Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
It's that time.
Speaker 2 (00:05):
Time time, time, luck and load.
Speaker 1 (00:11):
The Michael Varry Show is on the air. I hate
(00:43):
continue education, I hate sexual harassment, seminars, all of it.
And our company uses what many of you probably use,
which is workday and I hate getting notification. And I'm
not a very technological person. But after that whole discussion,
(01:11):
I get an email there is an action pending in
your workday. Oh hell, So I start clicking and trying
to get through, and I don't know my password. If
you miss it the first time, it kicks you out.
And you get a call somebody in New York and
(01:31):
it's Michael Berry down in Houston again. And I get
there and I click all the way through, and you
know what it was. You can't make this up. You
have a pending item that needs to be completed. The
pending item is HR for you help case customer service survey. Honestly,
(01:59):
they got something wrong on my paycheck. They had to
send me an email to fix it. Well, I'll tell
you because it's too funny not to tell you. They
had misdirected money that was supposed to go to Ramone
to me. True story. There's no way you're going to
believe that, nor should you. But it happens to be true.
(02:24):
So Ramone comes to me one day a couple of
weeks ago, Hey, how should I handle this? I went
in my workday and there's two thousand dollars that I'm
supposed to have that I don't have, and it goes
back to January, and I'm what should I do? Don't
(02:44):
worry about it, I'll tell Eddie. So Eddie he doesn't
know what to do either, So he calls in the
people and they start working on it. And he calls
back and he goes, well, guess what, hot shot, no
good deed goes on Punni. He is owed two thousand dollars.
It's actually seventeen hundred fifty dollars. He is owed seventeen
(03:05):
hundred and fifty dollars. And guess what happened to the money?
Somebody stole it? No, it went to you. So now
they're going to do a clawback from you and give
it to Ramon. I swear to you that happened. I said, Okay,
that's great, yeah, wonderful. So I'm I have to my
(03:26):
next paycheck. I had to have money taken out, So
then we had to go through this long drawn out
I said, I called the lady. Teresa's her name, Teresa. Yeah,
you can do it. Okay, Well I need you to
fill out the forum. Why do we need to get
documentation involved? So she sends the forum. I can't open
(03:47):
it because it's in some mody. I said, can you
just scan it send it to me by email. I'll
print it out and sign it, and my assistant will
scan it and send it back. Okay. So it's a
two page document. It's so simple. Yeah, I erroneously receive
the money. Now give it to ramonoop. So I signed
page two. Emily scans it and sends it back. What
(04:11):
was next? I need both pages? Oh, Mike, this is
like the Mitch Hedberg bit on when they hand him
a receipt on his sixteen cent donut and he said, now,
I'm not filing that on my taxes. You can keep
that receipt. Why would I need a receipt? So we
had to send it again, had to call Emily back.
She'd left the studio. Oh man. So after all of that,
(04:34):
all of that, I get an email that I have
a function and I don't know if y'all do workday
or not. For those of you who do it, keeps
pinging you, Hey, you hadn't done what you was supposed
to do. There's something waiting over here. And I thought,
do they not know that? I filled out the dang
form twice, sent it twice, and it was a customer
(04:54):
service survey on how did my experience go in filling
out a document? Back? There were five options. I've logged
out of that site. Did we really need to do
all that? Was that really necessary? I'll tell you why
it's necessary because in corporations, as you grow, people don't
(05:15):
have anything to do. The number of patrol officers in
a police department is often ten percent or fewer of
the total number of cops. You think I'm lying. The
number of men actually firing at the enemy in a
war is a small percentage of the overall, You've got
(05:35):
a lot of people sitting around doing things that are
not related to what they need to do. In the
school system, you've got a lot of the number of
actual teachers who are educating the children, especially in a
big district like HISD. You be shocked, speaking of which,
I've got a master tutor who's going to be our
(05:57):
guest in just a moment, and he's the best I've
ever seen at He's tutored my kids for years. He
has something called a study blueprint, and I have asked
him to share that on the air, not just with
my kids, not just with my kids. And if you're
thinking to yourself, yeah, but my kids are in school
right now, don't worry. You're going to share that segment.
(06:18):
They'll be coming up next with your children. He's incredible.
He's helped my kids do very very well in school.
He's very very good at what he does. But first
we have Tony Hopkins, the president of the FISD board
Friends would school Board Tony.
Speaker 3 (06:37):
Good morning, Michael.
Speaker 1 (06:38):
How come you don't go by Anthony Hopkins.
Speaker 3 (06:43):
My first name is actually Daniels, so I've been known
as Tony since the little kid. But I will say
on my resume over the years, I did put the
Anthony Hopkins for many a years. I mean they give
me a few interviews.
Speaker 1 (06:56):
I will tell you that Anthony Hopkins goes by Tony
to friends. And I happen to know that because Lee
Majors told me a great story about having lunch with him.
And Lee Majors was leaving lunch when Anthony Hopkins was
coming in. It was about three or four in the afternoon.
Lee Majors was by himself. He had a newspaper. He'd
read the newspaper. Anthony Hopkins is strolling in and Lee
(07:17):
Majors is walking out of the restaurant and Anthony Hopkins Sir,
Anthony Hopkins to you. Tony says, Lee, how are you?
And he said, well, Tony, I'm doing great. I said,
you call him. Tony said yeah, Tony, Okay, keep going.
And he said, Lee, how are you. I'm good. He said,
I'm by myself for lunch. Have you had lunch? And
(07:38):
Lee Major said, I told him no, I'd love to
join you. He said, so I sat down and ate again,
and I wasn't about to admit that I'd already eaten.
And what I love about that story is, you know,
if somebody like that asks me, I'm gonna jump and
do it. But to know that Lee Majors became a
(08:00):
little boy super fan at seventy, at almost eighty years old.
When that happened, that just delighted me. Hang tight with me.
Tony Hopkins is the president or president of the Friends
with Independent School District Board. I want to give you
and your board a hearty congratulations for lowering the tax rate,
(08:24):
and I want to know how you did it. And
then hang tight, We're going to talk to Derek Moore,
tutor extraordinaire with some tips to help your kids succeed
this school year. And trust me, he gets paid a
lot of money to teach kids how to succeed in
school without having to be stressed out. So hang tight,
that's coming up. The Michael Berry Show.
Speaker 2 (09:00):
Bonds on the good I never found anyone who fulfilled
my leads about how.
Speaker 1 (09:06):
Important school was to me and what good schools I had,
what good teachers I had. Miss Hardy who taught me
to love literature, and how literature is relevant to my life,
how the great writings by the great writers and the
(09:26):
great ideas, how important they are, and that they give
voice to my ideas. They help me explain how I'm
feeling because they've done it before. Or Miss Martin, who
gave me a or helped me with a passion for debate,
(09:47):
or Miss Evans, who gave me an understanding of good government,
or Miss Clytie Lee who taught me to love English,
our language and how it's structured informed and the different
influences on it. I just think about all of those things,
(10:10):
Miss Tally, who taught me to appreciate the theater and
everything that goes in it. In this little bit of
rural school, she would put on the best one act
play in the state. Didn't always win it, but it
was good. It was good coaches. This is why I
get so angry when I see schools doing things wrong,
(10:32):
and when I see people who were heading schools. Rodney
Ellis's staff member was the president of the HISD board.
She got indicted and pled guilty to taking kickbacks from
people who were overcharging the district, and she would sign
off on it and they would give her some of
the money that they stole. So it makes me very happy,
(10:53):
Tony Hopkins, when I see y'all lowering the tax rate
for the friends, would taxpayers? Good for you, sir, Good
for you. It's a model you deserve that your board
deserves the credit for that. What did y'all do? Did
you cut expenses? Did you find that a lot of
things weren't necessary? How did you do that.
Speaker 3 (11:15):
Well? In friends with I see we run pretty thin.
We're about sixty two hundred student district, so roughly eighty
percent of our eighty three percent of our budget is people.
So when last December, when the last special session ended,
we looked at it and said, Okay, the funds that
have already been appropriated for schools four billion dollars for
(11:38):
public schools and a billion dollars for security are not
going to be enabled and that money is not going
to flow through to schools. We started looking at cuts,
and so we started trying to find efficiencies. It's putting
a higher workload on all of our employees, but we've
done that. Then the other thing that we've done is
we've looked at ways to increase funding. One of our
(12:01):
big focuses this year, this past year and again for
twenty twenty four to twenty five has been on attendance.
Schools only get funds if students are in a seat
every single day, and so we've tried to end the
COVID hangover. Did a lot of school districts have where
attendance wasn't necessarily as important during COVID because if you
(12:22):
were sick, you were told to stay home. And I
think one of the things that's really helped us out
friends with I believe was the first urban suburban school
district back in person in twenty twenty one, and we've
started out seventy six percent in person. By January of
twenty twenty two, we were ninety or twenty one, sorry
in twenty twenty and then by twenty twenty one, we
(12:44):
were ninety six percent in person, so we haven't had
the learning loss. We also didn't have as much EZRA
funds to ramp up with and ramp down, and so
you know, we looked at positions. We brought in coaches
to try to help our kids get back up to
speed after being out, even though our kids weren't as
far behind. Then we cut those positions back or absorbed
(13:07):
into the budget and made other cuts. So it's a
combination of increasing revenue, lowering expenses such that we could
make it through. And then of course property values are
growing up. And so most of our reduction this session
or budget is from our debt service side. We're dropping
our debt service side three point three cents, and then
(13:30):
we're dropping on the M and O side point eight cents,
and that's because of the compression laws that are on
the books from the state.
Speaker 1 (13:38):
Do y'all provide meals for students.
Speaker 3 (13:44):
Yes, we have. Our low sees population is extremely small,
about eleven percent across the school district, so we really
only have two campuses that provide meals. The rest of
the campuses do not.
Speaker 1 (14:00):
How many campuses do you have.
Speaker 3 (14:03):
We have a total of seven and.
Speaker 1 (14:05):
That's elementary, middle and high school.
Speaker 3 (14:09):
Yes, we have basically basically four campuses that are K
through five, one junior high, one high school, and then
one special school that's a partnership of three districts for
special education students.
Speaker 1 (14:23):
How many special special ed students do you think you
have at the special school?
Speaker 3 (14:28):
And that one is a very defined program. It's called
the Therapeutic Education Center. We used to send Parentland, Alvin
and Friendswoo and now der Park is joining us as well.
Used to send the kids into Houston at a cost
of seven year, eighty or ninety thousand dollars. We're now
doing it internally providing much better services. But it's a
school of literally right now ten people because their level
(14:52):
of need is so high, and that's not something that
we get funds from the federal government under Title I
or the state to cover the level of services, but
it's the services that are needed for those students, and
so we figured out we could do it cheaper and
better in partnership with our neighboring districts, and we had
a building where we could actually house those students.
Speaker 1 (15:12):
When we talk, I mean, I'm sure it varies per kid,
but are we talking dyslexia? Are we talking severe autism?
Speaker 3 (15:21):
This is severe behavior This particular one is severe behavioral.
But you know it's across the entire state of Texas.
Special education numbers are ballooning from dyslexia to autism across
the So you know, I think in our district right now,
we're fourteen percent of our students are thirteen percent. Dyslexia
and autism have definitely skyrocketed, I think tripled, are quadrupled
(15:43):
over the last five to six years.
Speaker 1 (15:47):
How many teachers do you think you'll have across the
district who meet the bilingual standard because you needed them
to be bilingual, not just that they happened to be bilingual.
Speaker 3 (15:59):
I do not know that off the top of our
top of my head. Friends with we're a little bit unique,
and that we do not have is high a number
of students and that population, and so we don't have
the same programs that a bigger district may have just
because of the demographics and Friends.
Speaker 1 (16:15):
With Well, it sounds like a special place and it
sounds like you'll have your heads on straight. So Bully
for you giving money back. Lowering the tax rate for
your taxpayers is unheard of. I think it's fantastic. Tony Hopkins,
president of the Friends With Independent School District Board, thanks
for being our guest.
Speaker 3 (16:34):
Thank you. Michael.
Speaker 1 (16:35):
Coming up, we will talk to a tutor who I
happen to personally know is really really good and I've
been trying to coordinate with his schedule to get him
on our show for quite some time. Kind of funny story,
Derek Moore came to my attention because Stogy's, which is
(16:56):
one of the places where I smoke cigars, has a
member's lounge in the back. You wouldn't notice it if
you go in there to buy cigars, but you can
pay extra and there's a lounge in the back that's
just for the members. And so many days in the
middle of the afternoon over the years, I would go
over there and prepare for the evening show in the
(17:18):
in the middle of the afternoon and have a cigar,
and you know, nobody bothers anybody there. TV's on and
most people are on their computers working, and there are
people who can work from home or they have a
few hours to kill before meeting or whatever. And Derek
would be there and he'd have his backpack and he'd
get his work out and he was preparing for tutoring
somebody that night. And the owner said, you know who
(17:40):
that guy is, and I said no. He said, he
tutors Will Smith's kid. He flies to Los Angeles to
tutor Will's remember the actors at a rate of something turns.
Speaker 2 (17:52):
Out Michael, because the past.
Speaker 1 (17:58):
Is just a good test. First day at the University
of Texas was Monday, and he and I are very close,
but we have a father son relationship. He and mom
are very close and they have a mother's son relationship.
So he will tell her about a lot of the
(18:20):
picka une details of the day that he wouldn't share
with me, because that's more kind of things you tell mom.
So he had his math class and we had I
think three or four classes, four classes that day, and
he was going through them with her and he said,
(18:45):
my math class, the important thing is this, this and
this and the quizzes count for this percentage and this percentage,
and so where I need to focus is on I
think it was the quizzes because they will end up
at up to seventy percent of the grade. And she said, Michael,
I am so impressed that you focused on day one
(19:07):
on where the grades come from. And he said, Derek
taught me to do that. It's one of those little
tricks that you may not know. And by the way,
I understand that a lot of people cannot afford a tutor,
but every person, every adult, can help their children with
school using just common sense that you apply in your
(19:29):
day to day. What Derek Moore does is a step above.
Derek Moore is our guest. I had three things I
wanted to ask you about. Number one kind of what
we just talked about. My wife gave me the notes
of things she wanted me to ask you about because
you've applied them to our life. The schedule simplifier. Why
(19:50):
is this important in what a parents need to know
in helping their kids succeed in school.
Speaker 2 (19:55):
Yeah, that's a great question, and I'll tell you what
you nail bit because I have been working This is
my fortieth school year with students, And I ask college students,
high school students, in particular middle school, anybody who's at
that level one of the most important weeks. What are
the three most important weeks in a semester? And they say, oh, finals,
(20:18):
it's hard, it's crammed in. And then I say, well,
what if you are behind at the beginning, yeah, yeah,
I can catch up, And they realize after a few
moments that the first three weeks of a semester are
the most important. And that's what Michael t was talking about.
The schedule simplifier system is simply going through your syllabi,
(20:41):
going through how everything is weighted in your AP class
or your school class, and deciding where am I going
to put my energy. You have to get the details out.
You have to look ahead and smooth out your workload,
especially in college, because you're on your own. And that
allows them to control the balance. So I see that
(21:03):
it reduces their stress because you know what the worst
thing is surprises. Right, you have a professor and you
prepped for a test, but you might have left off
a chapter. That is not going to be a good day.
You've got to quiz over three chapters you thought it
was over two chapters. Those little things at the beginning
really set the table for the rest of the semester.
(21:26):
And I tell you what, when you know you've got
everything taken care of, you're free. You're free to have fun.
And that's what's so great is a little bit of
work on the front end will get you great rewards
in the back end. Kind of like it in life.
I don't know how you do Sundays particularly, but my
Sundays after five are getting me ready for the week.
(21:47):
I can't wake up at six or seven or eight
Monday morning and get ready for the week. It's already going.
And so those Sundays are huge for each week. Well
in the same way the first three weeks of a semester,
those are huge of the semester. So that's a great
start for Michael T. And I'll tell you what the
schedule simplifier it just it does that. It systematically takes
(22:08):
our students through every syllabus, extracting what you need, and
then you put it in this top to bottom first
day of semester to last day of the last final
and it's just liberating.
Speaker 1 (22:24):
You know, when I was growing up and I'm a
couple of years ahead of you. I had a trapper keeper,
and I loved my trapper keeper. I have always loved,
as you know, organization, filing things, organizing things, labeling things.
Everything has to be clean and neat and orderly. And
(22:46):
I find that other than artists and certain people, people
are more successful when they are organized. And I think
that's what you've taught our kids to a great degree.
If you see it kid coming home dumping their backpack
and you see papers crumpled up and things like that,
(23:06):
that is a bad sign. And one of the things
that Derek has taught our kids is let's get these
things out, let's look at them, let's organize them, Let's
know what's important and what's not, and learning how to
take out the unimportant and focus on the important. I'm
looking at my wife's notes. She asked me to ask
you about the study blueprint to manage time.
Speaker 2 (23:28):
Better, right, And that's that's a great segue because ultimately
what you're talking about is kind of a buzzword phrase,
is executive functioning, right, and so being able to take
my week. You're a math competition guy. Everyone knows there's
(23:48):
twenty four hours a day, seven days a week. Michael
twenty four times seven. Oh mee eight there you go, boom,
I need you know, So we call it a one
hundred and sixty.
Speaker 1 (23:59):
Eight I know you're ready eating blueprint.
Speaker 2 (24:02):
I know I knew you'd know fast. But we call
it the one one hundred sixty eight hours study blueprint
and really just taking one step at a time. You know,
the average student needs about sixty eight hours of what
we call m as in maintenance M level energy in
a week. That's sleeping, showering, and shaving. That's essentials every week.
(24:25):
High school might need more, college might need more, a
little bit less, depends on the student. You take those
sixty eight hours out, you have one hundred hours, that's
one hundred percent of your week available to allocate. So
then the study blueprint takes them through prioritizing that. So
what is the most important thing? We call those a
(24:45):
student activities. That's going to class, that's getting there early,
that's being prepared, that's doing your homework, that's studying also,
that's working out. You know, if you're going to church,
that's going to church. If you're going to a Young Life,
you're going going to uh Shabbat, you're going to your mosque.
You're going to do your yoga, whatever your spiritual exercise
(25:06):
is too. You've got to be balanced.
Speaker 1 (25:08):
So Derek Moore is our guest. He is a tutor
extraordinary and even if you can't hire any for your
own household, he has some great life lessons for your
kids to help you with your kids. Damn it all right,
this is Mark Chestnut and Jar Bizaar of Talk Radio
(25:35):
Choice for mom. My friend is a very high level tutor.
He teaches my kids and he's sharing advice on how
to help your kids succeed in school. And you play
hot for teachers. Actually, DLR man, I mean DLR makes
(26:05):
everything okay. Derek Moore is our guest. Folks. I know
you tune in for politics, but I love the process
of creating structure, creating order in a world of disorder.
(26:30):
It gives me joy. It also gives me comfort if
things are clean and not dirty, if they're organized and
not disheveled, if things are in their place. If it
creates an environment in which success grows. And many people
don't know how to succeed. They've never been taught, they
(26:52):
never learned, and then they don't have anything to pass
on to their children. And this is generational. This is
why some families succeed and some families fail. If you
can in any way interject into their Hey, here's just
a couple of tips that you'll be surprised as a parent.
Your child's success in and out of school should be
(27:14):
a huge focus of your concern it should you get it.
A lot of parents I see this. They'll drag their
kid to every hitting coach, every pitching coach, every fielding coach,
every select ball team, but won't have anything to do
with their education. I don't understand that. Derek Moore has
been my kid's tutor for years. He literally flies around
(27:38):
the country tutoring the children of movie stars and singers
and billionaires, and he is so incredibly good. And my
wife said, why don't you ever have Derek one to
explain what he does? And I agree, And we've been
trying to make this work with his travel schedule for
(27:59):
a while. My kids can tell you about the More
Method m O O R E. Which is his last name, Derek,
take five minutes and explain what that is.
Speaker 2 (28:11):
Yeah, Michael, thanks for having me on. And it is
officially the More Mastery Method. And actually just finished the
first manuscript for the book, uh and world class tutors
dot com, World class tutors dot com. I've actually got
a free chapter two there for anybody who wants to
(28:33):
pick it up. It's an overview of this way to
optimize learning. It's five very simple, repeatable steps m O
O R E. As you said, And what we do
is we begin by memorizing every student who takes a quiz,
who takes a test. Anytime you have a job interview,
(28:55):
you're talking about a new field, you need to memorize
the jargon, memorize the terminology, memorize the lingo, or you
can't even talk about the topic. So we begin by
attacking memorization, and our goal is to memorize perfectly. Then
the second step is the first. Oh, and that's overview overview,
(29:16):
and it's like today's legs where you have a nice
cake and it soaks up the three milks and it's
just getting the flavor in there. So if you look
at a chapter, let's say a biology chapter on history chapter,
but does it, sir, is.
Speaker 1 (29:30):
The icing more of a meringue style or is it
a heavy Because you know the icing of trace letches
is underrated.
Speaker 2 (29:40):
You know what the milk soaks in that top. You
might want it a little crispy, you might want a
little fluffy. That's where you get the specialization, right where
that's okay, Hey, go for it, man, So thanks, man,
that's great. We want to soak up everything but the tech.
And so this is a system where you say, I've
(30:03):
got the vocabulary memorized, and whatever sized chunk I can handle.
Maybe it's one section, maybe it's a whole chapter. Then
I read all around the words, the pictures, the charts,
the graphs, the previews, the summaries, the end of chapter questions,
everything but the text, because that's going to give me
the framework and help my brain relax. I'm only going
(30:25):
to cover this much material on these pages. It's not overwhelming.
You know, the fight flight or freeze mechanism. It brings
your stress down when you can bite sized chunk it.
So the memorize is first, overview is second, and then
we need to organize. The nice thing about learning nowadays
(30:45):
everything is organized. It's chapters, it's outlines. It's done pretty
well for you. So we just extract those outlines from textbooks,
from literary pieces of work. Wherever we're getting our knowledge
from we have to organize it and we want to
do it in a way that's methodical. We want to
(31:06):
be very systematic. The fourth step is the R and
that's read. I can't tell you the number of students
who go to class and they haven't read what the teacher,
what the professor, what the lecturer is going to present on.
In our more mastery METHODR are all done before lecture.
(31:30):
You know, if you go to class and you've memorized
all the vocabulary words, you've overviewed, you've organized, and you've
read the chapter, you're sitting back and you're now able
to listen in a stress free way. You're going to
know ninety percent of what's presented, and that ten percent
you may be able to jot it down. You may
want to make some notes, draw some pictures of it,
(31:52):
and really make it sync in. And this hit me
when I had a student who was a C student.
He was a C student and actually it was for
years in science. He applied this. In the first year
he applied this in his science course. He had one
hundreds on four separate exams in his science because he
(32:14):
was able to go to class back then with his
note cards with this outline. It's such a stress reliever.
So we go through this. But I have a biomedical
science degree. I have a background in science, so I
love the scientific method. This is not just one and done.
Most students are going to get about half maybe two
thirds of the material if you go through at once.
(32:37):
So what we do what they didn't master. We go
back to the top and we dig a little deeper.
Did you know the vocabulary words perfectly? Did you memorize them?
Let's look at those again. Let's look in the overview.
Where does this appear again, Let's reorder, reorganize, Let's reread
a few words or a few paragraphs. Then you evaluate again.
(32:59):
It's an iterative process and students will come out with
a's over and over and over again. It's most unbelievable
secret one moment.
Speaker 1 (33:07):
Coming up our last segment together, I want you to
think about advice you would give to parents. Maybe we're
not trying to raise the valedictorian, but parents who say
I'm a working mom, I'm a working single dad. Ways
that parents can help their children from when they wake
(33:29):
a child up in the morning till they put them
to bed at night. To succeed and I believe educational
excellence is not necessarily the determiner of success in life.
You can do well without being good in class. But
the skills you learn that lead to educational success, those
(33:52):
translate into whatever you do on the sporting field and
the corporate office and the military.