible

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The goal is to be more open and to be more flexible and to give people more grace when you can

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Because you really just, even beyond those identities, there are family situations, personal finance, cultural situations, generational trauma

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There's just so many other markers that make us who we are

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And in my story I talked about this is the way that I look and this is my birth story

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But that didn't speak about my situation at home or with my parents or any of that stuff

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So we just don't know that

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So it's really, this story has just helped me understand as an adult or as someone that has more influence or as a role model for other people

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How important it is for me to maintain that kind of like open curiosity and that expansiveness as I try to be empathetic

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And not look at it as a journey to be like, well, if I talk to X amount of people, I will understand all of the demographics

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So therefore, you don't have to tell me, I get what, I almost never say like, if I relate to someone, I almost never say like, I know what you're going through

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I'll be like, I can relate to that in some way, because there's literally no way that I could know exactly what they're going through

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And I feel like no one understood what I was going through when I was in fifth grade going through the Ellis Island simulation

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And I don't think rewriting it would be, I wish that I had an adopted teacher that understood the difficulties of registering for literally baseball

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I think I just, I think I probably would have been saved if there was a teacher that had this attitude of describing about being like, let's inquire a little bit more, why do we react in that way

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Like what might be going on on the scenes, not looking to understand those facts and like just understand them discreetly, but really just to give more grace and more patience to other people

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Because life's just really, really complex and it's, so it makes it great, but also it makes it deeply unknowable too

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Man, that's just, you just way smarter than you should be at this age, man, but that's really great

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I mean, that's really, I agree with you a thousand percent, when I was a school teacher, I had a policy, I said I don't want to hear the word same in my classroom

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You can say you had a similar something, but you can't say same, that irritates me when someone says, you know, like you said, I know exactly how you feel

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It's like, no man, you don't, and I don't know exactly how you feel either, I don't exactly know, I have some sense of it, but I certainly don't, you know, not smart enough to go there

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So you moved me with your story because, because I think a good teacher, and you are a teacher, learns from their own experiences

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We all are going to make our own mistakes, but the idea of being a teacher who understands, hey, I don't know the whole story of this human being that I'm working with and all that

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It really makes you for, I'm sure, a far better teacher, and you're teaching, and you said at City Colleges in New York right now

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Yeah, I'm actually in one of our classrooms now, I teach in the Masters of Public Administration program for City, the City College of New York, which is the founding college within the City University of New York system

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And just as a plug to CUNY, CUNY is the largest urban public university system in the country, and I'm just so proud to work here because it's serving just middle class, working class, students of color in New York

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And I'm really seen as one of the leaders in terms of helping students increase their earnings and socioeconomic status because it's relatively quite affordable

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And just the ethos of my colleagues, faculty administrative, is like we really are trying to create an equitable educational environment for the diversity that is our city

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Alright, well thank you Eric, I really appreciate you taking the time

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I actually went to Hunter College by the way back in the day, and that's part of the system I believe

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But anyway, thank you for coming on the show man, I really appreciate you taking the time, big fan of yours, and very moving story

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So until next time, this is Jay Reaac asking you all to please stay safe out there and try not to hurt anybody