07-03-24 Interview - Nick Ferguson on reading books to children in Jeff Co

Episode Transcript

(00:00):
You'll also see a fun Instagram postfrom Jeffcoe County Schools and it involved my
friend Nick Ferguson, So I justwanted to bring him on to give him
a pat on the back, wellrhetorically anyway, for getting kids to read.
Hello, mister Ferguson, how areyou hello, Miss Mandy Connell,
how you doing today? Now I'mgoing to out you a little bit on

(00:22):
our text message exchange. We justhad about strip clubs in Atlanta because because
you you played in Atlanta and youknow you have spent some time there,
I texted my brother to ask himthe name of the club specifically I was
trying to think of. It wasthe Cheetah. Do you remember me?
Because here's the thing in Atlanta,like people would go to a regular bar

(00:44):
and then somebody would go like,let's go to the Cheetah. So all
these people would just go to theCheetah and you'd be hanging out in a
strip club. It was just normal. I can't explain it, but yeah,
it was the Cheetah, not thePink Pony. Okay, So really
quickly with the Cheetah went to GeorgiaTech. So the Cheetah wasn't too far
from Georgia Tech, and truth betold, it was right behind my agent's

(01:07):
office, so I've been there before. But here's here's what we talk about
in Atlanta. We don't call themstrip clubs, Mandy. The correct term
is shoe model. I no,see, we call them the shoe show.
That's what I said earlier in theshow. I'm like, you call
them the shoe show because the ladiesare wearing their beautiful shoes and not much
else, so it's just the shoeshow. So yeah, no, I

(01:29):
know the lingo deck, I knowthe lingo. Let's let's get to a
more wholesome part of the Nick Fergusonstory right now, because you inspired a
bunch of kids and tell me abouthow all this came about. How did
you go to Governor's Ranch Elementary?How did you get in this? In
this circle? It was wild becauseLorie Eliver is the teacher who reached out

(01:51):
to me, because she reached outto me in DM on Twitter acts of
course, so I responded like,hey, you know what you on?
How can I help? She didn'tknow that I lived here in Colorado,
so she was telling me about thisritathon that they were doing and I was
like, yeah, I would loveto help out, and she said,
well, what could you and someof your alumni guys do. I said,

(02:14):
well, I can be there Friday. Now. We had this conversation
on a Tuesday, and I toldher I could be that Friday. Now.
She was shocked when I showed upbecause she thought my response wasn't real.
She thought it was Ai. Ohno, yes, she thought it
was Ai. So when I actuallygot out of the car and she stood
on in front of school and shesaw me, She's like, oh,

(02:34):
you were actually real. I didn'tknow that you were real and you were
actually responding. So it was acomplete shock and surprise for her and the
kids themselves. And what I didwas I went and read some of my
kids' favorite books, and once againthey were doing this rita throw and I
said, look, I'm going tochallenge you guys, but I'm a validate
you. At the same time.If your teachers said, well how many

(02:55):
books you need to read to validateyou guys, peace party on me.
And they did. They did theheavy lifting, they read the books.
I was so happy with the teachersand the effort and the kids and the
parents were so happy, so Irewarded them because I feel as though validating
people don't happen that much in oursociety. But I also know growing up

(03:16):
in the inner city and seeing itfirsthand, how important reading is, and
I just wanted to validate the teachersin the student Now, what grade are
we talking about here, Nick?So this is elementary? Right? So
was it a bunch of different gradesor one grade? Well, you had
a combination of different grades that werekind of mixed in. But man,
you know they were so excited,one for me being there and being a

(03:39):
former Bronco player, but just thefact of how enthusiastic I was about reading
and why I thought it was sovital and so important to produce more productive
members of our society. So I'mhoping that someone in the government here in
Denver they get involved with this campaign. And it's not just the government's ran

(04:00):
school. Let's just do this throughoutthe Denver Colorado areas, courage and kids
and validating them for what they're doingfar as reading is concern. I love
this. This is part of Jeffco Reads, which is an intensive summer
literacy program for students entering first,second, and third grades during the twenty
twenty four to twenty twenty five schoolyear. The focus is on developing phonomic
awareness. Phonomic skills and services areavailable at nine schools. Class sizes generally

(04:25):
ranged from eight to twelve. Studentsand teachers are all trained on the Orton
Gillingham approach that incorporates a multisensory approachto learning to read. I don't care
about that part, but I'm withyou because and I say this all the
time to younger people, like inmy life, and I realize that now
everybody has the World's library on theirphone, right, But when I was

(04:46):
a kid, nick, we wereallowed to go to the library once a
week in my hometown, okay,and we were allowed to check out as
many books as we wanted, butwe had to return them all the following
week. Right, So there wasthis pressure, like seven books, and
I would read seven books in sevendays. And it's one of the reasons
I'm such a fast reader now isbecause that pressure was there. But in

(05:08):
my mind, like you look atthe library, that is a massive box
of knowledge, and if you canread, you can do anything. You
can accomplish anything if you can read, And if you can't read, you
can probably still accomplish a lot,but boy, howdy, is it a
whole lot harder. So hats offto you, man. I think that's
wonderful. And if anybody wants meto come and read to students or host

(05:28):
a pizza party, I would loveto do it, absolutely. And once
again, look, I have individualsof my family who went to college,
and we have a number of peoplewho did not, and some of those
individuals don't know how to read.And I look at them in their lives
and how their lives had not reachedthe point that they needed to because they
could not read. So reading isso vital, is so important. When

(05:49):
I was growing up in the city, right outside of our school, there
used to be every Thursday this bookmobile, and I was so excited about going
to this book mobile, just checkingout books because I knew how important it
is. And I just want tocarry for that message. This is my
way of giving back to any communitythat I'm a part of. So I
since I live here in Denver,why not give back in this way?

(06:12):
You know, Nick talking about adultswho can't read. I have a family
member who became an adult literacy tutor, and so she would teach adults how
to read. And the oldest personshe ever taught how to read was like
seventy eight when he started. Wow, And he was a man who had
worked like hard labor jobs his wholelife. You know, never wasn't living

(06:36):
in poverty because he was a hardworker, but he worked really hard for
every dollar he ever made. Andhe wanted to read the Bible before he
died, and so she started toI've got goosebumps right now telling this story.
But she taught him how to readover a period of like three years,
and then he read the Bible whenhe was like eighty two years old
because he wanted to have that forhimself. And so I always say,

(07:00):
and when you find out that someoneyou love can't read, it's like,
it's never too late. It's hard, but it's never too late. And
there are programs out there specifically designedto help adults who cannot read. But
let's prevent that from happening by interveningin these early grades and getting these kids
to be super readers from the veryget go really quickly. I know we
don't have that much time, butmy grandfather, because he had to,

(07:24):
he was pulled out of school andhe had to work in the time that
he was a young man, andhe did not know how to read that
well. So me being able tosay that I got a master's degree,
I went, I graduated from GeorgiaTech. And I'm now pushing kids to
kind of read more. For me, this is a way to pay homage
to my grandfather, to say,Okay, well here's the things that you

(07:45):
would not allowed to do due tothe circumstances that you were faced with.
But now I can kind of flipthat script and kind of change things for
a lot of kids. I lovethat. And you know, one of
the things that people outside of thestate of Florida I don't know is that
when Jeb Bush, when j Bushwas governor there, and this is twenty
something years ago now, Florida kidscouldn't read. They were not performing at

(08:05):
a high level, right They justwere not. They were not doing well
on national tests. And as GovernorJeb Bush said, we are going to
make sure that every single kid canread. And Florida's schools adopted really intensive
reading interventions and they called it deerdrop everything and read, and it was
really a huge movement within the schools. But when you raise reading levels.

(08:28):
Everything else comes up too, likemath scores come up. Everything comes up.
So I'm hoping that this is AndI don't know a lot about this
program and Jeff co but I'm goingto find out find out more about it.
But I hope this is happening inevery school district, right I hope
this is the focus on reading ishappening everywhere because we're not making sure that
every kid can read right now.And you see that in the test scores,

(08:50):
and you see that about how we'reperforming nationwide. We're just not getting
it done, and we're leaving thesekids with a less bright future because they
can't read and comprehend and do thebasic things that we all learned how to
do. So Nick, I appreciateyou. And somebody just asked this on
the text line speed walking and Nickis open and now I'm gonna I'm gonna

(09:15):
tell you, Nick, I'm havinga really weird knee thing right now.
I got to go back to RegenRevolution. Although I don't think I think
it's on the I think it's inmy tendons in my left knee. But
once I'm over that, I'm ready. I'm ready because I speed walk practically
every day, so you know,but I think I need a good distance.
I need at least a mile.So we got to find a track

(09:35):
and get on there and see wecould do this. We should do yes,
a mile? Excuse me? No? Four laps is how many?
What is that? What is it? How many? Is too? Is
six hundred yards of a track?Six hundred We need at least that?
I need at least four labs?Can you do that? Or you sprint
that? Because I'm a distance walker, Nick, I'm a distance walker.

(09:56):
You are throwing too many things intothe question with a speed walking. But
how far were we gonna go?We never we never settled on the distance,
like are you? We didn't butI didn't think it was going to
be a mile. You will beatme in a fifty yard dash because you're
just more athletic I need. Ineed to be because you see these women.
I don't know if you see thesewomen that are that are in the
Have you been watching the track andfield Olympic trials? Have you been watching

(10:20):
any of that? Okay, sothese women that run the ten thousand meters,
did you see the end of theten thousand meter race where this road
comes out of nowhere and just turnsthe guns on the last like one hundred
yards after running ten thousand meters,and I was like that Dame is a
badass. I mean that they haveanything left. And I'm thinking, if
I got a shot, it's gotto be some distance. I knew it.

(10:43):
I told a Rod, I said, man, he was going to
come up with some kind of diabolicalway to win. And keep this in
mind, I've had two knee surgeriestoo, and my knee swelled, so
okay, well then we'll just braceup, we'll get our rock tape,
we'll all be you know, allminus. Here's the weird thing, and
I don't know. This is whenI got to go back to Regent.
In all of my knee pain experience, you know, over the last fifteen

(11:05):
years, I've never had pain thatgot better when I was weight bearing.
Isn't that weird? But I meanthat's weird. That's not normal. And
it's not in the middle of myknee. It's on the sides of my
knees. So something weird's happening rightnow. Getting old sucks. Nick Ferguson,
you don't have to tell me it'shard for me to sleep at night
after plan over a decade in theNFL. I bet I bet well,

(11:28):
Nick, I just wanted to bringyou on and give you kudos for your
good work and kind of shine alight on this because I think you're right.
If more people stepped up to reallyimpress upon kids that reading is just
so critical and so liberating because ifyou know how to read, you can
do anything, and you can findout anything, and you can learn anything
you want to learn. So ittruly is the path to freedom. Well,

(11:50):
thank you, Manny forgiving me someof your time. You're a beautiful
person. Appreciate at one more text. Nick has done Wonders tutoring Ben.
It's been great to watch his roath. So there you go. All right,
I'll talk to you later. NickFerguson, all right, thank you,
Thank you, my friend,