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

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

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Rich Roll?

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• 0:44Rich Roll?

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• 1:05Speaker 01

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

• 1:24Rich Roll?

  That's educator Stephen Ritz, this week, on the Rich Roll Podcast.

• 1:38Speaker 01

  The Rich Roll Podcast.

• 1:42Rich Roll?

  Hey, everybody. How you doing? What's going on? What's the news? It's Rich Roll here, your host, on this little podcast. Thanks for tuning in. As you most likely know at this point, each week I engage the best, most pioneering, paradigm-breaking, and often revolutionary minds and personalities. Today, I've got a huge personality for you guys that span the full spectrum of health, wellness, fitness, medicine, nutrition, spirituality, psychology, athletic performance, inspiration, and excellence.

• 2:09Rich Roll?

  These are not interviews. They are conversations, the purpose of which is to leverage the insights provoked to simply help you live and be better, to help all of us unlock and unleash our best, most authentic selves. So, thanks for subscribing to the show on iTunes. Thank you for spreading the word on social media and telling your friends. And thank you for always clicking through the Amazon banner ad at richroll.com for all your Amazon purchases. It's a great free way to support the mission, so why don't you go ahead, bookmark the link from the banner ad on my site, why don't you? Make it easy, and it's a win-win for all of us. So, one of the biggest contributors to our epidemic of childhood obesity and the rising incidence of type 2 diabetes in young people is unhealthy school food, right?

• 2:54Rich Roll?

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

• 3:37Rich Roll?

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

• 4:22Rich Roll?

  in a 100-year-old reclaimed school library. This guy's work has been featured everywhere, everything from Forbes to The Wall Street Journal, The Guardian, ABC, CNN, NBC, NPR. He was recently named a 2015 Top 10 finalist for the prestigious Global Teacher Prize. And in 2014, he and his 4th and 5th grade students were invited to and feted by none other than the White House. His accomplishments and his accolades are many, many, many, too many to list. I first came across his message by way of his incredibly inspiring TEDx Manhattan Talk, which is ranked in the top 25 Food and Education TED Talks of all time, and it's used for teacher training and workforce development globally, which is amazing.

• 5:04Rich Roll?

  I'll embed this talk, as well as a second TED Talk that he did, and a recent, very cool, short documentary on his work that premiered on Upworthy. It's a very cool piece. I'll put all of that on the episode page at richroll.com. And also, and quite impressively, Stephen recently lost more than 100 pounds. So how did he do this? Well, he did it by modeling positive behavior and simply eating what he and his students grow in school. All right, you guys, Stephen Ritz. This guy is the teacher you wish you had, the teacher every kid deserves, a true paradigm breaker.

• 5:46Rich Roll?

  This is a guy who sets the pace for future generations of teachers to come. So get ready, because this guy's got enough energy to power a city. So I guess that's why they call him the Green Bronx Machine. Enjoy.

• 6:04Rich Roll?

  Yeah, from watching all the interviews and everything like that in the TED Talks, you're looking trim. How much weight did you lose? You lost like 100 pounds, yeah?

• 6:14Speaker 01

  Yeah, a little over 100 pounds.

• 6:15Rich Roll?

  That's amazing.

• 6:15Speaker 01

  Yep, but now I have two new friends, Zeus and Apollo, but I want to work on them.

• 6:22Rich Roll?

  How's the, so how did you do it?

• 6:24Speaker 01

  Basically, I got smart, smaller portions, less soda for sure. Um, less soda for sure, that was a killer. But literally just reducing the size of my portions, less salt, less sugar. Um, and knowing when to say when. The first thing I did is I got rid of that big bagel in the morning. Because the bagel in the morning was the killer, with the huge coffee. Um, when I learned that a bagel is like six or seven slices of bread and I'm having that at six o'clock in the morning with a 24 ounce coffee, six ounces of which is probably sugar. I went to a real small coffee, got rid of the bagel, went with protein. Um, and that was it. I dropped like 20 pounds in the first two weeks. People told me I looked good and the rest I was off to the races.

• 7:04Rich Roll?

  Yeah, well, you do look amazing, so congrats on that.

• 7:06Speaker 01

  Well, thank you kindly.

• 7:07Rich Roll?

  And I'm so sorry that I missed this wonderful event yesterday. I'm kicking myself and I'm bummed, so I want to hear what went down.

• 7:15Speaker 01

  Well, yesterday I was just honored to host the former White House chef, Bill Yassiss, up at our school. Bill and I are working on a series of science STEM education programs. Um, because I grow food all year, um, indoors, and Bill loves to cook. But he also loves the science of cooking, the STEM, the technology, all the vocabulary around food. The crystallization of food, you know, the mulsification, you know, the different densities of oils and stuff. So we are going to partner together to build a very robust program endorsed by the New York City Department of Education.

• 7:49Rich Roll?

  Wow.

• 7:49Speaker 01

  And to think that I am in a community that has limited means and limited access to healthy, fresh food, and that we are going to be growing it 365 days a year in the middle of the housing projects is kind of exciting.

• 8:01Rich Roll?

  Yeah, it's crazy.

• 8:02Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 8:02Rich Roll?

  It's absolutely crazy. So let's, let's get into that. I mean, I think a good place to start is to... I mean, there's people that listen to this from all over the world. Uh, most people are familiar with the Bronx, the South Bronx, but why don't you, uh, indulge us by just painting a picture of what this community is all about?

• 8:21Speaker 01

  Well, first of all, I love my community. So there is no place like home and there is no place like the South Bronx. But I believe that the borough that gave birth to... Baggy pants and funky fresh beats can now be home to organically grown red ones.

• 8:36Rich Roll?

  Now you're just crazy talking.

• 8:37Speaker 01

  No, I'm not crazy talking. Um, you know, we are, we have slowly but surely become the home of local agriculture, local urban agriculture. And, um, why not? We are a community with limited means and limited access to healthy, fresh food. So the fact that we can grow it ourselves and grow it 90% less water indoors all year round, and for me, most importantly, aligned to outstanding academic performance is what it's all about. But classroom by classroom, block by block, school by school, we are changing the landscape and the mindset of the South Bronx. And I like to say the Bronx can change attitudes now.

• 9:13Rich Roll?

  And you are, you are a shining, bright example of that. And, and we're going to get into all the amazing work that you're doing. But, uh, let's, let's, let's like have a little sort of statistics class on, like, step it back to when, before all of this began.

• 9:28Speaker 01

  Okay, so statistically, um, the Bronx, the South Bronx is the poorest congressional district in America. We have some of the highest rates of single parent homes, some of the highest rates of homeless children. Um, you know, Bronx County is the 62nd rated county of all 62 in New York State for health outcomes and income. So there are some real health and wealth disparities in my borough.

• 9:54Rich Roll?

  Right. And at the time, uh, prior to all of the things that you've been doing, I think, uh, attendance rates were something like 43% and

• 10:04Speaker 01

  Well, oh, okay, so it's my kids.

• 10:06Rich Roll?

  You know what I'm talking about? Like, yeah, yeah, for like the kids and, and kind of like, you know, what it's like to, you know, live below the poverty line and be faced with, you know, sort of this nutritional desert, you know, scenario where it's just bodegas, you know, pushing fast food and cigarettes and malt liquor essentially.

• 10:21Speaker 01

  You are 100% right. I mean, there are a lot of wonderful shopkeepers in the Bronx. So I don't want to disparage anyone, but I think if a visitor from another planet came to the South Bronx, they would think that like McDonald's and Dunkin' Donuts are the chief, you know, places of congregation and social interface for the community. People are there for breakfast, for lunch, for dinner. They're open 24 hours. We have weddings in McDonald's for God's sake.

• 10:43Rich Roll?

  Is that right, really?

• 10:44Speaker 01

  They practically stalk us. You know, if you look at the highest densities Of where kids go to school. There's usually a McDonald's, you know, within walking distance, on the way with happy smiles and happy meals, but you know.

• 10:56Rich Roll?

  And cheap.

• 10:56Speaker 01

  And cheap, but cheap food is so damn expensive and eating across the rainbow is not a bag of Skittles, damn it. It is healthy, fresh food and my kids need it. Seventy-five percent of the kids who I say see labeled learning disabled would not be if their parents had access to good prenatal nutrition and to think that's in the Bronx, you think that's America is crazy. Um, and so my classes, eight out of ten kids know someone with diabetes. Awful.

• 11:22Rich Roll?

  Eight out of ten.

• 11:23Speaker 01

  Eight out of ten.

• 11:24Rich Roll?

  Crazy.

• 11:24Speaker 01

  I mean, I have two hundred pounds sixth graders. We have a championship basketball team, but most of them don't look like athletes. They look more like the ball than the athlete. I mean, we're very talented, but we've got a nutritional crisis. I think most of the food that we eat is what I call a mess, a manufactured edible synthetic substance that is packaged for single use with infinite shelf life, designed to sit there forever and seduce and smell wonderful and taste incredible and dissolve and get you to buy one bag more.

• 11:54Rich Roll?

  Mm-hmm. Yeah, absolutely. Frankenfoods that are highly, highly.

• 11:57Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's a good, I've never heard that term.

• 11:58Rich Roll?

  Oh, you haven't? I like mass. I'm gonna take that.

• 12:00Speaker 01

  Yeah, okay, and I'll steal Frankenfood. That's cool. Yeah, it's definitely Frankenfood in the South Bronx.

• 12:05Rich Roll?

  And, and how did you end up there? You were playing basketball in Europe, yeah?

• 12:08Speaker 01

  Well, I'm from the Bronx, so I am a Bronx native. Um, but I was playing basketball. Well, you did your homework. I did play basketball in Europe, got hurt. Before I left, took a test to become a teacher. Um, and in the eighties, there was a tremendous exodus of teaching and a tremendous educational crisis in New York City, particularly in, in the Bronx and in certain communities. So lo and behold, I passed the test. Um, and when I came back, I came back in a cast and I wound up taking a job.

• 12:36Rich Roll?

  You got injured playing basketball?

• 12:38Speaker 01

  Yeah, I blew out something and you know, it just, I needed to come home and, um.

• 12:45Speaker 01

  I wound up taking a job at South Bronx High School in 1983. I think it was the only standing building in like an eight block radius. Hip hop was taking off, crack was everywhere. And at that point, the Bronx was burnt. It was toast. Make no doubt about it. I mean, it was just awful. But I kind of believed in kids and found my niche teaching. And for a long time, I was still playing ball. I was the best athlete in the school. I won the slam dunk championship, you know, even as a teacher back then.

• 13:17Rich Roll?

  And then did you go off and play college ball?

• 13:19Speaker 01

  No, this is after I played college. This was after I played college. But I got the bug for teaching. But the Bronx was just really a tough place to be then. And I left. I wound up going out to Arizona for a while and got a scholarship to go on for my masters at ASU, where I pursued a masters in special ed, started teaching there and came back home and have not looked back since. Had some stints in the restaurant business and some other stuff in service industries. But really, my love is teaching and I haven't looked back. And then a few years ago, I found out about gardening because, you know, I'm not a farmer. I mean, you've done your homework. So, you know.

• 13:55Rich Roll?

  You're a farmer of humans.

• 13:56Speaker 01

  Yes, I'm a people farmer, I like to say. The kids are my seeds.

• 13:59Rich Roll?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. But when you first began, did you have this revolutionary spark? Or, you know, were you, did you become frustrated with the daily grind of it? Or where did the birth of this idea of really trying to transform the community, like where did that arise from?

• 14:17Speaker 01

  I guess it's that Pee-wee Herman line, "I'm a rebel." I mean, I've always been kind of that rebel insurgent teacher from day one. So, in the age of hip hop, I was really into the power of pen. And even though back then I was a tremendous athlete, I was more into the power of words than I was into, you know, the power of being an athlete because I knew there was always another better athlete out there. You know, there was always someone stronger, faster. But I really felt that if we gave kids a voice. Particularly a voice in the South Bronx that was a unified voice and a positive voice that they could grow something greater. I started an academic Olympic team. I had a bunch of math champions. I was really doing nutty stuff with the most marginalized kids

• 14:59Speaker 01

  because I felt if we can move those who are apart from to becoming a part of, together we can all prosper. And we literally grew something greater way before we were ever growing plants in the South Bronx.

• 15:10Rich Roll?

  Yeah, and the growing plants in the classroom occurred almost accidentally.

• 15:17Speaker 01

  Yeah, 20 years later, literally 20 years later. I had a lot of incarnations in between. I mean, I had a special Olympics athletic team. We were the first team to compete in the five borough bike tour.

• 15:27Rich Roll?

  Wow.

• 15:28Speaker 01

  At one point, I was that nutty teacher when we had tokens that had kids creating algorithms to use one token to go into the subway and never come out and hit every single stop and, you know, closed-loop system.

• 15:40Rich Roll?

  Uh huh.

• 15:41Speaker 01

  We won science fairs. We won writing competitions. We took on big projects. We had graffiti contests. We had poetry contests. Anything and everything that brought the classroom into the community and the community into the classroom that had a positive kind of multiplier effect, concentric circles.

• 15:58Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 15:59Speaker 01

  This was way before food. I mean, way before I even knew.

• 16:00Rich Roll?

  Right, right, right, right. And one of the things that you said, I can't remember where I read it, but I thought it was really kind of illustrative of where you're coming from and your style is this idea. You said something like, "I'm not interested in incremental change. I'm interested in transformative change or exponential change."

• 16:17Speaker 01

  Oh, absolutely. I am not, yeah.

• 16:19Rich Roll?

  Like, just trying to cut, "Well, yeah, we're in a difficult situation up here, but let's try to make it 10% better."

• 16:26Speaker 01

  No, I don't want to push the needle. I want to flip the script.

• 16:28Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 16:29Speaker 01

  I believe that my kids, you know, that the Bronx, we are poised, ready, willing, and able to export our talent diversity. We are ready. The vast market of human capital there is insane. Hell, we brought the world hip-hop.

• 16:40Rich Roll?

  But you're like a one-man cyclone. So how is this working, you know, within a system that probably has a certain way that it likes to do things and maybe isn't so interested in somebody coming in and ruffling a bunch of others?

• 16:51Speaker 01

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

• 17:14Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 17:15Speaker 01

  And you know, neither jail nor retail is a living wage in the South Bronx.

• 17:18Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 17:18Speaker 01

  So we've got to flip that script. We've got to move kids into spheres of success they've never imagined.

• 17:24Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 17:24Speaker 01

  And we've got to move them from being consumers to producers.

• 17:27Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 17:28Speaker 01

  To writing their own story, telling their own story.

• 17:30Rich Roll?

  And that's what you've done, and that's what makes your story so profound, because you've done it in, under the most difficult circumstances. And when you kind of canvass, you know, across America, across the United States, and you look at kind of the systemic problems in, in public education, even private education, you know, with school lunches, and, and all kinds of, you know, issues that, that sort of plague and affect schools across the country, um, you know, in affluent suburban communities, they're having difficulty making even incremental change. And, and under these, you know, extraordinary circumstances, you've been able to kind of, you know, 10x the whole thing.

• 18:07Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, listen, everybody's challenged these days, you know, particularly around health, particularly around nutrition, you know, you have kids who are so disconnected from things, from people, from places, you know, even wealthy kids who are getting tons of money and just eating themselves to death, or interneting themselves to death. Um, to my kids, who are also, you know, nickel and diming themselves, themselves to death. But we've really got to look at certain realities. The reality is, this is the first generation of children that are not going to outlive their parents, largely because of what they're eating. I'm looking at kids going through puberty in elementary school. Now, that didn't happen, you know, 30 years ago. It's got to be the food. Um, you know, I'm looking at

• 18:50Speaker 01

  what a portion is, and I come from a family where food is love, but when you look at what portions of cheap food are today compared to what they were 20 or 30 years ago, Jesus Christ.

• 19:00Rich Roll?

  Yeah, it's crazy.

• 19:01Speaker 01

  You know, make that spoon a little smaller.

• 19:04Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 19:04Speaker 01

  A little less rice and a whole lot more love, please.

• 19:07Rich Roll?

  All right, so, so 20 years into your teaching career, and you happened to leave uh, some daffodil bulbs uh, on the heater one day, right?

• 19:16Speaker 01

  Crazy daffodil story.

• 19:17Rich Roll?

  And, uh, and, and a whole movement is born. So walk me through how this transpired.

• 19:22Speaker 01

  Well, it wasn't, I mean, there's a lot of tragedy. So, um, you know, there was some tragedy in my life. For years, I'd been doing middle school crisis intervention, real troubled kids in middle schools. Um, we had a tragedy in my family, and I wound up moving closer to where I was living, and taking a job very close to the immediate high school in my community. Little did I know, the immediate high school in my community had a seventeen percent graduation rate. You know, had forty-eight security agents, eighteen armed police officers, and over two hundred felonies a year. Like the metal detectors at the front door and the whole thing? Yeah, they were macing kids in school on a daily basis. You know, they were bringing kids out in handcuffs. I mean, it was, it was a classically failing school.

• 20:05Speaker 01

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

• 20:50Speaker 01

  But they believed in me, and they knew I believed in them, and I had a certain amount of street credibility with them. And they knew that my job was to love them until they learned to love themselves. Lo and behold, someone did send us a box of these crazy daffodil bulbs. I didn't know what the hell they were. They looked like garlic, but to me, they were really projectiles, and I was mortified that they were going to be going at each other. So I just hid them one day behind the, you know, got this box and hid it behind this huge radiator and kind of forgot about it. One day, there was a fight in class, and a kid went behind the radiator to look for a weapon, and there were hundreds of flowers coming out of this box. Beautiful, bright, yellow flowers. And it was like an aha moment. And the boys wanted to give them to the girls for sex, and the girls wanted to give them to their parents,

• 21:33Speaker 01

  and people thought we could sell them and do this, and it kind of diffused this insanely kind of, um... Really crazed moment in class, you know, the beauty of a flower.

• 21:44Rich Roll?

  Sounds like this lightbulb moment.

• 21:46Speaker 01

  Yeah, it was like a lightbulb moment. I was also constantly being asked by kids who were going back and forth to probation, why plants were growing out of the side of the buildings. And you know, nature happens. Seeds, if they take root, will, you know, will germinate and will grow. And that was what this was about. So that year, lo and behold, I planted 25,000 daffodils bulbs across New York City with gang kids. And the program was to take kids and go into neighborhoods that they would never want to go into to do something greater and to kind of create this beauty. And the kids loved it. They loved seeing the daffodil sprout. They loved getting out there. They loved getting dirty. And at that time, there were still so many abandoned lots that we specialized in taking kind of

• 22:29Speaker 01

  unproductive, ugly places and turning them into aspirational, inspirational, productive places where people wanted to aggregate and kind of came together. And it was great.

• 22:40Rich Roll?

  That's cool. So the city, the city is permissive when you, are they, do you have to jump through a bunch of hoops?

• 22:46Speaker 01

  Oh, I mean, asking for permission is begging for denial.

• 22:49Rich Roll?

  So you just go do it and...

• 22:50Speaker 01

  Go do it and give everybody else credit and say thank you and credit the one you know is going to be your biggest... I can't let my secret out, but asking for permission is begging for denial. It's a different city now, too, than it was then.

• 23:00Rich Roll?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 23:01Speaker 01

  This was before Bloomberg. So there was a lot going on. And now, you know, listen, the Bronx is a totally new place. Not to say we don't have our issues, of course we do, but back then, there were so many places. And people wanted us, which was also great. People were like, hey, Steve, we've got, we've got a place for you. And it was great for my kids to be a part of. And quite frankly, there were a lot of teachers there who have since moved on, who were thrilled to see my kids not in their classes and spending time with me. But my job was to love them until they learned to love themselves. And I went the distance. I had my daughter with me. So my daughter grew up with them and they saw what parenting looked like and what love looked like and what concern and commitment looked like. And lo and behold, all those 17 kids went on to graduate, a bulk went on to work with Majora Carter at Sustainable South Bronx.

• 23:46Rich Roll?

  I just met, I just met Majora last week.

• 23:49Speaker 01

  Majora's what? Yay, Majora, yes.

• 23:52Rich Roll?

  We both spoke at this event and I got to hear her give a, give a talk. It was, it was very inspirational.

• 23:56Speaker 01

  Right. We put in the first green roof. It was her vision and my kids. And that was awesome. And that's about, you know, that's about as locally grown as locally can can happen.

• 24:05Rich Roll?

  Right, and these kids are, I mean, the typical kid, I mean, they're coming from single parent families, perhaps occasionally homeless even in certain situations or in shelters.

• 24:16Speaker 01

  For sure.

• 24:17Rich Roll?

  Um, living in the projects, et cetera. I mean, what are, you know, learning disabled, I mean, what are some of the kind of conditions that you're having to, you know, navigate with with sort of the typical.

• 24:29Speaker 01

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

• 25:06Rich Roll?

  Yeah, and what is the gang culture like, I mean, back then, I suppose?

• 25:10Speaker 01

  Oh, back then it was awful. Um, I mean, back then, drugs were just everywhere, you know, I mean, now the drug problem is still very much a problem. It hasn't gone away, so don't think we've solved it, because we haven't, America, own up to it. But it's kind of gone behind closed doors. Um, cell phones and technology and also real estate values have changed that. Um, but you know, one only needs to walk into certain neighborhoods and say that, hmm, something isn't right. But you know, the open air drug supermarkets of the 90s and the millennium, a long since gone, and thank God. But in some ways, that's a different problem too, because it's behind closed doors, and now it's prescription drugs.

• 25:48Rich Roll?

  Yeah, or it also becomes harder to kind of know what's going on, I suppose, right?

• 25:52Speaker 01

  But also the proliferation since then of fast food. I mean, I'm seeing kids expand on a, on a weekly basis. You know, cheap food is now everywhere and, um, you know, franchise food, fast food, bulletproof restaurants, it's everywhere.

• 26:06Rich Roll?

  So you're combating simultaneously sort of starvation because they're nutritionally deficient and yet obesity.

• 26:13Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 26:14Rich Roll?

  At the same time.

• 26:15Speaker 01

  I mean, my big thing is, you know, if America's listening, you know, we've got to address this. Civilized nations feed people. And we still want to believe in the food drive, in the canned food drive, like, kind of like the bucket brigade. Oh, let's put out the fire one bucket at a time. We can grow food. We can change lives. We just have to commit to do that. And civilized nations feed their children. Civilized nations educate their children. We've got to stop this, you know, cradle-to-prison pipeline.

• 26:43Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 26:44Speaker 01

  It's not work, I mean, it works for some people.

• 26:45Rich Roll?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 26:46Speaker 01

  So some people want to see it keep happening. But we've got to change that. And that's my job, to flip the script.

• 26:50Rich Roll?

  So you go and you plant these daffodils and these flowers in these vacant lots and you're giving these kids a very tactile experience of seeing, you know, this process from, you know, seed, literally, to, you know, to flowering.

• 27:05Speaker 01

  Right, good.

• 27:05Rich Roll?

  And giving them, you know, kind of an outlet outside to, you know, to have a different kind of experience, right? And so I take, you know, I would assume that the result of that is that you're seeing a change in these kids.

• 27:22Speaker 01

  Absolutely.

• 27:22Rich Roll?

  But I mean, you're like this hyperkinetic guy, right? Like, so, and these kids are starving for somebody to emotionally invest in them, right? And so here you are saying, okay, I'm here, let's do this.

• 27:34Speaker 01

  Yeah, my job, I mean, you hit the nail on the head. It's an emotional thing. My job is to love children and people until they learn to love themselves. Yes, I'm a teacher, yes, I'm an educator, you can give me a million and one titles. But my job is to love people until they learn to love themselves and to be the power of example.

• 27:51Rich Roll?

  Mm-hmm. And so you have these vacant lots and you're growing flowers and then you're like, oh, well, here's something. What can I do next now?

• 28:01Speaker 01

  Well, it got interesting.

• 28:02Rich Roll?

  I mean, how does it go from there?

• 28:03Speaker 01

  Because these kids were really a great labor force. And we were in communities where people needed labor.

• 28:09Rich Roll?

  Mm-hmm.

• 28:09Speaker 01

  And we're willing to pay for it, whether it's demolition work, or yard work, or landscaping work, you know, tree pruning. And who knew you could make $50,000 a year being a tree pruner? Who knew, you know, Mayor Bloomberg was talking about all these parks that we were going to have? And every person should be five minutes from a park or someone needs to take care of them. And why not my kids? So we started looking at that. We started looking at golf course maintenance. And our proximity to Westchester, New Jersey and Long Island was really beneficial to my kids who were willing to work and go to work daily and kind of put down the tools of their past trade and embrace tools of a new one, so to speak. Because they were going to get paid and get paid living wage. A lot of these and son businesses need labor.

• 28:50Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 28:51Speaker 01

  And kids feel good. The nice thing about outdoor gardening, for better or worse, you show up, it's very reinforcing. You show up and the lot looks like crap. Twenty minutes later, you see the progress of your work. And that builds a sense of self-esteem, a sense of accomplishment. Yes, I did that. I took something ugly and I made it beautiful. You take it a step further, you put a seed in the ground, you come back a week later and say, wow, I'm somehow responsible for that. So there was short-term benefit, midterm benefit and long-term benefit that kept kids coming back. And all along, no matter where we go, people were very polite. They were very welcoming to us. They wanted us there. We were doing something great. So it wasn't adversarial. We went to places we never expected to be and were embraced with open arms.

• 29:32Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 29:32Speaker 01

  And left flowers. How cool is that? And left flowers.

• 29:36Rich Roll?

  And giving these kids a trade where they can go out and make money, earn a living wage and be employed.

• 29:42Speaker 01

  Right. The big myth, exactly. Because the big myth is like these kids need hard skills. I say the soft skills are really the hard skills. Kids understand technology. They understand tools. Listen, kids farm better than me. They use the internet better than me. They do everything better than me. I just get all the credit. It's a great system. But what these kids need practices in showing up, managing their money, talking to people, not taking your paycheck and going out and buying a tattoo and a new set of gold teeth. You know, that kind of showing up at the job and not trying to pick up the homeowner's wife, those kinds of things. You know, putting your swag to the side. Those are the real hard skills.

• 30:18Rich Roll?

  And that, those don't show up on the standardized test.

• 30:20Speaker 01

  Right.

• 30:21Rich Roll?

  And that's not part of the curriculum.

• 30:22Speaker 01

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

• 31:04Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 31:04Speaker 01

  So the kids get that experience. You know, nothing is more thrilling for a kid to pass a standardized test that they never thought they could, by learning about life and having fun in the process.

• 31:13Rich Roll?

  And that's the amazing thing, because basically by implementing these programs, and we're going to get into more of how that evolved, but you were able to take, you know, a population of kids that literally weren't showing up for school half the time, and raise attendance rates up to ninety, like ninety-three percent, right?

• 31:29Speaker 01

  Ninety-three percent. We went from forty percent to ninety-three percent. We targeted kids. We targeted kids.

• 31:34Rich Roll?

  And it's a, it's kind of a leap of faith, I think, if you're looking at this through the lens of conventional wisdom, that growing plants either in the classroom or on these lots has any connection to academic performance in the classroom. And yet, this is, it's undeniable that that's what's transpiring here, and that's your experience.

• 31:55Speaker 01

  Yeah, without a doubt, without a doubt. I mean, it's, the thing about plants, see, is that they're living, breathing things, and kids don't realize that. But you can't make them fight, and they don't speak back. So like, you know, in my neighborhood, everyone has a dog. They're either really cute and adorable and two pounds, or they're the biggest dog with the biggest teeth in the world. There's no middle ground. But plants, they need you. Actually, they really don't, but don't tell the kids that, because I've been lying for a long time. But as long as you give them water and love, they're going to grow. And kids need to see that. You can't put plants to fight. You can't have them attack each other. But as a good educator, I can invent all these scenarios that happen to plants. That, I can't kill Fluffy the rabbit,

• 32:39Speaker 01

  but if the kids come to class and they fart too much, or they listen to too much Lil Wayne, I say, "Put Lil Wayne on." I can go when the kids leave and, you know, I'll kill the plant. I'll pour bleach on the plant. See, that music is toxic. Look, I can't do that to the dog. I can't ethically do that to fish. But to plants, I can. So you create all this kind of dialogue around what you're doing. And if you're a smart teacher, you realize that this is, there is a, there's a lens, if you will, a point of entry that ties to common core, that ties to content area, that ties to subject matter that can be related to in a test. And if you make it fun... Kids don't get up to fail and no one rises to low expectations, damn it. Now that I'm thinking about it, you know, people rise to high expectations. So I've got to set them for them and that's what I do. But we can have a lot of fun and grow a lot of vegetables and flowers along the way.

• 33:22Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 33:23Speaker 01

  It's cheaper than therapy, you know.

• 33:25Rich Roll?

  Yeah. Uh, I wish you were my therapist.

• 33:28Speaker 01

  Oh, I don't know. I mean, you'd get a lot of, you'd get a lot of fruit and vegetables with me.

• 33:31Rich Roll?

  Right. So at what, at what point do you start bringing this into the classroom and, and start creating kind of more structured, I guess for lack of a better word, curriculum around it?

• 33:42Speaker 01

  Okay, cool question. So it was a lot of fun doing stuff outdoors. Um, except I really don't like being outdoors. You know, to me, the world would be better if it was all dark and indoors, like a club or a good restaurant. That's how, or the gym. Um, and the problem is that you're limited by seasonality. Plus, you know, try getting on the plane with, you know, 20 big black kids and a bunch of pitchforks in the South Bronx, you know? Thank God for my wife and, you know, the police verification. Yeah, what are you farming for? Um, so I wanted kids in school. I didn't want them just with me. I wanted them in school. So I, when I learned about vertical farming and indoor farming, I was like, wow, I could take all of that, not have water fights, not have hose fights, not need a bunch of tools and put it in a classroom.

• 34:27Speaker 01

  And then link it to jobs and employment and opportunity. And guess where the kids were? In school. And it also held my colleagues accountable because they had to treat those kids differently because they couldn't just behave for me or not behave for me. So it gave everybody more, like I like to say, more bats at the plate, more steps to the plate. And that's what kids need. They need more rep bats.

• 34:47Rich Roll?

  Was that, was that difficult to kind of pitch that idea to the administration because it's sort of out of the box?

• 34:53Speaker 01

  I didn't pitch it, I just did it.

• 34:54Rich Roll?

  You just started doing it.

• 34:55Speaker 01

  No, don't ask for permission. I just started doing it. I mean, now I've learned a lot since, you know, my program got huge and I probably clipped my own wings a little bit and I understand that, um, in the process, but you know, it's been a learning curve and I'm willing to share that. You know, my experience should be everyone's experience and, you know, I hope people learn from me. My, my job is to blaze the way for others. But there are tons of Herculean teachers out there, so take that big leap, you know? Do something bold, do something great. Now, the thing is, don't forget the mandate of your day job. Because there are a lot of teachers that want to get out there and change the world, and I'm one of them. But remember what you're paid for, and remember what your principal's gonna evaluate you for. Because that'll help you have longer legs.

• 35:36Rich Roll?

  And they're evaluating you based on standardized test results?

• 35:40Speaker 01

  Well, sometimes standardized tests, but you know, listen. You've got to be true to your day job. Autonomy is not the freedom for me to do whatever the hell I want on someone else's time with someone else's money.

• 35:49Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 35:50Speaker 01

  Autonomy is my responsibility to get the job done for what I'm paid for the most efficacious way possible. So, I'm somewhat of a rebel, but you know, I'm also, I like to play by rules. But, asking for permission is begging for denial, so get in there, build what you gotta do. But do it within the mandate of your day job. Make it fun, make it sexy, make it creative.

• 36:09Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 36:10Speaker 01

  And that's why I love project-based learning, but you know, I was just a little bit ahead of my time. Because now, project-based learning is all the rage.

• 36:15Rich Roll?

  Right, I mean, project-based learning, I mean, basically, define that for people that might not be familiar exactly with what you're talking about.

• 36:22Speaker 01

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

• 37:07Rich Roll?

  Right. This idea of providing an experience that they're innately already interested in. And then using that as a foundation or a template to teach all sorts of other things that are related to the in-classroom stuff that, you know, we all need to learn, or whatever, to pass these tests. But, they're engaged, that's the difference, right? It's not you talking down to them, it's them participating in something that they're into. That they wanna show up for, right?

• 37:32Speaker 01

  There's one word to all of this, engagement. You've got to meet kids where they're at and continually move them to the zone of proximal development. So what does that mean? It means I gotta do some assessment. I hate to say it, but you know, what's the next step? How can I get you, Rich Roll, in 20 minutes to the next step of proximal development academically, socially, emotionally, and physically? And that's what it's about. It's about a continuous cycle of self-assessment. You know, I call it very recursive. I mean, I'm very metacognitive, but I'm also very detail-oriented. You know, I'm not right. I'm not right. So if my wife, if you're listening, you're right. I'm not right, but I'm committed to getting it right. And the kids know that. So I'm not there to talk at them. I'm here to learn with them.

• 38:16Rich Roll?

  Right. I think the key, the key seems to be to have a kid who is curious, interested, and like you said, engaged. And, and the job, at least like, you know, I've got four kids and you know, it's like, how can... On some level, I feel like they're either curious or they're not. You know, I can't, I can't instill curiosity in them. But when I find something that they're interested in, then you gravitate towards that and you support that and you fan that flame.

• 38:46Speaker 01

  Absolutely.

• 38:46Rich Roll?

  And through that, you can do all kinds of different things.

• 38:49Speaker 01

  Through that, anything is possible.

• 38:50Rich Roll?

  As opposed to trying to, you know, jam a square peg into a round hole and get them interested in something they're just not interested in.

• 38:56Speaker 01

  You know, in this crazy data-driven society, and all the metrics about attention data, there's one fact that remains true. The biggest prognosticator to a child's success is having one kind, caring adult accessible in their life. And that's my role, to be that kind, caring, accessible adult. I mean, I bring my A-game daily. I come to class prepared. But I come to be that kind, caring... I'm the conductor of an orchestra I can't play an instrument of. The kids are better farmers than me. They're better scientists than me. They're better on the internet than me. They do all the work. I get all the credit. It's a wonderful system.

• 39:30Rich Roll?

  Uh huh.

• 39:32Rich Roll?

  All right. So you're growing food in the classroom and you start to grow these...

• 39:35Speaker 01

  No, it wasn't even food. It wasn't food. It was still ornamental. It was still ornamental.

• 39:39Rich Roll?

  So when do we get to the food? How do we get to the food part?

• 39:42Speaker 01

  Well, we didn't even know what the hell food was. I mean, you know, for me, food was, you know, a two-liter soda and a bag of salt and vinegar chips and some flaming Cheetos in the morning with a burrito, you know? I mean, I was eating four or five quarter pounds a day, understand, it was crazy.

• 39:55Rich Roll?

  I love the fact that this is as much a learning experience for you as it is for the kids. You've taken this journey with them and you've transformed yourself as well as the kids and the community in the process.

• 40:05Speaker 01

  Well, yeah, I mean, that's what it's about. It's not do as I say, you know, it's do as I do, do as we do. We're all in this together, you know, um, and that's it. Together we can all prosper, you know, each one teach one, let's do this together. But we didn't know too much about vegetables. What was interesting is my first foray into vegetables, quite frankly, was we had read this small story about Doctors Without Borders and how kids in Jalisco, Mexico were going blind simply because they had vitamin deficiencies and these vitamins, literally if kids were growing leafy greens, that they would um be able to not go blind or not need all this surgery. So my kids just wanted to provide them these grow boxes for leafy greens.

• 40:49Speaker 01

  And then we found out leafy greens are something that like most of my African American kids like to eat or their grandparents like to eat, collard greens. So we started growing collard greens and we started growing what we call the hood vegetables, you know, the stuff you get through the bulletproof window.

• 41:03Speaker 01

  Green peppers, you know, kind of like the stuff that has a longer shelf life. We didn't know much about it and it was cool. The flip side is a lot of my kids were also getting their second or third meal a day in soup kitchens. So they also knew something about nutrition elsewhere. But it wasn't until we went to Whole Foods and really learned about what was out there, you know, and then all the white people buying that stuff. Which was crazy. We had no idea, you know.

• 41:27Rich Roll?

  You do like a field trip to Whole Foods?

• 41:29Speaker 01

  Yeah, we, we, I remember my first field trip to Whole Foods, I couldn't believe it. I was just adding up all the miles on the vegetables. They all should have gotten free flights somewhere and there they were, just waiting to be eaten by all these wealthy white people. And you know, the kids, we, we saw our green peppers for a dollar ninety-nine a pound and we saw red peppers and orange peppers and it was very poignant. The kids said, man, you know. Food is like people. It comes in all shapes, sizes and colors. But you know, I had some real entrepreneurs, um, of very interesting sorts who said, yo, check out the white people. They're buying red peppers and orange peppers and you know, and yellow peppers for six ninety-nine a pound. Instead of the green ones for a dollar ninety-nine. The kids said, Ritz, you screwed us. And they actually used more graphic language than that. They said, what did I do? They said, you should have had us growing the good shisnet, you know?

• 42:13Speaker 01

  And there we were. We started growing the good stuff. Um, and Whole Foods was very kind. They started letting us sell it to them.

• 42:19Rich Roll?

  Oh, wow. That's cool.

• 42:20Speaker 01

  And we started learning about this whole, you know, the whole local fora movement, local food movement, food movement took off.

• 42:27Rich Roll?

  Mm-hmm.

• 42:27Speaker 01

  Um, and we started learning and it was cool. I mean, I learned about arugula. Man, I love arugula.

• 42:33Rich Roll?

  Mm-hmm.

• 42:33Speaker 01

  You know, we didn't know. Most of everything was like, you know, lettuce that came on a quarter pounder with cheese.

• 42:37Rich Roll?

  And you're growing this in the classroom in like boxes?

• 42:40Speaker 01

  So we started growing. I started with basically sub-irrigated planting containers in classrooms. Then I moved to vertical walls. And you know, and I learned that I could grow vertically. Like you're talking to the oldest sixth grader in the world. And I just thought, wow, this was cool. And the thought of taking like a half of an acre and condensing it into my classroom with some grow lights was just the coolest thing in the world. I didn't know how much work it was going to be, but I was determined to do it. But the kids loved it. It was like green graffiti. We were putting logos on walls. We were doing all kinds of stuff.

• 43:10Rich Roll?

  That's what's so cool. I've seen a bunch of the walls that you guys have done and they're art pieces.

• 43:14Speaker 01

  Yeah, absolutely.

• 43:15Rich Roll?

  You know, living works of art.

• 43:17Speaker 01

  They are living, breathing art.

• 43:19Rich Roll?

  And it really is like this sort of urban growing graffiti. It's really cool stuff.

• 43:24Speaker 01

  It is cool stuff. Exactly. But you know, five, six years later, you know, I realized that I can't ask every teacher to do that. So now I'm really focused on replicable, scalable technology and things that. So that's been my, and also things that are far more cost-effective.

• 43:38Rich Roll?

  Mm-hmm.

• 43:38Speaker 01

  Um, you know, and just easier to use in a classroom. I'm into scale now. I'm into scale replication. And you know, an easier application. I'm also working with little kids now. Because one of the things that I learned is, you know, I had kids who were eighteen, nineteen, twenty years old. Uh, with children of their own who were reading on second and third grade reading level. And just, they were really little kids and you know, they have so much to unpack. But when I learned about little kids, that was the game changer, you know. It is easier to raise healthy children than fix broken men. And the little kids, they're just adorable. It's easier to build good habits around, you know, planting lima beans and fun stuff in classrooms. And hopefully, I won't have to have so many bigger problems at a later stage. So I'm still very much into the older kids. Don't get me wrong. And that's where my first love is and will always be.

• 44:24Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 44:24Speaker 01

  But if I can problem solve this at a younger age and get these kids eating healthy and growing healthy and most importantly, learning healthy, you know, and performing well in school at a young age.

• 44:34Rich Roll?

  It carries their whole life. You're setting them up for success.

• 44:38Speaker 01

  You know, whereas I'm thrilled to have gotten, you know, been part and parcel to 2,200 local jobs. Nothing will thrill me more than to send a cohort of kids to the Bronx High School of Science. Because that will be a far greater game changer for their generation and all their children as well.

• 44:52Rich Roll?

  Yeah, the ripple effect.

• 44:53Speaker 01

  Right, the ripple, the multiplier effect.

• 44:54Rich Roll?

  Yeah, it just will transform the community. And I want to get into the scalable stuff, but, but still, I'm, I'm, I'm trying to understand how this whole thing starts, you know, begins to blossom. So you're growing food and then this starts to expand, right? You have tower gardens and at some point, um, the food finds its way into the cafeteria of the school.

• 45:14Speaker 01

  Oh, so we started growing, yeah, we started growing so much food in school. So I started, to your point, you know, asking for permission is begging for denial, but I started looking at some of the programs that were existing in the DOE, Department of Ed, for those who don't know. And they had this great program called School Garden to School Cafe. You know, where they'd come and you'd build a garden and, you know, and you'd get food and put it into the cafeteria. So I just decided I was gonna have the best School Garden to School Cafe program ever. Uh, and I might as well do it year round. And, you know, they had the program, so I gave them the credit. I had the kids and the resources to do it. And so we did it, we gave them credit and it was a beautiful thing and the kids loved eating it. But then I aligned it to like research because like the kids really liked the crunch factor.

• 45:58Speaker 01

  So we started like researching Department of Ed menu options and literally the kids thought they were like picking their menu, but no, they were aggregating data. They were doing the science. They were doing the kind of stuff that they needed to do that they would see six months later on the test, just not realizing it. And oh, I did that for Ritz when we was all, you know, they were, they were talking, they were looking at it, but they also started loving eating it.

• 46:20Speaker 01

  And then along the way, you know, my kids became activists because we realized about how many people don't have food and some of the larger issues in the world. And to think, you know, I'm so proud of my kids and I want to shout them out. You know, that first cohort of kids that raised money for the tsunami victims and in Haiti. You know, and my kids from the Portis Congressional, we did a food and clothing drive. We had 17 vans of clothes and sneakers. My kids hit up local drug dealers for stuff to donate to victims of natural disasters. And to think, if my kids in the South Bronx can do it, you know, kids on the Upper East Side, West Side, Beverly Hills, across this country, everybody, give up one pair of sneakers and donate it to someone who needs it. Your life will be better and so will theirs.

• 47:01Rich Roll?

  Uh huh.

• 47:02Speaker 01

  So it was a game changer and we gave birth to the Green Bronx Machine.

• 47:12Rich Roll?

  Yeah, so explain what the Green Bronx Machine is.

• 47:14Speaker 01

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

• 47:58Speaker 01

  and actually got in, but we didn't have a vehicle to do it and do it legally. So we cobbled together this 501(c)(3), which we are. And by the time we got that thing established, those big donors moved on. And we're learning. And what we were, we were dedicated at that time primarily to workforce development and community development. You know, getting kids, those who are apart from... Becoming a part of and generating jobs and we were very good at that. We also, we always said that, well, my wife's name is Lizette and we always said kids who went through Camp Lizette were ready to go to work. And so the kids knew that if they put up with me and put up with my wife and gave me six months and got their life together. And they actually found that their lives were coming together by spending time with me and Lizette.

• 48:43Speaker 01

  That, you know, things got better, their drama went away, they were getting credits, they were closer to graduation, they were happy, they weren't, you know. We gave a lot of boyfriend girlfriend advice too, um, you know, all that stuff, life advice. So it became a workforce development program. But then we started also realizing academic success and community development, so we continued to evolve. Then I found out about elementary school education and just became in love with that. So Green Bronx Machine believes that healthy students are at the heart of healthy schools. And healthy schools are at the heart of healthy resilient communities and that together we can grow something greater. And then, of course, I found Tower Garden Technology and that was the biggest game changer for me, ever.

• 49:26Speaker 01

  Tower Gardens changed everything for me, how I got there is a funny story, but.

• 49:32Rich Roll?

  So tell that story.

• 49:32Speaker 01

  Okay, that story is crazy, my kids and I won the National Indoor Gardening Championship. And we get invited to, uh, this show, I won't, in another state and my kids and the bulk of them never left the Bronx. So we get invited to this state and I was so naive, I didn't realize what they were growing in this state. Um, and we get out there and everyone's like, you know, with the kids are going, they thought I was a, we're growing too buddy, loved your TED Talk dude. Um, so the kids thought I was the coolest teacher in the world, you know, the first interview they wanted was me in high times and I had to run. That's not what you want to do on a school trip. But we started looking at the technology. And lo and behold, you know, I came across Tower Garden Technology. It was affordable, it was practical, it was scalable.

• 50:16Speaker 01

  It was small, it was precise, it was concise and it worked. And I said, all the things that I've always wanted to do with plants, I could do with this thing. And not get dirty and do it in class and do it year round and put it on wheels and that was a game changer for me.

• 50:31Rich Roll?

  So how many tower gardens do you have functioning now in the school?

• 50:35Speaker 01

  In schools, we have them across America. I mean, I put tower gardens in school systems in Wisconsin, in California, in Florida. I'm now in the process of building the National Health and Wellness, National Health, the National Health Wellness and Learning Center at PS55. So if you haven't seen our TED Talk, that's the TED Talk I'm really proud of, the most recent one. The National Health and Wellness Center.

• 50:59Rich Roll?

  There's two, right?

• 51:00Speaker 01

  There's a couple, but there's two that are very well-known and some that aren't well-known. The one that viral is long ago where I was big and fat, that seems to haunt me everywhere. But the one I'm most proud of...

• 51:10Rich Roll?

  It's great, though.

• 51:11Speaker 01

  Well, the funny thing about that TED Talk...

• 51:13Rich Roll?

  I love that TED Talk.

• 51:14Speaker 01

  Believe it or not, I...

• 51:15Rich Roll?

  I'll link it in the show notes for people that are listening.

• 51:16Speaker 01

  Well, put the new one, put the new one in. The old one is funny.

• 51:20Rich Roll?

  The new one where you're wearing the hat?

• 51:21Speaker 01

  Uh, yeah, the new one where the kids come out on stage. You know, I want to celebrate the kids and talk about my vision for the future. The old talk was really, I talked about what I did, and that was great, and people got excited. But, you know, where can we take this? You know, how can we flip the script on public education and public nutrition? That's the game changer.

• 51:38Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 51:38Speaker 01

  And we can do that, and Tower Gardens allows for that.

• 51:40Rich Roll?

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

• 52:21Speaker 01

  How cool is that?

• 52:22Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I mean, it's amazing.

• 52:23Speaker 01

  It was our version of the Jeffersons, I like to say, from South Bronx to Southampton.

• 52:27Rich Roll?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 52:27Speaker 01

  That's right, our version of the Jeffersons.

• 52:28Rich Roll?

  And, and, you know, pictures of kids holding up checks and getting paid, you know, well, to do something that they know how to do to create something beautiful and sustainable that's enriching the lives of the people that are paying for it. I mean, you know, across the board, pillar to post, it's like a win-win for everybody, right? And so you're seeing this tremendous, you know, not incremental, but exponential change in your community, and, and kids going out into the world empowered with skill sets that will serve them their whole life, not to mention, you know... Teaching them how to be healthy also.

• 52:59Speaker 01

  A lot of vegetables, a lot of flowers and vegetables, man.

• 53:02Rich Roll?

  Yeah, exactly. And, and, and so the idea being, okay, how do we scale this? How do we create this in other school systems? I mean, the one thing you can't scale is your, is you, right?

• 53:13Speaker 01

  No, I believe I can scale me.

• 53:14Rich Roll?

  There's not a Steven Ritz. I mean, you are a very unique individual, right? So you can't rely on there being a guy like you in every school system.

• 53:22Speaker 01

  There should be, and there are. They're coming, they're coming.

• 53:24Rich Roll?

  Right? And I, and it reminds me, uh, well, it reminds me of a couple of things. First thing is, two years ago, I went and visited PS 244 in Queens? 224, wait, is it 244? Um, they were the first school to implement like a vegetarian school lunch.

• 53:41Speaker 01

  Oh, I've heard of them. They're awesome.

• 53:43Rich Roll?

  It's great. And they're doing, it's a whole, that got a lot of press because it's vegetarian. But in truth, you know, after visiting them and, and meeting the kids and the teachers and the administrators, it's really a wellness focused school. Like it, it's infused into the DNA of, of what they've created there. It's really cool.

• 53:59Speaker 01

  That's exactly, it has to be in your DNA.

• 54:00Rich Roll?

  And they worked with, uh, an organization that I'm probably going to butcher it. I think it's called the New York Coalition for Healthy School Lunch or something like that. And it sounds like it's probably something similar to this sort of, uh, what was the organization you referenced that allowed you to feed the kids the food that you grew in the cafeteria?

• 54:19Speaker 01

  The Department of Ed's School Garden to School Cafe Program.

• 54:22Rich Roll?

  Right, which is great because there are political and social and economic barriers to letting kids eat the food that they, that they grow. I mean, there's a lot of money that goes into school lunch and a lot of politics.

• 54:35Speaker 01

  A lot of waste.

• 54:35Rich Roll?

  So to penetrate that in the slightest is like a huge victory. And, and it reminds me, the second example that I was thinking of is when Jamie Oliver did his Food Revolution show and he tried to do it in Los Angeles and he was trying to kind of address and overhaul the Los Angeles Unified School District's school lunch program and he just got shut down. Like they, he just couldn't do it.

• 54:57Speaker 01

  Well, I'm looking for Jamie. He could partner with me. Jamie, if you're listening, I've been writing to you, you just don't write back.

• 55:02Rich Roll?

  He's a tough guy to get to, right?

• 55:03Speaker 01

  I know, he's a tough guy to reach.

• 55:05Rich Roll?

  Um, but, but I think. You know, being able to impact school lunch in any way whatsoever is, you know, is difficult. But to the extent that you've been able to do that, that's a huge victory.

• 55:16Speaker 01

  We have lunch and learn with the principal every week and the kids grow the food in school.

• 55:19Rich Roll?

  It's amazing. It's amazing.

• 55:21Speaker 01

  And that's the coolest thing.

• 55:22Rich Roll?

  And there's all this fear around it, like, oh, well, what if somebody gets sick? But they're feeding ki- kids this terrible food, right? So the ri- the right questions aren't being asked.

• 55:30Speaker 01

  Well, the big question I like to ask the kids is how many nuggets when we see a chicken? Because even though they like eating chicken and they like eating meat and they like eating hamburgers, they don't realize that came from a cow or a real chicken. Oh, it's a fake chicken, you know, it comes from the food factory, it's in the basement of Costco. Kids don't, so I always show them a chicken and say, how many nuggets? Like, what do you mean? They go, how many nuggets are you gonna get out of that? You mean, what do you mean? Um, so kids don't know, but to your point, this has to be in their DNA. When it's in their DNA, they get it and it transcends everything. There's culture. So this health, wellness and learning culture is critical if we're going to teach kids how to change their lives.

• 56:09Rich Roll?

  Mm-hmm. So you have scaled it, right? There's been programs in other cities with other schools, so let's get into that a little bit.

• 56:18Speaker 01

  I mean, it's cuckoo. I'm, in two weeks, I'm headed down to Colombia, South America. To think a kid from the South Bronx could make it to the front page of the Colombian newspaper, given the relationship between Colombia and South Bronx in the seventies, eighties and nineties, when everything was crazy, OMG, as the kids would say. But that's the beauty of this. And I mean, Colombia has a lot of challenges, but they've really turned around their inner cities. And now they're looking at ways to scale workforce development along with healthy eating. Because food is a non-negotiable. No matter where you go, people gotta eat. So if you learn that you can grow food and that essentially all food is grown, you know, without farmers, we'd all be naked and hungry. So that's just the sad reality of it all.

• 56:59Speaker 01

  And that farming, well, we need to restore dignity to farmers first and foremost. So we need to restore dignity. Food, you know, needs to become less of this thing that is cheap and inexpensive and more of this thing that we respect and adore and kind of tell a story about and romance.

• 57:15Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 57:15Speaker 01

  And respect. So that's part of it. And ironically, my kids learn about kids in other countries who tend to look like them, who are doing it as slave labor. So that gets them upset.

• 57:23Rich Roll?

  Mm-hmm.

• 57:24Speaker 01

  And that's a good thing because that's a whole entry point into human rights and self-respect and dignity and, you know, and equal rights for all.

• 57:31Rich Roll?

  Mm-hmm.

• 57:31Speaker 01

  And that, that, those, those are the issues that matter to me. And I'm thrilled that they're eating healthy, dude. There's nothing better than seeing kids who are well-fueled for a day of academic performance instead of some kids who are just, you know, hopped up on bad chemicals. I'll never forget, how did I learn about organic food? With a bunch of gang kids talking to me about organic blunt wrap. I was like, what the hell is organic blunt wrap? And they're, they're like, uh...

• 57:55Rich Roll?

  Whatever your entry point, right?

• 57:56Speaker 01

  Yeah, whatever your entry point. They're like, yo, Ritz, no, you don't want any chemicals messing with your weed. And I'm like, what is this organic thing that you're talking about? Well, you know, you have to grow these things without chemicals. And I'm like, so you guys get smoked out and you're sitting McDonald's in White Castle all night and come to school on six cans of Red Bull and you tell them you don't want chemicals because you want organic?

• 58:14Rich Roll?

  Mm-hmm.

• 58:14Speaker 01

  But understanding what these things are. And then again, you know, in my lifetime, I've seen the onset of puberty in kids at a much younger age. And I really believe it has to do with what we're eating and how we're eating.

• 58:27Rich Roll?

  Mm-hmm. And has this program been replicated in other school systems in the U.S.?

• 58:32Speaker 01

  Yeah, I've done a bunch of schools in California. Um, it's amazing that one man in a bowtie on a mission can get out there and really create this kind of change, but I think the world is hungry for it.

• 58:44Rich Roll?

  You're like, you're like the Bill Nye the Science Guy version of urban gardening.

• 58:49Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah, I like to say, I'm Mr. Cotter, you know? I'm Mr. Cotter, I guess. You're like my modern day Mr. Cotter. But, um, yeah, uh, but really what I want to do is grow teachers. Because I believe the next generation of teachers who can change lives is right out there. You know, it's not about being when I was young, the big voice or the, you know, the stronger or faster than the kids. It's just really about living a healthy life and empowering them to make decisions that are going to change them.

• 59:14Rich Roll?

  Right. It seems that the kind of conventional narrative is that, you know, teachers go in idealistically into underprivileged communities and they get beaten down by the system and they burn out, or they just sort of fall into line. So how, you know, how can, how can somebody model, you know, what you've done?

• 59:35Speaker 01

  There's also another aspect too, quite frankly, and here's the ugly truth. A lot of teachers go into these communities because it's real easy for them to be there. They can't cut their weight in their own community. And because these communities have such challenges, they believe there's more money. So, you know, when we start prognosticating summer school in October and November, because, you know, teachers want to send their kids to day camps. I'm like, no, you need to teach harder for eight months and come see me in June. Because you're going to tell me that you can't teach in 10 months what you can in six weeks because you want some extra money for your family? That's not happening. So we've got to break the status quo. So some teachers do get beat down. Listen, for sure. The challenges are tough, but I believe that by creating healthy, vibrant, aspirational classrooms,

• 1:00:18Speaker 01

  verden, green, inspirational, aspirational places, we're taking the edge off that. And more importantly, you get a lot of vegetables too. You can have a healthy lunch with your kids and the principal and me.

• 1:00:27Rich Roll?

  So if, if there's a teacher out there who's listening to this, who's inspired by your example, I mean, how does, how does one begin to, you know, implement some of this wisdom into their classroom?

• 1:00:38Speaker 01

  Cool question. Start small. I know that sounds weird coming from me, but start small. Exclusively.

• 1:00:45Rich Roll?

  But don't ask for permission.

• 1:00:46Speaker 01

  Yeah, don't. Get a good mentor. Find a good mentor for sure. Um, but you know, now it's much more permissive. I really believe we have pushed the needle in that regard where it's okay to do these things. We realize we've got to change. Um, we realize that. I mean, here in New York City, I'm a big fan of the new chancellor. Um, you know, she's wonderful. She's talking about community schools, you know, whole school communities, and that's what it's about. Nothing thrilled me more than to hear Chancellor Farina talk about her role as chancellor and abuela, you know, and how do you, and how do you, but it's really bringing community and parents and people together. Schools are at the heart of healthy communities and particularly resilient communities. So we've got to look at those high needs communities to get them what they need.

• 1:01:31Speaker 01

  And that's really whole community education. And that's what's great about food now more than ever. Because good food, respectful food also offers living wage employment. And that's great in addition to the health benefit.

• 1:01:45Rich Roll?

  What are some of the success stories with the kids?

• 1:01:49Speaker 01

  The kids who are graduating college. I mean, I've got kids who are coming to my house asking me, you think it's okay if I get married? I mean, how cool is that?

• 1:01:56Rich Roll?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. I feel like you're like this, in your neighborhood, in your community, you're like old school, like what the kind of like priest would have been like back in the 1970s, who knew all the kids in the neighborhood.

• 1:02:09Speaker 01

  Well, I do try and know every single kid.

• 1:02:11Rich Roll?

  Kids go to you for advice. And you're the one guy who knows what everybody's doing.

• 1:02:15Speaker 01

  I know. Sometimes I think I know too much, but I feel I never know enough either.

• 1:02:22Speaker 01

  But my job is to be the mayor, you know? I'm CEO, chief eternal optimist, and you know, and I'm going to forever scream, si se puede, but I want to mentor teachers.

• 1:02:32Rich Roll?

  What does that mean?

• 1:02:33Speaker 01

  Yes, we can. You know, we are Americans, Mexicans, Dominicans, African Americans, and this is our moment. And I believe that no matter what community you're in, yes, and I can't build you a new school, but I could put a plant in your classroom. And I believe having a plant in the classroom is a good start. It leads to a whole lot of other things.

• 1:02:53Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I loved in, I think it was the urban gardening video where it's the kids and they're, they have all of their, the shovels and everything like that, and they're getting on the subway, and people are like, what's going on?

• 1:03:04Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:03:05Rich Roll?

  And then you have the picture of the kid who, he's wearing a tie, and he's like using an ATM machine. He's the first person in his family to use an ATM machine. Like, these are like huge, you know, transformers that changed people's lives.

• 1:03:17Speaker 01

  I know exactly what story you're talking about. I mean, I have a young man, and that's what's interesting too. See, because America is still the land of opportunity. And I'm in a community where a lot of parents came here from another place because they were hungry, literally hungry for food. Or they were walking six miles a day to get water for subsistence farming and couldn't go to school. So when you give these kind of opportunities for kids who come from that, they love it. And when you grow culturally relevant food, and you give it away for free in a community that has limited means and limited access to it, and this is what these parents came to America for. Oh my god, that's a game changer and that's the purpose behind my National Health and Wellness Learning Center. Because we're gonna also do job development.

• 1:03:59Speaker 01

  We're gonna have parents in after school, we're gonna be open early, so we're gonna do workforce development, job training. And we're gonna teach people how to grow food and give it away and grow culturally relevant food. So we're gonna connect kids and parents around science, around learning, around literacy. When parents are in school, you know, you bring the body, the brain follows. We're gonna sign them up, we're gonna make them voters, we're gonna get them registered, we're gonna give them healthcare. This is, these are the critical things and teach them how to be proactive and move into spheres of self-care as opposed to dependent healthcare.

• 1:04:28Rich Roll?

  Right, and I think, I would think that that begins with instilling them with a sense of self-esteem. That actually that is possible for them in their lives. Because maybe they're, they're messy, they've never been told that before. Or they're, they're living in a, in a, in a, in a world in which they don't think that that is possible for them.

• 1:04:49Speaker 01

  Right, when my kids hold up a bag of produce, my little guys and say, hey, I grew this and I'm bringing it home to my parents, that's awesome. When they have their favorite teacher and they bring them lettuce or tomatoes, that's awesome, the kids love it. You know, and just like the mommy mommy factor worked in the sixties and seventies for sugar sweetened cereals. You know, the healthy, fresh food works too. Don't discount, you know, the mommy mommy factor with kids and the cool factor. But more importantly with the older kids, there's a job factor. Listen, you're never gonna get, you know, a great job working in a fast food restaurant. You may work your way up, but the reality is with gourmet culinary, you know, you could be a sweet chef and make a good living.

• 1:05:30Speaker 01

  You know, you could work as a prep cook and a line cook in a fancy restaurant and have a decent life. And if you made some mistakes in the past, as long as you're showing up clean and sober, you're gonna have a good life. You know, I don't care if someone got arrested five years ago for drug possession when I'm out to eat. I want my food fresh and I want it the way I like it. You know, I don't want something that's homogenized, pasteurized and, you know, I mean, not anymore, I know better. I still have my moments of weakness and, you know, but. For the most part, I want healthy food. I gotta nourish myself.

• 1:06:00Rich Roll?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:06:01Speaker 01

  And the kids will find that. And there's no greater demand for culinary than here in New York City. So five short miles and six long degrees of separation is between my kids and Manhattan.

• 1:06:12Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:06:12Speaker 01

  But Manhattan and Brooklyn is becoming the new proving ground for my kids, and that's awesome.

• 1:06:16Rich Roll?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:06:17Speaker 01

  They think they're going there for something good, to feed people. They show up and they put on their uniform. They can't wait.

• 1:06:21Rich Roll?

  Well, and it's an amazing time for that right now, particularly in this city, because the local food movement is so big, and there's so many restaurants that are looking to, you know, source locally.

• 1:06:31Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 1:06:31Rich Roll?

  I mean, even sort of economically and politically, you know, you can tell a great story about food that was grown in the Bronx that's by these kids, that's being served in these restaurants, and restaurants that are employing these kids.

• 1:06:43Speaker 01

  For sure.

• 1:06:44Rich Roll?

  That have grown the food too. That's a really cool story.

• 1:06:46Speaker 01

  Wrong's flavor, baby. Wrong's flavor. Hood food is good food, I like to say, and good food is hood food.

• 1:06:52Rich Roll?

  What are some of the things in the public education system that you think are, you know, need to be addressed, that are crisis issues, just sort of systemic issues that are not serving the kids?

• 1:07:09Speaker 01

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

• 1:07:51Speaker 01

  I'd like to see a greater emphasis on STEM and STEAM. And for those who don't know, STEM is STEAM is just STEM with A for arts, advocacy, and aspiration. I'm a huge believer in arts, no matter what form it is, including sports. So getting those carrots into schools that make kids want to be there, and then, you know, keeping that carrot in front of the kids so that the body continues to come in, you continue to access the brain. But I think, you know, technology is the way, and not necessarily only iPads or, you know, digital technology, but food technology, tinkering, you know, projects, collaboration, coalition, um, you know, we just need to have a more engaged and active student participatory model.

• 1:08:34Rich Roll?

  Yeah, because, I mean, project-based education really just isn't the model at all. I mean, it's about like, surface-level learning, and, you know, get what, get the facts that you need to know to take the test, to pass the test, and it's moving on to the next thing. And it's just very, you know, boom, boom, boom, and it's, the train is moving very, very quickly. So, there isn't a lot of opportunity to really go in-depth into any given thing. And so, the, I would imagine that the devil's advocate point of view would be, we love what you're doing, but like, not every classroom can be project-based in the way that, and do things the way that you're doing, because we'd never get anything done. Right? Wouldn't that be like?

• 1:09:13Speaker 01

  I don't think every classroom should, I think every classroom should have an element of everything. Um, so to be entirely anything is, is not good, but kids are learning differently. I mean, I'm a very, I want to teach empathy, you know, an ecology of the mind, and ecology of the planet. These are some of the critical things that are really going to affect these kids long after you and I are gone. Um, you know, the world is getting hotter, crowded, you know, more crowded. There are real issues going on, and the ability to communicate in real time is insane, or miscommunicate is insane. So, teaching kids those critical skills is, is absolutely important. Um, and problem-solving, you know, we're, we've created quite a mess.

• 1:09:55Rich Roll?

  Yeah. Uh, empathy, yeah, that's, there's no course for that.

• 1:09:59Speaker 01

  There's no course for that, but we are human beings, you know, Mother Nature has no mercy. But, you know, we as human beings do. We need to look at that. We need to understand what it means to be compassionate, what it means to be civilized, what it means to walk erect and upright. And treat all kids with dignity.

• 1:10:18Rich Roll?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:10:19Speaker 01

  You know, you look around what's going on in this country, you know, the biggest issue around the world still remains civil rights. And if you stranded out, it's education and the environment.

• 1:10:27Rich Roll?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:10:28Speaker 01

  And you know, and zip code and skin color shouldn't determine one's destiny in life, damn it. But sadly, that seems to be the biggest prognosticator.

• 1:10:35Rich Roll?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:10:35Speaker 01

  We need to change that.

• 1:10:36Rich Roll?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:10:36Speaker 01

  And we need to change the way we teach kids to get along with each other.

• 1:10:39Rich Roll?

  Yeah. So what kind of, you know, what kind of things that do you do in your daily teaching to kind of instill those ideals?

• 1:10:48Speaker 01

  I do a whole lot of hugging, a whole lot of hand-holding, a whole lot of nose wiping. Um, and those are things that matter, you know? Those are things that matter. But I bring my A-game daily. I do a lot of due diligence in terms of preparation of lessons. Um, I always, you know, yeah, you want to be the teacher, but I always imagine myself as the student. I do a lot of observations, I do a lot of teacher support. So I'll go in, I try and find great things that teachers are doing, and I celebrate. You gotta celebrate, you know? Celebrate the small successes. One celebration leads to another. And the more you celebrate, the more you show up. And that's critical. You just gotta celebrate properly.

• 1:11:22Rich Roll?

  Yeah. I think that you're, you know, you're living, you're very, obviously extremely passionate about, you're doing exactly what you're supposed to be doing. Like, you're, you're, you know, you are in the right place at the right time, right? Um, but you hear a lot like, oh, we're not getting the best people to be teachers because we don't pay them enough. And, you know, the, the people that are going into teaching are, it's not what it used to be. I mean, how can we address that issue of trying to, trying to inspire bright young minds to get into teaching? And to be able to, you know, because I think people listening to you will say, I, you know, I'd like to be like that guy. Like, this sounds like,

• 1:12:01Speaker 01

  Come on down.

• 1:12:01Rich Roll?

  This sounds like, you know, a, a life worth living, right?

• 1:12:04Speaker 01

  It is, my life is a life worth living.

• 1:12:07Rich Roll?

  Yes, well, certainly it is.

• 1:12:08Speaker 01

  And my teacher's life is a teacher's life, life worth living. Teachers change lives. So if you're listening, teachers change lives. If you're getting into it to change your own life, you're probably gonna crap out really quickly. But if you get into it to change lives, listen, behind every successful person, there is a teacher. Whether it's a mentor, an elder, a family member, there is someone who taught you something. Every person listening, you know, remember that teacher you hated? I'm not that guy. Or I'm not that woman. But remember that teacher you loved? Remember that teacher that you wish your child could have one day or that you saw on TV? Be that person. Be kind. Be firm, but be kind, you know? And learn the meaning of the word "no." You know, you can still say "yes," you can still say "no."

• 1:13:00Rich Roll?

  Well, I mean, you've had to, you know, you're from the, you're from the community where you teach. So was there a process of, you know, how do you gain the respect of, of your students? Because I think, you know, a lot of people who go into teaching into areas where they're not from there, they, they struggle with that, right?

• 1:13:17Speaker 01

  That's a great point. So you see, when I first started, this is, I started teaching before the internet, you know? I mean, like, whoa, I tell the kids, you know, Jesus was, was one of mine. And literally in the old days, all you had to do was be like the big loud voice in the room. Today, I find the most effective teachers are those distinct voices. The soft voice, the, you know, the unique voice. You know, the internet has changed all that. Now, as administrators and systems, we need to find and create systems where those unique individuals could flourish. You know, the nutty teacher with the... Kids love nerds. Some of my most effective teachers in the inner city are these tiny, pipsqueak people who are really passionate about what they do and can convey that passion,

• 1:14:00Speaker 01

  whether it's through their voice, their artwork, or their laptop. So bring your A-game, dammit. But administratively and systemically, we've got to create systems where these professionals succeed.

• 1:14:11Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:14:12Speaker 01

  But teaching changes lives, man. Get out there and be a teacher, please.

• 1:14:16Rich Roll?

  If you were Secretary of Education then, what kind of systems would you change? Like to make that more possible?

• 1:14:25Speaker 01

  So I believe that some of the data stuff, like there are schools that I see that have data managers that are letting teachers do what they need to do. And they're effective. And they're far more effective. I think we're look, I think, you know, this is a great, it's a crisis time in public education, but I believe out of every crisis comes a victory. And we're starting to get it right. We are starting, I want to see it happen more. And I want to see it happen more substantially. But I think that we are getting it right. But the bottom line is everyone needs to work harder. So roll up your sleeves, get a little dirty and plant something in the ground and realize some days it's seeds and some days it's kids. But you know, you gotta keep planting those seeds.

• 1:15:02Rich Roll?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:15:02Speaker 01

  And bring your A game.

• 1:15:03Rich Roll?

  I love the fact that you didn't, you know, you didn't come from this place of knowing a lot about gardening or growing food. And you know, this is not part of your, you know, life experience. And you figured it out, you know, and you figured it out for the kids and for yourself.

• 1:15:18Speaker 01

  I haven't figured it out. The kids have figured it out. I just get the credit. It's great.

• 1:15:21Rich Roll?

  Because the people, you know, people will say, well, I love what you do, but I don't know anything, like, how do I even start that? Like, I don't, I wouldn't even know where to begin.

• 1:15:28Speaker 01

  You know, it's funny, I get like a lot of email and I get these nutty questions from kids about, you know, they want to grow food and jalapeno, I mean, like technical stuff, man, thank God for Google. But that's the beauty of it. I really don't know that much, but I'm determined to get it right. And thank God I can assign kids to do it for me. And that's the beauty of the internet age. You know, you could really get access to information and FaceTime and Skype and learn from other people. And I'd like to see a world where we're spreading seeds instead of dropping bombs and computers, you know, and FaceTime and, you know, and Apple phones and all that cool stuff that I didn't have when I was a kid allowed for that, instead of sitting there and watching some stupid video about Rihanna or some nonsense, you know, about that.

• 1:16:08Rich Roll?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, can you imagine as a child having a, be able to hold a thing in your hand that basically could answer any question you ever had about anything?

• 1:16:16Speaker 01

  You're gonna laugh. So this is a true story. I was recently invited back to the South Bronx High School campus where I started teaching. And I remember when I started teaching in 1984, there were textbooks in the building that said, "One day, man will go to the moon." And I remember taking them out and the kids were so insulated, they didn't even know man had been to the moon. And I sit there and I would read these books to the kids, you know, and they, they, it was fiction. One day man will go to the moon and we'd look outside the window and think, wow, Rich, that's cool. You think that'll ever happen? Meanwhile, it happened, you know, God knows how, how, how much, way before they were born. And then, you know, these cell phones came along and there's probably more technology in this thing in, that you could put in your hand or in your pocket. They never got people to the moon. You know, the kids marvel at me. I have, I wear cassette bow ties sometimes.

• 1:17:01Speaker 01

  I still listen to cassettes. They think I'm like broadcasting. It's funny. Um, but the internet age, you know, there are blessings and there are curses to it. You just gotta learn how to be in control of it and use it to your advantage.

• 1:17:14Rich Roll?

  Mm-hmm. And how, is that a problem with kids and cell phones in the classroom? Like, how has that impacted? Cause you know, the cellphone thing really hit its kind of nadir and only in the last couple of years, really.

• 1:17:26Speaker 01

  I think we've just begun to look at how we could use them creatively. I think it's still so novel and kids are so dependent on it. Um, but I believe, you know, technology done right, along with capitalism done right, can change the world, you know?

• 1:17:41Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I mean, it's not going away. It's a way, it's your relationship to it.

• 1:17:46Speaker 01

  Right, it's how you manage.

• 1:17:47Rich Roll?

  And how you're using it in your classroom. So how, how many kids are in your class?

• 1:17:51Speaker 01

  I see on a given day, I have a gardening club where 50 kids show up. Depends on my schedule, any day I could have one class to four or five classes, cause I also try and push into classes to support teachers. Um, and that's a lot of what I wrestle with, because to create the next generation of me, which I believe is imminently possible, people, you know, you're giving me far too much credit. I believe greatness is everywhere. We've just gotta unearth it and, and nourish it. Um, so my job is to nourish greatness. Now, while I love being in front of a classroom and love being in front of kids and love being with kids and love being a kid. Enabling a teacher to grow and grow X many more classes and X many more generations is a far better use of my time.

• 1:18:33Speaker 01

  Having a principal who I adore, who trusts me and values me and, you know, is able to reflect upon his practice and my practice together means we're going to govern a school better. And that's, that's critical.

• 1:18:44Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:18:44Speaker 01

  So it's a time balance. You know, I am a work in progress, you know, I mean, on the evolutionary chart of man, I think I'm trying to get from the left side to the right. But, you know, I'm, I'm trying to remain teachable and trying to figure it out. I don't ever want to keep doing what I've just done. So, learning how to be most efficacious with my time, um, in this technological age, I can't even catch up with all the stuff that I'm supposed to catch up with, you know, half the time.

• 1:19:06Rich Roll?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:19:07Speaker 01

  But I'm learning.

• 1:19:07Rich Roll?

  So, all right, so, teaching the kids and then, right now, like, through Green Bronx Machine, like, how much food is being produced and what's going on with that?

• 1:19:16Speaker 01

  Okay, so, I wish, I, I, I mean, I wish I could push, I take the picture out of my phone and push it through the radiator. Right now, at my little school in the South Bronx, and make note that we're in the heart of public housing, on our little stretch of cement, we have the most productive school garden that I know of, and I'm sure there's someone out there with more, but we have one of the most productive outdoor gardens per square foot of anywhere that I've ever seen. We literally have five to 600 plants in a front yard that are going to generate thousands of pounds of food. And already starting to, I mean, it's beautiful to see what's going on. You know, indoors, I've grown 30,000 pounds of vegetables, and 30,000 pounds of vegetables

• 1:20:00Speaker 01

  later, I like to say my favorite crop is organically grown citizens, graduates, and members of the middle class, kids who are going to college. But we're just getting started. My goal really is that the National Health and Wellness Center is to generate 100 bags of groceries per week, vegetables that kids are taking home, leafy greens, tomatoes, peppers, herbs, things that have, you know, are dense in nutrition and robust in taste, so that we can expand their palates and their vocabulary and their culinary experiences and bring parents back to school.

• 1:20:30Rich Roll?

  And the Health and Wellness Center is another thing. We didn't even really get into that. Like, that's another project that you've birthed, right?

• 1:20:37Speaker 01

  Right, yeah.

• 1:20:37Rich Roll?

  That has its home inside PS55.

• 1:20:40Speaker 01

  Right, four stories up. It's coming soon. If anybody wants to donate, please let me know. You can write us at the Green Bronx Machine website, or check the kids on the Facebook page. So if you're listening, please like the kids on Facebook. I don't even know what the Facebook thing is.

• 1:20:54Rich Roll?

  What is it? Well, I'll put all that in the show notes. I think it's just Facebook forward slash Green Bronx Machine. I don't know.

• 1:21:00Speaker 01

  I don't know. I'm on Twitter. You can listen to me on Twitter. I do Twitter. Not too much during school time, but Twitter's like my...

• 1:21:05Rich Roll?

  At GreenBXMachine.

• 1:21:06Speaker 01

  At GreenBXMachine. That's me. I try to stay off it during school time, but I try to have fun with it. I do love Twitter. I think, you know, it's made me a better writer, a better effective communicator. It allows you to tell a story, so to speak, in a short, kind of knuckle way.

• 1:21:20Rich Roll?

  Yeah, well, you share lots of cool stuff in your feed. I enjoy it.

• 1:21:22Speaker 01

  But the kids, yeah, the kids are cool on Facebook. We are redoing the website. We're gonna try and do a TV show. So we've got things coming.

• 1:21:30Rich Roll?

  Right, but the Health and Wellness Center is, like, how is that different from Green Bronx Machine?

• 1:21:35Speaker 01

  Well, Green Bronx Machine is gonna build it, but this National Health and Wellness Center, and literally, Green Bronx Machine is raising the money.

• 1:21:41Rich Roll?

  Right, so that's the, that's the for, what are you calling it? Not nonprofit, but for purpose organization.

• 1:21:47Speaker 01

  For-purpose organization with charitable status.

• 1:21:49Rich Roll?

  Yeah, that's what's fueling the growth of this center, right?

• 1:21:52Speaker 01

  Correct.

• 1:21:53Rich Roll?

  So tell me what the center is.

• 1:21:54Speaker 01

  What this center is will be a 21st century classroom. An epicenter of the school that is going to offer seven periods a day of instruction, have enough food to send 100 bags of groceries home per week, have a complete digital media center so kids can broadcast their success, have a teacher research center, have an interactive classroom, and a completely mobile medical kitchen, which is a teaching kitchen. So we'll be able to process food, teach food, teach food safety, teach food hygiene, have culinary club, but also learn all the science related to common core and content area about growing food, propagating food, storing food, selling food, eating food, and everything else about it.

• 1:22:33Rich Roll?

  Yeah. How much money do you have to raise for that?

• 1:22:36Speaker 01

  I'm trying to raise about $125,000, and I'm delighted to name it after anybody who writes me that... So please.

• 1:22:42Rich Roll?

  That's not that much.

• 1:22:43Speaker 01

  It's not that.

• 1:22:43Rich Roll?

  From what you just described, I'm thinking, well, this is gonna cost a couple of million bucks.

• 1:22:47Speaker 01

  No, and again, I am very frugal, I'm very efficacious, we do Herculean work with lots of quarters, nickels and dimes, but we could sure use a couple of hundred dollar bills.

• 1:22:56Rich Roll?

  Yeah, and just so people know.

• 1:22:58Speaker 01

  And we're 100% volunteer.

• 1:22:59Rich Roll?

  For years and years and years, I mean, you're, you were, you self-funded this whole thing from the beginning.

• 1:23:03Speaker 01

  I have been self-funded for years.

• 1:23:05Rich Roll?

  This was all came out of your pocket to even, you know, make this, make this happen, so.

• 1:23:08Speaker 01

  And that was part of it too, kids, so I had, you know, skin in the game.

• 1:23:11Rich Roll?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:23:12Speaker 01

  You know, I just don't wanna walk over bodies. I wanna, you know, carry people on my shoulders.

• 1:23:16Rich Roll?

  Right, and how many, can you estimate how many acres of the South Bronx, like, just through sort of urban, you know, blight and, and, and, and open, you know, open lots that have been transformed by your kids?

• 1:23:29Speaker 01

  I would say to, oh, all, I mean.

• 1:23:32Rich Roll?

  Like, it's huge swathes of land up there, right?

• 1:23:34Speaker 01

  It's kinda cool.

• 1:23:35Rich Roll?

  I mean, not even including all the rooftops.

• 1:23:37Speaker 01

  Yeah, we have a couple of, we have like one farm that goes for six straight blocks.

• 1:23:43Rich Roll?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:23:43Speaker 01

  Um, you know, you talked about.

• 1:23:45Rich Roll?

  And the kids maintain that? Who works on that?

• 1:23:46Speaker 01

  Yeah, the kids are there, I mean, the kids are there.

• 1:23:48Rich Roll?

  And they're, and they.

• 1:23:49Speaker 01

  And the other community owns it, which is really cool too.

• 1:23:51Rich Roll?

  Right, and, and it's created this, you know, sort of, it's, it's a school for entrepreneurship too, because the kids tend to it, right, and then they sell, this is like a business for them. Is that how that works, or?

• 1:24:02Speaker 01

  That's part of it, but I just think, to your point, it's becoming their DNA. I mean, the most touching thing is that my most productive workers are kids who have come back to, from the program and have jobs elsewhere, who just wanna give back.

• 1:24:13Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:24:14Speaker 01

  Um, and that's beautiful, you know, the garden in front of PS55, that was built by my graduates, who just wanna afford the next generation the same opportunity that they had. How cool is that? Um, this is, there is no one getting a salary at Green Bronx Machine, um, you know, the kids are there volunteering, I'm there volunteering, my wife is there volunteering, um, and we are just determined to grow something greater. Um, ideally, it's gonna scale up, we will take on some employees, and, you know, that, that will be something in the future, because that needs to happen, but this is really about as local as local gets.

• 1:24:49Rich Roll?

  Yeah, it's beautiful. Well, we're getting close to closing it down, but there's a couple of things I wanna ask you before I'm gonna let you leave.

• 1:24:55Speaker 01

  No worries, I'm easy.

• 1:24:56Rich Roll?

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

• 1:25:31Speaker 01

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

• 1:26:15Speaker 01

  Sometimes you just need to feel safe. And when kids know that you're this beacon of safety, then the magic happens. And the other piece is, you know, listening. Sometimes you don't need to ask questions. Let them ask you questions. I mean, you know, it's funny because I'm sitting here running my mouth endlessly, but you know, I think the best thing I ever do with my daughter is shut up and let her talk. Or just spend time together quietly.

• 1:26:38Rich Roll?

  She's sitting back there right now. She's gonna start laughing.

• 1:26:42Speaker 01

  You know, be a good partner. And that's, you know, the same thing in a marriage. Be a good partner, you know, give credit where credit's due. I think kids benefit from acknowledgement, too. Everyone wants to be acknowledged. Make them a hero. Every kid should be a hero at least once a week. Once a day, once an hour, whatever works.

• 1:27:01Rich Roll?

  The flip side of the question is, is for educators out there who are similarly trying to connect with their kids, or trying to find a way to inspire them. And I feel like, you know, you've found, you've tapped this vein with farming, and it's been enormously successful. But I feel because you're such a dynamic personality, it could have, like if it was woodshop, you probably could have created that same kind of engagement through another vehicle.

• 1:27:29Speaker 01

  Oh, I was a hell of a math teacher, man, let me tell you.

• 1:27:32Rich Roll?

  I'm sure you were.

• 1:27:33Speaker 01

  Yeah, I love.

• 1:27:34Rich Roll?

  I figure like, whatever you decided, you could make anything interesting to these kids.

• 1:27:38Speaker 01

  So, and, but that's the point. So can you, bring your A-game, bring passion. Kids respond to passion. So bring passion.

• 1:27:46Rich Roll?

  But you can't manufacture passion.

• 1:27:48Speaker 01

  But everybody's passionate about something, and you have to share that.

• 1:27:52Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:27:53Speaker 01

  You have to share that. And the other thing is to be organized. You know, I do come with an agenda, and you know, I also tell kids, this is perhaps, okay, so this is a great thing. I always tell kids on a daily basis how they're gonna help hold me accountable. So every day, you know, I say, oh, we're gonna hold you accountable for this. Well, I tell kids, oh, they're gonna hold me accountable. Basically, I just flip the script on them. And you know, the funny thing is, kids go out and they say, well, Mr. Ritz's class, you know, he says we could hold you accountable. And you know, the teachers come to me, Ritz, what are you telling them? You know, it's my class, my name's on the door, not theirs. I said, let them hold you accountable. You know, because that means they're asking you questions. So accountability is a two-way street. At the end of the day, I know which way the ball runs, you know, and it runs downhill, and you know, I am not the boss either, you know, I'm part of a larger ecosystem.

• 1:28:35Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:28:36Speaker 01

  But accountability is key. So be passionate, and let the kids know you're gonna hold them accountable, but they can hold you accountable, and it's okay to ask questions.

• 1:28:44Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I think that's, I think that's the key thing, too. And that, that means that the, the adult in the equation has to be perhaps a little bit more transparent and vulnerable than maybe they're used to being.

• 1:28:56Speaker 01

  Listen, kids recognize the real. Now, more than ever, kids recognize the real.

• 1:29:03Speaker 01

  It is perfectly okay to tell a child you don't know and I'll get back to you. In fact, the chancellor did that the other night at a school meeting and I thought it was brilliant. You know, she got asked this question, you can't know everything all the time and she was honest about it. And I thought that was brilliant. You know, like I say, I'm not always right, I'm just determined to get it right. And I'm not going to, you know, build my bays on your back. I believe that together we could, this is a us, this is a we, this is our moment. And I want our time together to be sacred. And I think when kids know that you hold their time sacred and you're gonna hold your time sacred, that time does become sacred. And you have to have expectations for it and you need to lay them out there. So I love seeing classrooms with an agenda. I love seeing classrooms with schedules.

• 1:29:48Speaker 01

  Kids love checking off lists, even the high, the little kids don't pay much attention to it, but the big kids, oh, you know, you're five minutes behind on your agenda, you know, you missed your talking point. You know, I love being held accountable.

• 1:29:57Rich Roll?

  They wanna be able to call you out.

• 1:29:58Speaker 01

  And that's fine, so, and be vulnerable, be willing to be called out. If you're being called out for a greater common good, God bless everybody, they're paying attention, so enjoy it.

• 1:30:09Rich Roll?

  Yeah, beautifully said. All right, well, if it was up to me, and I'm sure you would agree with this, every school would be growing its own food. Yeah?

• 1:30:17Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:30:17Rich Roll?

  So how do we, how do we make this happen?

• 1:30:21Speaker 01

  Put a plant in every class, celebrate food, talk about food, talk about diet. The easiest way, you know how I got kids to stop drinking soda? By testing the pH of the water, that, you know, we use liquid nutrients in water, so we're very pH dependent. And the kids love testing the pH because the color changes and it's a colored chart and they equate it to what's going on with the plant and they graph it for days. And then I go at them with the soda. Because the minute they test soda and they see the pH of soda, they're like, I can't put that in, it's toxic. Duh. You know, I can say, "Don't drink soda my whole life," you know, no one gives a damn. But when kids understand what it is in relationship to something else they love,

• 1:31:06Speaker 01

  that's what it's all about.

• 1:31:07Rich Roll?

  Hmm, interesting. I love it.

• 1:31:08Speaker 01

  Um, now, is it possible to grow, every, every school should be growing some food. Every kid needs to understand that plants are living, breathing things, just like they are. And that's a beautiful thing, you know, that we're all part of a greater ecosystem, that water, soil, these things, you know, these are valuable resources and we need to, you know, steward them.

• 1:31:29Rich Roll?

  Yeah, we're so disconnected from where our food comes from and...

• 1:31:33Speaker 01

  Dude, my food comes through a bulletproof window and three layers of plastic.

• 1:31:36Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I mean, I can't imagine of any place in America where there's more disconnect than where you live. And, you know, meanwhile, we're, you know, depleting the planet, planet's resources at a, at an alarming rate. And our, you know, our soil is becoming progressively more toxic. And, and all of these sort of things are happening very, very quickly. So it's never been more important for us to understand what, what is actually at play. And it begins with teaching one kid how to put a seed in soil, right? And, and creating that connection, um, and fostering that and fertilizing that.

• 1:32:11Speaker 01

  Well, this is, here's the deal. Um, you know, my kids are traditionally, urban kids are traditionally disconnected from nature in a variety of ways, except for the nature channel or some kind of show on TV. But if you teach kids about nature, they learn to nurture. And when children learn to nurture, we as a society collectively embrace our better nature. You know, how we walk with the wounded speaks far greater than how we sit with the tall. So walk with the wounded, you know, and walk with them the way you want to be walked with. That's the lesson here.

• 1:32:44Rich Roll?

  Hmm, I think that's a great place to end it.

• 1:32:46Speaker 01

  Alrighty.

• 1:32:47Rich Roll?

  Thank you so much.

• 1:32:48Speaker 01

  Man, thanks. I want to ask you, I want to ask you a question. I want you to train me, man. So what, what's...

• 1:32:53Rich Roll?

  We could talk about that.

• 1:32:54Speaker 01

  Yeah, I want, I want, I want to be trained, man. I want to look like you.

• 1:32:57Rich Roll?

  I don't know, you look pretty good, man.

• 1:32:59Speaker 01

  No, I don't look that good. Trust me, I've seen you without a shirt off on the website.

• 1:33:02Rich Roll?

  What is, uh, what's your, what's your, uh, workout routine right now?

• 1:33:05Speaker 01

  I don't have one.

• 1:33:06Rich Roll?

  You don't have one? Well, we got to change that.

• 1:33:08Speaker 01

  I do a lot of stairs because I live in a walk up and I'm up and down the stairs all day.

• 1:33:12Rich Roll?

  Uh huh.

• 1:33:13Speaker 01

  I want to develop core.

• 1:33:14Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:33:15Speaker 01

  And I went to a yoga class, you're gonna laugh, and I was in this yoga class and I kept thinking I'm gonna fall over on one of these pregnant people.

• 1:33:20Rich Roll?

  Uh huh.

• 1:33:21Speaker 01

  Because they put me in, you know, the beginners class with the pregnant people and it was just I couldn't balance myself. I came home sore. Um, but like, it's been so long since I've really been physically active. I don't like running.

• 1:33:33Rich Roll?

  Uh huh.

• 1:33:33Speaker 01

  Uh, and my knees are shot.

• 1:33:35Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:33:36Speaker 01

  But I really wanted-

• 1:33:37Rich Roll?

  Yoga's great. I would say keep going back to yoga and I got a core routine that I'm gonna send you.

• 1:33:42Speaker 01

  Yeah, send me a-

• 1:33:43Rich Roll?

  I got like a PDF with a bunch of exercise on it.

• 1:33:45Speaker 01

  I want to look like you. I want to be one of your events. I want to give you credit, you know?

• 1:33:49Rich Roll?

  I want to have your enthusiasm and vitality. So you're doing something right.

• 1:33:53Speaker 01

  To be doing what you're doing, the way you do it, it's gotta be you too. And I mean, that's it. You find your passion, you go with it, you nourish it, you feed it. Um, my passion is really seeing smiling, happy kids in school. I love being called, they can't even, some of them can't even pronounce my name. They call me Mr. Rips. Um, instead of, you know, on the flip side, the happiest thing is when I see these older gang kids who are working and living respectful lives and treating themselves and their partners and their communities with respect. That's awesome. Um, you know, together we can grow something greater and it's time, you know?

• 1:34:24Rich Roll?

  Beautiful thing. Well, you are a true inspiration. You really are and, uh, it's an honor and a privilege to talk to you.

• 1:34:32Speaker 01

  No, thanks kindly. Like my kids on Facebook. Otherwise they'll hate me if I don't plug it. I need to plug it more. Like my kids on Facebook.

• 1:34:38Rich Roll?

  You know what? While we're sitting here, I'm gonna pull up the Facebook page just so I make sure that I have it right.

• 1:34:43Speaker 01

  I should have been tweeting while I'm here.

• 1:34:44Rich Roll?

  But, um-

• 1:34:45Speaker 01

  I'll tweet on-

• 1:34:45Rich Roll?

  You wanna do it? Uh, hold on. Green Bronx Machine. I think it's there. Uh, hold on a second. Meanwhile, you're on Twitter at, uh, GreenBXMachine and your website's Steven PH, uh, Steven with a PH, Ritz.com.

• 1:35:02Speaker 01

  Is he? I don't know.

• 1:35:03Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I think so. You don't even know?

• 1:35:05Speaker 01

  Green Bronx Machine and, yeah.

• 1:35:07Rich Roll?

  And, uh, and you, and Green, and it's GreenBronxMachine.org is the-

• 1:35:12Speaker 01

  Correct.

• 1:35:12Rich Roll?

  -website for the organization, right?

• 1:35:14Speaker 01

  We have an upworthy special coming out soon and we're gonna have a, uh, a campaign aligned to that.

• 1:35:18Rich Roll?

  Uh huh.

• 1:35:19Speaker 01

  But we are a for-purpose organization with charitable status.

• 1:35:22Rich Roll?

  You are. Alright, it's gonna take too long for me to find this on Facebook right now, but I'll put it up in the show notes. I'm pretty sure it's, hold on, let me see.

• 1:35:32Rich Roll?

  Let me just make sure. Whoops, I misspelled it in my haste.

• 1:35:40Rich Roll?

  Machine.

• 1:35:44Rich Roll?

  That should be it. Facebook.com forward slash... No, that's not it. All right, I'm gonna put it in the show notes.

• 1:35:52Speaker 01

  I don't know.

• 1:35:53Rich Roll?

  Or I'll do it in the intro on the outro.

• 1:35:55Speaker 01

  The daughter probably knows.

• 1:35:56Rich Roll?

  Yeah, all right? All right, man.

• 1:35:57Speaker 01

  All right. Thank you, man. Thanks so much. What an honor, what a pleasure.

• 1:36:01Rich Roll?

  The honor is all mine.

• 1:36:02Speaker 01

  Nah, so when are we gonna get you up to the Bronx? We gotta get you up to the Bronx.

• 1:36:04Rich Roll?

  I know. Well, I'm leaving on Monday, but I'll be back in New York soon.

• 1:36:07Speaker 01

  You're doing a nutty event this weekend.

• 1:36:09Rich Roll?

  Yeah, the seed. You gonna come down to the seed?

• 1:36:11Speaker 01

  I'm flying to San Francisco tonight and jumping from here to a plane. Otherwise, I would've been there. I just heard about it this weekend. They started tweeting it.

• 1:36:18Rich Roll?

  Yeah, it should be. It's gonna be a good event. I've done it before.

• 1:36:20Speaker 01

  When you're in New York the next time, come on up. We'll have the kids make you a locally grown South Bronx salad.

• 1:36:25Rich Roll?

  I love it. I love to go and meet the kids and talk to the kids, too.

• 1:36:28Speaker 01

  That's really, for me...

• 1:36:30Rich Roll?

  That's what it's about.

• 1:36:31Speaker 01

  Yeah, when you validate them, then you're validating me.

• 1:36:34Rich Roll?

  Beautiful.

• 1:36:34Speaker 01

  And they like to... They love meeting people. They get very social.

• 1:36:37Rich Roll?

  Yeah, cool.

• 1:36:38Speaker 01

  And it's cool, you know? It's cool that people actually wanna meet them now. I mean, we had the White House chef there. He loves it. He goes all over the world.

• 1:36:44Rich Roll?

  The kids went, didn't you? You went to the White House, too, right?

• 1:36:47Speaker 01

  Yeah, my fourth graders and I, we actually farmed our way to the White House, right into the White House kitchen. But the coolest thing is then we invited Bill to come and we grew the food in school and grew it for him. He told us what to grow. We designed the recipe. We grew it indoors and invited some of the wealthiest private schools. We had international charter schools all come right to the middle of the housing projects to eat food four stories up.

• 1:37:11Rich Roll?

  Beautiful.

• 1:37:12Speaker 01

  Yeah, it was an amazing day. Yep, that's what it's about.

• 1:37:15Rich Roll?

  All right, man. Keep doing what you're doing.

• 1:37:17Speaker 01

  All right, you will. Thanks kindly.

• 1:37:18Rich Roll?

  Peace.

• 1:37:18Speaker 01

  Thank you.

• 1:37:19Rich Roll?

  Plants.

• 1:37:25Rich Roll?

  All right, we did it. That's our show. I hope you guys enjoyed it. Let me know what you've thought of the episode in the comments section on the episode page at richroll.com. And keep sending your questions for future Q&A podcasts to [email protected]. I am looking for a decent web-based way of cataloging the questions now that Google Moderator is defunct, but until we figure that out, just keep sending those emails to [email protected]. For all your plant power needs, visit richroll.com. We've got nutrition products, books, education products, 100% organic cotton garments. We've got tech tees for running. We've got meditation programs. We have signed copies of The Plant Power Way and also Finding Ultra. And now we have sticker packs, awesome plant power stickers, piece and plant stickers,

• 1:38:10Rich Roll?

  temporary tattoos, all kinds of cool stuff. And also, limited edition art prints that are either framed or unframed, signed and numbered from my friend, the esteemed artist Andrew Pasquale, who is a premier upcoming talent making waves in the art and food movement. Check that out, all on my website. Basically, everything you need to take your health and your life to the next level. If you're into online courses, I've got two of those at MindBodyGreen, The Ultimate Guide to Plant-Based Nutrition, three and a half hours of streaming video content, and also The Art of Living with Purpose, which I think is about two and a half hours of streaming online content. It's all about setting goals and doing the inside work, getting your life on the right trajectory. It's really good stuff. I'm really proud of both of those courses.

• 1:38:51Rich Roll?

  You can find them both at mindbodygreen.com, just click on "Video Courses." Thanks for supporting the show by telling a friend, sharing it on social media, for using the Amazon banner ad at richroll.com for all your Amazon purchases. I love you guys. I'll see you in a few days, and make it great, everybody. Have a good one, and we'll talk more soon. All right? Cool. Peace. Plants. [music]