Our education system's broken. Very much so. We need to fix it. It's broken not because we don't have good teachers, administrators. It's broken because they haven't changed how we teach children. We've added in computers and iPads, but we haven't changed anything else besides that. Beth Rupert is transforming education through Solid Foundations Academy, an individualized curriculum designed to ensure every child has the chance to succeed. She helps children overcome learning disabilities and unlocks their unique potential. It's quite the battle you're facing here. Why not just give up? What is your why? Why? Why fight it? Why fight it? I'm going to tell you why. It spans the globe like a super high school. It spans the globe like a super high school. Internet. Elvis. Red. Today, Apple is going to reinvent the ball. It's not over until I win. The Living Your Legacy podcast. For those who live to leave a legacy. That's extraordinary. The impossible. Oh, that is sensational. Open. Chicago with the lead. You said ball is the fastest man on the planet. You can live your dream. welcome back to another powerful episode of the women in power podcast for inside success i'm ray gutierrez joining me today is beth rupert she is transforming education through solid foundations academy ensuring that every child has a chance to succeed how do you feel about that intro beth i love it you're welcome we're done here publish it we're done beth welcome Thank you. We're about to film your episode today for Women in Power. What are we going to learn about you today, love? Our education system's broken. Very much so. We need to fix it. It's obviously Trump is tearing it down as we speak right now. Good old Grandpa Trump. And we don't have the Department of Education. And what we don't have, to be honest with you, is we have a new society. You know, the world has changed. Back in the day, moms stayed home and took care of the kids, educated the children. And we had a different society than we do today. The problem is, is we still have the same education system. So it's broken not because we don't have good teachers, administrators. It's broken because they haven't changed how we teach children. We've added in computers and iPads, but we haven't changed anything else besides that. Who are you serving here? Because you're speaking to me. I realize my teacher was an idiot, maybe sixth grade. I'm like, I stopped doing my homework. I'm like, does it even matter if I do it or not? Like, this guy doesn't care. He has no real investment in my education. He's coming and doing his thing. You can just feel it. But most kids don't think that way. Who are you speaking to? Are you speaking to parents? Are you speaking to the children? Like, who are you speaking to with your message? I'd like to first and foremost speak to the government because, you know, it starts at the top and money is what we need. We need interventions. We need money to help the schools, the school districts, the parents. So first and foremost, start at the top. Sure. And they're working our way, obviously, down to parents. As a parent that had a child that struggled with education, I know what it's like. Oh, yeah. To feel your heart breaking for your child. I know what it's like to fear that your child won't have a successful future, because if you don't have a good education, unless you have a trade and we know that robotics and everything's taken over, there is no future. And then I'm also talking to the children that deserve quality education. It should be every human right to have a quality of education. How do you educate the people that need the education the most? Like they're clearly part of an old traditional way of doing things. Throw money at it and the problem will go away. Throw bodies at it and the problems will go away. It's the American spirit, folks. Yes, yes, yes, for sure. How do you educate these folks that go yo like we due for a collapse here and it because the education ain right because you all a little dated Yes How do you educate these folks So research is out there I mean it been done over and over again It's early childhood education. We keep sinking the money into elementary education. Let's face it, people. Teachers are leaving by the droves. No one wants to be a teacher today. Why? It's the testing. It's the, you know, I think even if we paid our teachers a million dollars, they still wouldn't like their jobs. Because we have children that are coming into the system that need help. Fully armed, weaponized. Anxiety, everything. Depression, drug abuse, bullying, addiction. I can go on and on. These are teachers, not therapists. Right. Exactly. Exactly. Or police officers. Oh, police. Absolutely right. You can get beat up. You can get hurt being a teacher today. But it's like seeing how things are, it's almost like a temperament of how the energy is out there right now. Like you're seeing it through the generation that is supposed to be leading us. And there's a lot of disruption and destruction. It's quite the battle you're facing here. Why not just give up? Like, why not just be like, oh, well, I've got my own problems, like 99 problems and a B-81. Like, why not just give up? What is your why? Why? Why fight it? Why fight it? I'm going to tell you why. Again, I had a child that had a learning disability. I went and my child, Andrew, he, I couldn't understand what was going on with him. I mean, he's in preschool and his name is Andrew, A-N-D-R-E-W. And he could write his name and say the letters. But if you pointed to a D, he had no clue. He looked at me with stars in his eyes. And at that time, I was not a teacher. I was in psychiatry. I worked professionally in psych for many, many years. the last years, six years in the psychiatric emergency department. So I had, I did know about learning disabilities, but I couldn't figure out what was going on with them. I'm like, okay, you're a really smart boy, high IQ. What is going on? Ask, you know, the teachers are like, you know, he's a brilliant. And I'm like, no. So I realized he was highly intelligent and compensating for his disability. He would say, if you pointed to the letter D, he'd say four. And I'm like, dude, it is a letter, not a number. What are you doing? And I just was so concerned and hid under his breath a whisper. And I didn't know what he was doing. And then finally, just getting to know my child, taking time, talking to him, trying to understand how his brain processes, I realized he knew every letter of the alphabet numerically. He was saying four because four is, or D is the fourth letter of the alphabet. So he then would say D and got the letter. High intelligence, but there was a processing disconnect. And then I went and started studying. I developed my curriculum for Solid Foundations Academy. I started using what I researched and learned through collaboration with doctors that helped me with auditory processing disconnect, visual processing disconnect, and started trying things out. And guess what? He, his grades improved. His self-confidence came up. And then at that time, it was a teacher. So I was helping other students. And I saw the difference. The unlock. It like the snap of a child that feels worthless of no confidence. And we don't like to do. Hey, we don't like to do things we're not good at. Right. Of course not. If we're good at learning, we want to learn. Right. If we're not good at it, we don't want to go to school. We hate school. School is terrible. Fighting with the parents. And then I saw the parents go from hopelessness, helplessness, just gut-wrenching pain to hopeful. Yep. To excitement, say, that's my kid. My kid has a future, and that's why I do it. And it comes down to survival, because it's all about building a legacy. Not to plug our other show, but it really is, because when you're telling me those stories, I can just feel the panic in these parents' hearts going, how do I teach my son to fish? He's got difficulties, he's just operating, but it's the way I'm speaking to him, and it's the way I have to teach him that is the key here. I can't help but think of my own father that, unfortunately, I don't speak to anymore. But he, gorgeous man. I mean, hotter than George Clooney, crystal blue eyes. Oh. Exactly right. But dumb as a doorknob. And Cuba dropped out of fifth grade and no one could figure out why this poor boy gorgeous man would not learn Couldn read anything And he suffered And if it wasn for someone like you that would have stepped in and go yo there's a specific way to speak to this man. He could have been something far greater. And God bless him, wherever you are, Dad. But I have some of that code. I found myself, when I looked at my dumb sixth grade teacher, I saw sort of a reflection of myself. I'm like, well, I'm not really paying attention to much whatever the hell he's saying, but you give me a computer, I can design you a website. I was designing websites in 1995. I was, you know, camera work, anything. But when it came to reading math and all these boring things that I wasn't visual, that I couldn't tell a story, I couldn't learn it. Like that to me was difficulty. So hearing your story, I'm like, gosh, where were you that day in sixth grade when Mr. Trujillo failed me? And so what happens next now? Like, how are you educating? Like you said, you're speaking to leaders. What change are you seeing? Are you seeing massive change or change per one parent at a time? So for the leaders, I am an advocate. I do. I live in Pennsylvania. I do go to Harrisburg and I do meet with the reps and representatives and senators. And I've talked to them about early childhood education. The solution isn't difficult. to be really honest with you, because we all know that how you think your personalities, your processing systems are already solidified for the most part by the time you're five years old. Sure. Yep. Absolutely. So by the time you get into kindergarten and in Pennsylvania, you don't even have to go to kindergarten. You just have to go to first grade. It's not even a cursory level. So by the time you get to first grade and people figure out like you, oh my gosh something's not going on here it's not right we're already too late yeah so if we put the money in and sink it into early childhood education quality early childhood education and i don't mean child care i mean academics yes i mean and we're behind other countries most countries speaking fine language to be honest with you they call english basic in In Switzerland, English is basic. Basic. Yeah. And most children start their education at three years old. Jesus Christ. Right? And we wonder why we're struggling as a nation. Yeah. Yeah, I know. Honestly. But it's the American way. Cheeseburgers, hot dogs. I give you credit. You found something that you're good at. I got lucky. You found something that makes you happy. Not everybody's that lucky. and then we are losing kids grow up right and they turn to drugs they turn to alcohol they have mental health issues basically from something that could have been remediated from the time they were young so let's move that money into early we're going to save the government money you know it's a no-brainer guys like we're not doing something we don't know but what do you say to that politician when he goes wow we have montessori we've got all these other programs Why not just put the kid in Montessori? Well, first of all, Montessori's in most states, you have to pay for. So what if you have a parent that can't afford a Montessori? We just put them in a Catholic public school. And not all children can learn by Montessori. I know, honey. I'm playing devil's advocate here. So we need something that teaches or educates the child as an individual. So my curriculum is individualized. Your brain and how you process is different than my brain. Absolutely. And if it's one curriculum and we turn a page and this is our lesson today, not everybody's learning that way. So it has to be individualized. We have to say, hey, well, how are you, you know, following that information in your brain? How do you understand it? And why don't you get it? Like my son, he's saying four for the letter D. How's he doing these days? He's fantastic. Guess what? He went to college and he's an accountant. Fuck yeah, he is. I love it. Hell yeah. That's amazing. He loves math from the time he was a little boy. That's amazing. What a great story. I'm like, I don't look and see numbers. I see letters. Huh? Huh? I'm like, dude, it's not a number. And I'm thinking, oh my goodness, what did I do wrong? And then I started. Musicians call it synesthesia. The dude from, oh God, I forgot his name, from Nerd. He also lives in Miami. Synesthesia, they see sounds. They see it. it's very difficult to explain what that means happens to me where I'm like no I can see you I can see it you speaking to me but I see the bubbles well I going to get all geeky on you right now let me say geek right we have the different hemispheres of our brain right and this is the thing if you have a kid that has air infections and most people don't know okay the information that goes in your right ear is actually for the left hemisphere of your brain right and the information that goes into your left ear goes into the and processes in the right hemisphere of your brain the left hemisphere is where you have language wow how you learn how to read and to speak yeah i'm just think if you have air infections in your right ear the download like my son did yeah and then you have air infections they actually process not can they hear things like the peanuts. And then your friend, he has that left ear because he's got that musical mind. So that left side that goes to the right side at right hemisphere. Geeking Yacht, I know. Freaking Yacht. I love it. You're like, oh, wow. If you want to get really freaky, this is kind of morbid. I'm like, I just saw JFK's assassination. I'm like, oh, back into the left. So when the billet pierced, it actually went through this one and then it knocked out. So he kind of technically had his last words to wow this this turned to a very dark podcast wrong podcast sorry but but yeah just to give you a kind of a look who you're speaking to in our audience um uh let's let's bring it back so you're talking about the different hemispheres in the brain like how much of it is science versus personal philosophy versus data and a smidge of foo-foo like talk to me about the quadrants of what your message and where you're positioning it well that's all science so right we know that but i i tell people all the time but science is boring for most people so how do you romanticize it and make it i romanticize it in the fact that you know i have kids that come to me all the time and children with autism yep oh yeah and let's talk about that they're they're they're in their mind right their minds closed up so let's talk about a child with autism I had a child with autism. Mom came to me a year ago crying, said, look, my child's getting kicked out of another school. They're saying that he's behavioral issues. He's disruptive, has all these things. This cutest little boy comes to me. Oh my goodness. Adorable. Big brown eyes, just sweet as can be, but he's just locked up. But no one took the time to even talk to him. They all just see behaviors. It's what he does. It's not what he thinks. You get to know him. He is smart as a whip, let me just tell you. And we just did some interventions, got a one-on-one help, supports, and he went off to kindergarten this year's going, go Hunter! He's doing great. But when you see kids come out of their shell to romanticize you, there's nothing more romantic or exciting than a kid just being so happy in life. The eyes sparkle, the smile. Who doesn't love a kid? I mean, that's as best as it gets, man. I didn't really start speaking until I was five. So I'm a bit on the spectrum. I haven't been officially kind of like... You overcame your decision. I definitely overcame. I'm still overcoming it to this point. A lot of it is a little bit of masking, but I'm learning all these great terms based on all these interviews. I definitely want to wrap it on this. How upset are you that they're no longer making Hershey's chocolate in Hershey PA? Really? Oh, I've been to Hershey PA. Next, tell me that Heinz ketchup is leaving us too. Are they really leaving? No, that won't be because I'm moving them. Yeah, Hershey PA. This is not going to happen. The only thing that's left in Hershey PA is the museum. They're not making chocolate there anymore. They moved that factory years ago. We're stillers. Oh, that's true. And you've got the chocolate gumdrop light posts. And it still smells like chocolate in Hershey PA? Oh, yeah. Oh, thank God. But, yeah. You got to come to the Berg, man. Right on. Yeah, I haven't been in any of this. I'm loving Miami, though. Cool. Cool. Well, welcome. Miami's enjoying you. Thank you. It's been a lot of fun. Beth, you've been such a pleasure. I cannot wait to start your interview session. You and I are locked in for 90 minutes. I can't wait to discover more. We're going to be best friends. Hell, yeah. Pound it. Right on. Yeah, man. To education and to kicking ass. Another powerful episode of the Women in Power podcast for Insight Success. I am Ray Gutierrez.
