Making Math Engaging: How Mary Ryan Brought Experiential Learning to Students | Daycare & Early Childhood Education Series

Intro  

Welcome to another edition of inspired stories where leaders share their experiences so we can learn from their successes, how they’ve overcome adversity, and explore current challenges they’re facing.

Anthony Codispoti (00:17.452)
Welcome to another edition of the inspired stories podcast where leaders share their experiences so we can learn from their successes and be inspired by how they’ve overcome adversity. My name is Anthony Cotispodi and today’s guest is Mary Ryan. She just retired as director of early childhood education at Albert Unified School District in Riverside, California, where she oversaw the preschool and transitional kindergarten programs for her district. And she has just taken on a new role.

with the educational consulting agency, Illuminated Collective. We’ll also hear how she always wanted to be a teacher ever since she was in kindergarten. Now before we get into all that good stuff, today’s episode is brought to you by my company, Ad Back Benefits Agency, where we offer very specific and unique employee benefits that are both great for your team and fiscally optimized for your bottom line. One recent client was able to add over $900 per employee per year in extra cash flow by implementing one of our proprietary programs.

Results vary for each company and some organizations may not be eligible. To find out if your company qualifies, contact us today at addbackbenefitsagency .com. Now, back to our guest today, Mary Ryan. Thanks for making the time to share your story today.

Mary Ryan (01:30.957)
no problem. I’m excited.

Anthony Codispoti (01:33.386)
So tell me about this earliest memory of wanting to be a

Mary Ryan (01:39.117)
I remember a few small things about kindergarten, but one of them was the teacher had a recorder and she was recording our voices for some reason. And each of us had to go up and say what we wanted to be when we grew up. And I remember telling her, I will be a teacher. I also remember one of the little girls saying she was going to be a witch. I think she was thinking of Halloween. But poor thing, everyone burst out laughing.

Anthony Codispoti (02:09.248)
And have you stayed in touch with her? What is she doing today?

Mary Ryan (02:11.741)
The teacher or the little girl? No, we moved away from that area and I didn’t really stay in touch with anyone.

Anthony Codispoti (02:14.474)
The little girl.

Anthony Codispoti (02:21.261)
So tell me about this path to actually getting to be a teacher. As you were telling me before we got on air about just sort of this collection of weird jobs that you always seem to fall into.

Mary Ryan (02:33.725)
Yeah, not so weird that when I was 10, we moved into an area, our next door neighbor had three children, the oldest one was three, and the youngest was just born when we moved in. And she started having me go with her places or coming over during the afternoon and I would take care of the kids, they had rental properties. And so I would go with her to the rental properties.

because she took all three kids by herself once and the boys painted the baby’s head blue. She decided she needed help. So she, sometimes she’d be waiting for my school bus to get home to take me with her. So I always kind of worked with kids. I babysat throughout high school even. I did try.

working at a clothing store like high school girls do and it just didn’t work for me. It was not active enough. It was not dynamic enough, I think. I did get trained and this is one of the weird side jobs. I got trained once this summer I was 17. Someone I babysat was a dentist and his dental assistant was going on maternity leave. She

trained me to do her job. So for the summer I was 17, I did dental impressions, I helped fill cavities, I took x -rays, I basically did an assisting job. And then I went off to my senior year of high school and once I got done with high school, I was working in high school, I started working at a preschool and that kind of became the thing.

By the time I was 18, I was co -directing the preschool. And then I started going to the community college because that was right when you started needing actual college credits in order to teach preschool. went to one of my professors said, hey, there’s a job coming up that I know about, and I think you’d be really good at it. It’s at the domestic violence shelter in town.

Mary Ryan (04:58.631)
they’re looking for someone to run the children’s program during the afternoon. And I said, okay, should I try? I interviewed, I got the job. I worked from three to eight so I could still go to college in the morning. And I did that for several years. It turned into a full -time job. And by the end of the time I was the director or the nighttime supervisor of the pre, of

shelter home. So it was battered women and their children. I would go for it at midnight. I would oversee what was going on in the home, but also answer their crisis line. So I was doing crisis calls with women who were needing to get out of their homes. It was an interesting education. It was really hard on me to see the women that went back, especially after

I had worked with their children and heard their children’s stories. It was so hard. But I saw a lot of good come out of it. I saw women get out. I saw women connect with their kids and the kids start to heal. And so that always stayed with me. And then of course, by then I was finishing, I had finished my BA. I got my teaching credential and then I started teaching kindergarten my first year.

I’ve taught kinder up through second and then TK came along and I taught TK for a number of years. TK is transitional kindergarten in California. It means that kids who aren’t the age appropriate for kinder still get a year of schooling in public schools, which is amazing for especially the district I work in is lower income a lot, like probably 75 to 80 % lower income.

kids on free and reduced lunch and needing extra support. So it was amazing to be able to give those kids a year before Kinder.

Anthony Codispoti (07:03.829)
So a few things I want to go back to here, because we covered a whole bunch of ground there. But the biggest thing that I’m sure everybody listening still wants to hear more about is this baby’s head getting painted blue. What was that?

Mary Ryan (07:08.221)
Yeah.

Mary Ryan (07:19.901)
So the mom I was working for, as I said, they owned rental properties. The boys, there was a baby girl, she was, I think, born the day we moved into the home next door. She was just an infant. The boys were 18 months and three years old and active, very active, as boys are, or as kids are.

and just curious and I think I wasn’t there when it happened. She was painting in a room. I think they found the paint and I don’t know what possessed them. You never know with kids. They decided to paint the baby’s head.

Anthony Codispoti (08:02.377)
We gotta decorate our little brother. Yeah.

That’s something I wouldn’t put past my own boys.

Mary Ryan (08:07.997)
So she had a blue sheen on her head for a while, even after getting the paint off.

Anthony Codispoti (08:14.826)
I have two boys who are eight and 10, very active. Yeah, I know very well. And I’ve got pictures of my youngest when he was probably about four, I would guess. We had these window markers, right? Where you could draw all over the windows and he just loved using those. The problem was we had to take them away from him because he would start drawing all over himself.

Mary Ryan (08:17.723)
I’ll see you now. Yeah.

Mary Ryan (08:30.365)
Mm -hmm.

Mary Ryan (08:38.909)
You

Anthony Codispoti (08:40.784)
He was like, okay, as long as we can keep him contained and he stays off the carpet and the couch and everything. But then he started putting them in his mouth and he looked like a smurf from the inside out. And so, yeah, we had to put a stop to that. So yeah, I could see a couple of boys with their little baby siblings saying, this looks fun. What are we gonna paint? We’re gonna paint this little kid here. Yeah. So.

Mary Ryan (09:03.943)
Yeah. Yeah. She kind of looked like a smurf.

Anthony Codispoti (09:08.902)
Yeah, yeah, I could see that and that was back in the day maybe when Smurfs were popular or was this before

Mary Ryan (09:17.245)
it would have been in the 70s. Those kids are all grown and I, and my understanding is the baby has kids of her own and she’s a dentist now.

Anthony Codispoti (09:19.451)
Okay, that might have been pre -SMURFs.

Anthony Codispoti (09:27.366)
Okay, all right. So the interesting thing about your story of being in kindergarten and not a lot of memories from kindergarten, but one that you remember very well is, and it’s an unusual thing for teacher to have been doing voice recordings in class, but she was, and asking everybody what they want to be, and you remember very firmly, I want to be a teacher. I have a niece who’s just going into college. Her name is Sophia

she has always, similar kind of thing, she’s always wanted to be a teacher, she’s always wanted to be an educator. When she plays, you know, as a little kid, she plays like she’s a teacher and she sets up a pretend school. And then as she got older, she set up courses to teach like the local neighborhood kids. And I think the first year maybe she did it for free to get some practice and then she started charging money.

Mary Ryan (10:03.067)
Mm

Anthony Codispoti (10:18.997)
And she had a nice little side business where she was doing this. it seems like you’re wired the same way. I see you nodding your head. You’re like, yeah, yeah, that’s me. So you started working at the preschool. And what was it? Within less than a year, you were the co -director?

Mary Ryan (10:26.481)
Yeah, sometimes teachers are born.

Mary Ryan (10:39.281)
Yeah, I started as an assistant. Just again, I had a lot of experience with kids, so I thought, okay, that’ll work. You didn’t have to have college credits then, so it was easy for them to bring me in. The person who owned the preschool…

Anthony Codispoti (10:40.284)
How did that happen so fast?

Mary Ryan (11:03.97)
I was young, so it was hard for me to remember my exact, she didn’t run the preschool well. It was always, we’re trying to figure out what to do, we’re trying to figure out where things are, we’re trying to figure, and at one point after hearing, we just don’t have money for that, but the preschool’s full, how could you not have any money?

I looked, she showed me her books and there were people who were like three months without paying their payments. And I said, this is why you can’t live like this. You can’t even feed your family like this. How are you doing this in life? And maybe it was that bossiness. She said, okay, then you’re gonna be the one that works on this part and you’re gonna have to talk to the parents. And I said, yeah, they have to pay

pay and they have to start paying something or their kids can’t come anymore. I know it’s hard for you. I know you love these parents and these kids, you can’t do it for free. You have a family.

Anthony Codispoti (12:10.12)
Was that hard for you as an 18 year old to be calling on these parents and saying, hey, pay up?

Mary Ryan (12:15.985)
you know, a little bit. but, I’ve, I just always had that attitude, I think, like, this is the way it needs to be that you, you know, you made a contract, you decided you wanted to bring your kids here and we love having them, but we can’t do this for free. And I think that’s kind of the way I said, you know, I appreciate it. You know, we love your kids, but we can’t do it for free. She’s got to pay us and she’s got to feed her family.

Anthony Codispoti (12:46.671)
and so what point did you decide to transition from that into the work at the domestic violence shelter

Mary Ryan (12:53.373)
I was 19 when I started there. I don’t know how far into, it was probably just maybe a few months, six months or so, but I was 19. remember when I moved, when I worked there, it was a huge culture shock for me to go into. Not that I didn’t know that kind of thing existed. I just didn’t know how prevalent it was and how awful the stories were.

And I, one of the things I remember, a little girl who was eight, and a lot of times it happens that battered women are isolated by their partners. So she kind of started using the eight -year -old as her sounding board and her friend to talk to. And the eight -year -old opened up to me. We had to take her to the hospital or the doctor at one point, because she kept having stomach aches, stomach, she had ulcers.

from hearing, from seeing it all and then hearing her mom’s side of everything. It was just an amazing shock to my system of this is how people live and this is, and there was a lot of training that went with it. They did a lot of training with me and this is the cycle of violence and this is the way, most of the time these women were in abusive families and then the abuse is so normal to them

they don’t even think about it, just becomes that’s their relationship that they move into. So knowing all that, but my biggest thing was the kids. just, can’t, and I would tell mom, they can’t make this decision. You have to make the decisions for them and you have to think about what you’re doing to them too. And you gotta do, you have to think these things through.

and talking to them about, you know, this is what they said, this is what’s happening. It’s so hard. I learned how to make restraining orders. Yeah, so when I became a teacher, that was good. I learned how to already knew how to do CPS reports already knew how to so at school, they’d say, hey, we have to make a CPS report. Can you tell us, you know, it was it was normal to me.

Anthony Codispoti (14:55.641)
wow, you got involved with those,

Mary Ryan (15:15.097)
It was hard. had my son while I was working there and it was hard once I had him. By then I had finished my BA. I was doing my student teaching. was on my way to becoming a teacher, but it was really hard. think the emotion of watching these kids struggle so much and then having my own son and he’s just a baby. I think it just opened up my heart in a different way.

Anthony Codispoti (15:43.203)
What were some things that helped you cope through that difficult

Mary Ryan (15:51.645)
I know. think they say compartmentalizing. I think compartmentalizing, like this is my life. This is my work, trying to separate from it when I wasn’t there. When I was young, when I first started in my 20s, I would work from four to midnight. I’d go out clubbing and in the 80s it

clubbing and running around and you know, that was easy to go and do that and I love to dance anyway, so I would go and do that and forget about it. But then once I had my son, wasn’t as easy, you know, I wasn’t doing that anymore and I wasn’t, I was a new teacher. It was harder to do that kind of stuff. I was doing my student teaching at that time and trying to get through everything. I finally,

I just had to walk away and say, know, I’m going to be a teacher, so I’m going to have to quit working. It was too hard for me to hear the stories. Plus, I had some abuse as a child, and that all came up during that time. So I just had to get out.

Anthony Codispoti (17:10.927)
Did that, was that an impetus to you seeking any additional treatment for some of your own experiences?

Mary Ryan (17:18.393)
Yeah, I went I started therapy. Probably right before I got pregnant with my son. I started parent therapy went through some sessions and it was good. I was very jaded for a while I got really like, everything is so terrible and things are so bad. And, that’s not really the person I am. So I knew I had to go talk to someone.

And it was great. It helped a lot. I got through it. I went back at one point because I left my son’s dad. And so I went back into therapy and talked about that relationship and everything. It was good. I think anyone who even has an inkling, maybe I need to talk, someone should do

Anthony Codispoti (18:05.477)
That’s a great point and I think that’s something that everybody needs to hear. There’s been a stigma around mental health.

for a long time and it’s getting better, right? That stigma cloud is lifting, but it’s still there and there’s a lot of people who resist because they think it’s a sign of weakness or, know, if, you know, I was playing kickball with my kids a few weeks ago and I fell on my shoulder, I had no hesitation to go to a doctor and get it scanned, make sure that there was nothing broken, right? But if there were, you know, a big life change for me, a career change,

got fired, I’m leaving my spouse, there’s something going on with my kids, that would cause a little hesitation. Like, wonder, should I just go out clubbing? Should I just try to bury this? Should I try to find an escape? Or should I try to do something about it? And so good on you for, not once, but at least twice, that you’ve shared with us here, that you identified, hey, this is an area I need some help in. And to hear you talk about it, it was a huge assistance for you.

Mary Ryan (19:12.357)
It’s important, I think, and it is hard, it is scary to even talk about it to your family and friends. But it is better now. I know one of my nephews was having problems and we talked to him about, need to go talk to someone, honey. And it just kind of normalizes it. you’re struggling. Even my son got married during COVID.

Even with him, you need to go talk to a marriage counselor before you get married. Make sure you go talk to someone. You guys need to make sure you have a good strong base before you get married. Yeah, I just believe like there are people out there and that’s their job. And so why not utilize them? Why not, you if you’re you need help, go talk to someone.

Anthony Codispoti (19:48.599)
That’s interesting, I like that.

Anthony Codispoti (19:59.403)
And for you, how did you find the person that you were comfortable talking with?

Mary Ryan (20:03.515)
did I find that person? I think it started while they were still working for the shelter. And I think one of the people there recommended someone. had Kaiser, no, I don’t even think I had insurance at the time. So she took me on as a, I paid a lesser amount. But it was great. And she’s the one that I went back to the second time.

Luckily, and it’s hard. think you have to be, you you’re in a vulnerable spot and if the person’s not working out, it’s hard to then say, okay, it’s not me. I need to go find someone else. It’s that part’s hard too.

Anthony Codispoti (20:50.999)
Yeah, you know, I’ve actually, I’ve been to see different counselors and therapists over the years and I found them to be incredibly helpful myself. And one piece of advice that I like to give to people is to not feel bad if you get to a point with a particular therapist where it’s not working. Either it’s not working in the beginning or you get to a later stage and you’re like, well, that was helpful and now I feel like we’ve sort of maxed out.

I have been in that position before where, yeah, this was helpful for a couple of months, and now I feel like, okay, I’m good. Maybe it’s time for me to move on to somebody else who has a little bit of a different perspective. Don’t have that sort of, it’s great when you find somebody that you have that connection with, but if that connection is not there, or if it dissipates and you’re not getting the value anymore, it’s perfectly within your rights to move on. You’re not going to hurt their feelings. They’ll be all right.

Mary Ryan (21:27.869)
Yeah.

Mary Ryan (21:41.265)
And it’s like that with any profession. I think if your doctor’s not working for you, go find someone else. I think people hesitate to do those things, but it has to be best for you.

Anthony Codispoti (21:53.844)
Agreed. So tell me how you got started then at Albert. How did this come

Mary Ryan (21:59.491)
I grew up in the district. So it was a district I had grown up in. I was placed there. I don’t know if they did it on purpose or not. So when you’re doing your teaching courses, the college places you in a district to do your student teaching. And it’s a year of basically working for free that you go in and you

do different grade levels for an amount of time and work on doing lessons and things like that. And the college placed me in Alvord. I don’t know if that was the reason, but, and then I did some subbing. Once you get your VA, you’re eligible to substitute teach. So I did some subbing when I wasn’t doing my student teaching. One of my,

Again, it just fell into my lap. One of my best friends growing up, her father was a principal at one of the schools. And I said to there, and he said, hey, I’ve got a kindergarten next year. Do you want it? And I said, yeah, yes. And that was it. I didn’t interview. didn’t,

Anthony Codispoti (23:16.258)
Just reputation alone is sort of opening up these doors for you as you move through life.

Mary Ryan (23:20.144)
Things fell in my lap. And I think I’m sure part of it was, you know, I was his daughter’s good friend and, and, you know, he knew my family and, but then the same thing, once I started working, my third year teaching, which is so when you’re a teacher, you’re on basically you’re on probation for two years. It’s not like everyone else that you have six months and, that’s

They can let you go at any time without cause for two years. Once you walk into school that third year, you’re tenured. That doesn’t mean they can’t let you go. They have to have cause. They have to prove their cause. But for two years, they can let you go at any time. And just say, yeah, we’re gonna go another way or we’re not gonna keep you. So my third year.

They came to me and said, hey, could you be a mentor? Would you be interested in being a mentor? I had only been teaching a short time. And I said, I don’t even know what I’m doing. Like, I don’t know if I have anything to say to anyone else. Yeah. Yeah. And I did my first two years, get a mentor teacher usually. but I said, sure, if you think so. And they came and watched me teach and interviewed me and said, yeah, we want you to be a mentor.

Anthony Codispoti (24:27.177)
I need a mentor. Get me one of those.

Mary Ryan (24:43.857)
So I was my third year teaching, I was mentoring first year teachers on what to do and how to do it and how to find help and support and what they needed in their classrooms. And I was very lucky that after the summer, after my first year of teaching, I was sent to a math conference because back then there weren’t even standards. There were some guidelines, but like make sure you.

Anthony Codispoti (25:08.299)
What do mean that there weren’t standards?

Mary Ryan (25:10.685)
It wasn’t like today, like here is a list of everything the kids need to know by the end of the year. These are the things you have to absolutely teach. There was a list of, you know, in second grade, make sure they start doing cursive writing and, you know, things like that, but not, it wasn’t a hard, fast, like people did kind of their own thing a lot. But I know I wanted, I needed

in college, don’t, they don’t focus, they didn’t focus as much. I don’t know what they do now, but they didn’t focus as much on math. So they sent me, they paid for sending me to a week long math training. And I’ve done that math ever since. It’s hands on, it’s experiential and kids get it. Like I, I even, I struggled in math as a kid. I, when I went through the training went, that’s why.

Okay, that makes sense. Now, kids, little kids, especially need their hands on things, they need to understand it in a concrete way. And so that’s kind of what I became as a mentor teacher, I did math trainings, I trained other teachers in how to do hands on math, how to do experiential, how there’s levels of this math program. And I taught it up until last year.

I think I taught a course last year for my district.

Anthony Codispoti (26:40.8)
Alright, so you started at Albert in 1990, and then was it your third year that you became a math teacher? And so since 1993 up until this year, 2024, you’ve been teaching math not only to kids but to other teachers in this hands -on learning. And when you say hands -on, I’m imagining like, you know,

Mary Ryan (26:48.604)
Yep.

Anthony Codispoti (27:03.545)
Lincoln logs or building blocks and we’ve got two here and we you know bring three here now How many do we have is that what it is?

Mary Ryan (27:05.829)
Lux.

Mary Ryan (27:11.951)
And games, activities, fun. Yeah, you start with the blocks. It’s not all blocks and it can be anything. This math program even taught you like send out a note to the parents and ask for things like buttons and keys that they’re not using. And so that you had containers of all different kinds of manipulatives that the kids could choose. And it’s things like, okay, we’re starting with Show Me Three.

Show me three, everyone show me three things. And it grew over the years as things changed in education, I adopted some extra stuff that I didn’t get in that program. But it basically was always the same. And I had kids, I have a little video clip still on my phone of three little girls who are playing a game I taught them for adding.

just turned five and they are not only adding, doing this game, they are able to write the equation and they understand what the equation means at

Anthony Codispoti (28:24.287)
How far can this hands -on math go? You’re talking about addition, subtraction. Are you using it to multiply and divide? Are you doing any sort of geometry with it?

Mary Ryan (28:32.582)
I did.

Mary Ryan (28:36.571)
You could, I did geometry because with little ones you have to teach shapes. So yeah, I did a lot of that hands on and look at your shape and tell me how many corners you see, tell me how many faces. This is what a face is. This is what we call it in math. It’s called the face. And I also believe not using baby words. So with kids, they don’t know the word. So I just.

told them the word and now they know it. They don’t say it always well but you know there’s corners you know just like in the corner of our classroom there’s a corner on it. Can you find the corner? Yeah it’s the pointy part. Good. That’s called a vertice and if you use it enough they will call it a vertice. It’s the same when your child is learning to talk when you have a baby. Whatever words you use those are the words they’re going to use.

Anthony Codispoti (29:20.745)
Okay.

Mary Ryan (29:34.031)
If you use baby words, they’re going to talk baby

Anthony Codispoti (29:38.674)
I want to talk about TK, transitional kindergarten, because this is a big deal in California now, right? And I’ve been talking with a number of

daycare owners who are sort of, you know, wringing their hands because this is now taking a lot of their students away. But at the same time, they sort of understand the reason for it. And they think that it’s great that so many kids are now getting access to school at a younger age, which I’m going to guess, particularly in the district that you’re involved in is super beneficial. It’s a low income district. These are kids who

aren’t being pulled out of a daycare to come to this transitional kindergarten, right? These are kids that were not getting any sort of a structured environment outside the home. And so it’s particularly beneficial for them. Is that right?

Mary Ryan (30:32.357)
Yes, and also, but I mean, even if they were in a preschool, I think there’s a lot to say about preschool. And and the new laws say that if a parent wants to choose preschool over transitional kindergarten, then that’s what you do. So that’s. The pair well, but there are if you’re lower income, there are a lot of options for you.

Anthony Codispoti (30:49.906)
but the parents have to pay for it. The state won’t subsidize it.

Mary Ryan (31:01.053)
Head Start is one for if you’re, they have a very low income threshold, so it’s harder to get in. You have to be really low income. State preschool is what I opened up for the district. State preschools are funded by the state, but there is an income limit, but it’s pretty high. You could have a family of four and be making 80 ,000 a year and qualify.

There are options. if you, we do have parents that in our preschools that say, know, I like the half day. I like just half day. So I’d rather stay in the preschool because, because TK now in my district was full day. it’s, yeah, it’s six hours. So they’re there from probably eight to two 30 or right around there. Yeah. But it includes.

Anthony Codispoti (31:39.142)
And what does full day mean? that like a nine to two or what’s that schedule?

Anthony Codispoti (31:50.556)
And is there any sort of aftercare available for families that need extra coverage? Is there any sort of aftercare available for families that need coverage in later hours?

Mary Ryan (31:54.364)
What’s that?

Mary Ryan (31:58.449)
Yep, that became a thing too in the last few years. there’s extended learning is a big thing right now. Expanded learning just means after school programs. We had after school programs, but they were very limited. Once expanded learning money came, they opened up and that’s when they said you have to add kinder and TK. So TK kids can go after school.

My district, it ended at six, which is perfect for working parents. And I know a lot of people say, that’s horrible. They’re only four, but there’s a lot of four year olds in preschools all day. My son, my son, because I was a single parent, I took him in the morning, went to work. I came and got him, you know, by four or so in the afternoon. He was there all day. Parents are working and they need a safe place and a good place for their kids.

So if they’re there in TK all day and TK evolved once all that happened and once it went full day, it was only half day. It became, it’s now becoming and that was part of my job, more hands on, the kids need more play time, they need kids learn through play. If you think back even to when your children were young, they, a lot of what they did, even though it seemed silly or whatever, they got

meaning out of. They’re born that way. They’re born to play and figure things out. So we have to, because they’re four, we have to expand that to give them time to play around, which is, again, the reason I liked my math program so much. They got to play.

Anthony Codispoti (33:46.118)
Tell me a little bit more about your educational style. You describe sort of the hands -on with math. You’re talking about learning through play. Expound on that.

Mary Ryan (33:50.663)
Boom.

Mary Ryan (33:59.333)
It’s very important for kids with brain development. And I won’t go into all that background, but their brain development is very, it’s like programmed to.

mess around with something until they figure out what it does. Which again is probably you were talking about your son with the markers. If you remember when they’re babies, everything goes in the mouth because the first thing they’re trained to do is is it food or not? So they’re trying to put everything in their mouth to see is this food or not? It holds over a little bit as they get older and but still things will go in their mouths. I know when I use

smelling markers in my class. They always went up the nose. And so you could always see the mark on their nose where they had put it. Yeah. They have to figure, find out and that’s how they do it. They play around with it until they figure out what it does or why it does that. My style has, and maybe because I came from preschool, my style has always been let them play around with it as much as possible. I’m there to guide that. So.

I would do whole group things where we learned certain things, especially if I was teaching a new concept to them. We would sit down and talk about it, and I would train them on a game they could play for that concept. And then I’d let them go do that. So we did a lot of activity time in my room. We did a lot of games and

I would walk around to the different groups and I will say the biggest most important thing I learned was questions. And not just what color is that? That doesn’t get your brain working. Why are you doing that? What are you learning from that? How did that work? How did you figure that out? Those more leading questions.

Mary Ryan (36:10.951)
where kids actually have to talk to you about what they’re thinking and they have to talk to you about, that’s the biggest brain growth. When you give kids the chance to actually think, why did I do that? What did happen? And have to explain that to you, it’s huge. And I learned that more once TK started and just watching kids. I had a kid.

tried to explain magnets to me one time because I always started from, what is this? What do know about this thing? And I had magnets and they, I said, so you told me it sticks to things that when we talk about that as scientists, we say attract. So this attracts to that thing, but why doesn’t it attract to this thing? And there you could see they’re trying to, why doesn’t it attract to that

Hmm, do you think it attracts to everything or just some things? No, just some things. Okay, that’s good. So today, here’s your job. When you go to the magnets, I want you to walk all around the room. I don’t care where you go. Try a magnet on everything. And on your little, in your, they always had a journal with blank paper. On your journal, you’re gonna draw a picture of what it attracted to and what it didn’t attract to. And then we’ll come back and report to the

They were like little scientists, but they learned so much more that way.

Anthony Codispoti (37:41.156)
So I’m gonna ask a selfish question here about asking questions. I am a very curious person by nature myself. I try to instill that sense of curiosity in my kids. And when they were younger, I used to have a little trick that I would use to get them to tell me about their day at school, right? Because if I just say, you know, how was school today? What did you do? I don’t know, nothing, fine, good. So then I would make something up.

and be like, yeah, so I heard you guys were making sculptures today. They’re like, no, we weren’t. I’m like, yeah, in art class. Dad, we didn’t have art class. We had gym class today. that’s right, it was gym class and you guys were playing kickball. We didn’t play kickball, we played dodgeball. And I got Ben out. And so was like, just by me, they loved correcting me. So if I just made up something wrong, I would get a little bit of information about what they did that day.

Now they’ve gotten a little bit older. They’re a bit more clever and so it doesn’t work on them anymore And so I’m at a loss as to how to get my my eight my ten -year -old to tell me anything about summer camp or their school day or aftercare What what advice do you have for me and all the other parents listening?

Mary Ryan (38:56.055)
It’s hard as they get a little older because they don’t really want to share. And I had two boys, so I get it. The thing I tell parents, even with little kids, is if you think about yourself on the spot, if someone came up to you and said, what did you do today? Well, I did my show.

but you don’t always think of the details because you put on the spot. But if you say, okay, you did art today, I think. What did you do in art? What were you working with? Were you working with markers? Did you paint? What did you do in art? Can you tell me about it? I’m really interested to know what you thought about that art. Because now you can have conversations as they get older. I’m interested to know.

what you thought about and they may not answer you, but at least it gives them the idea that their thoughts are important to you. And then when they’re ready to answer,

Anthony Codispoti (40:03.853)
I’ve tried something very similar, so thank you for that. And the answers that I get are still, I don’t know, I don’t wanna talk about it. What I’ve, what I found is the most helpful is if I can get them one -on -one in just a quiet space. We go on a walk together, we’re hanging out in their bedroom together, and it’s just quiet and peaceful, and then at some point, they just offer up.

Mary Ryan (40:11.003)
Yeah.

Mary Ryan (40:19.079)
-huh. Mm -hmm. Yes.

Anthony Codispoti (40:30.019)
But if I’m trying to pull, lot of times it’s not working.

Mary Ryan (40:35.429)
Yeah, I think the biggest key is just letting them know, I’m really interested to know how your day went. And then leave it. My sons, I was gonna say the same. I had to get up early to go to work. And especially once they got to be in their teens and high school and stuff, they don’t wanna talk to you. They don’t wanna talk to you. And I was involved as much as I could be. They were both in drama and theater

Anthony Codispoti (40:40.45)
I do think that’s important.

Anthony Codispoti (40:54.541)
Right? I know it’s just going to get even worse from here.

Mary Ryan (41:05.181)
What I found is, amazingly enough, when I was trying, I would go to bed at maybe nine o ‘clock, one of them would appear at the door and come sit in bed with me and then start spilling. I will tell you, my experience has been boys are easier to do that than girls. I don’t know why. Girls will keep it to themselves.

Anthony Codispoti (41:27.449)
interesting.

Mary Ryan (41:33.595)
But yeah, my sons would come and sit in bed. I’d be half asleep. Okay, I’ll wake up for this. And try to remember that I have to ask you, how’d you feel about that? What did you think? What could you have done differently? All those things. I’m sorry, let me take a drink.

Anthony Codispoti (41:50.572)
Yeah, no, think this is good. I want to hear this.

Mary Ryan (41:53.213)
All those things that you wanted to ask, that you wanted to get out of them, for some reason, my sons decided that was when to do it. So you have to pick, and like you said, going for a walk. Going for a walk is great because you can be talking about things that are going on. You could be talking about, I think the other thing is sharing your vulnerability.

allows them to be vulnerable to you. If you talk about a time, you know, I remember at your age, this happened. That was really hard for me. I remember one of my friends getting angry at me. It was really hard for me. I didn’t really know what to do or how to say or how to manage that. And I really didn’t have anyone to talk to. And I had to kind of figure it out myself. If you start talking about things like that, a lot of times they’ll go,

Yeah, I know. had that. They’ll start coming out when you become a little vulnerable. They feel like it’s

Anthony Codispoti (42:58.752)
I really like that approach, especially because there are times where I know that something’s happened in their day because a teacher or another parent has told me. And if I ask them directly about it, they sort of freeze up. But if I took a more circuitous route and was like, you know, I just happened to share something that happened to me that was similar, that might help to tease out the story of what just happened to them that day. It’s on a similar page.

Mary Ryan (43:21.937)
Yeah. And there are times that I said things straight out. One of the times, because my son’s dad wasn’t really, he was around, they didn’t have that relationship. So I kind of became the one that had to talk to them even about like puberty and all that stuff. I used to listen to a radio station and they had things.

now and then about teenage topics. So when I drove to school in the morning, I would make sure that was on and whatever topic. And then I could say, do you ever hear this stuff at school? you ever, does this happen? I remember this kind of stuff when I was in school, like is it still happening in your school? I, my goodness, found out the myths my son believed about how girls can get pregnant. I was

Honey, we’ve had this conversation so many times. I’ve told you the only way not to get pregnant is to not have sex. But you know, kids. And it finally, he said, mom, there’s studies. There’s studies that prove this stuff. Have you read these studies? No, but I’ve heard about them. From who? And that’s when it dawned on him. other kids. -huh.

who are just as unknowledgeable as you. You have to find their way. And it’s not the same for every kid. You have to find the way that works. Sometimes as a teacher, I would say something and the parent would come back and say, what did you say yesterday? Or what were you talking about yesterday? Because they were telling me this. So sometimes if I brought something up, they would talk about it

And I would tell the parents, hey, if you want me to talk about something, let me know.

Anthony Codispoti (45:16.854)
That’s great. This was a great sidebar, Mary. I loved going down this little rabbit hole with you. Let’s go back to your time at Albert. You quickly reached the position of director of early education, a position that you held until your recent retirement. Is that correct? Yeah. And so while you’re there, are you responsible for helping to recruit teachers, hire teachers, manage teachers? Is this all kind of falling under your umbrella?

Mary Ryan (45:21.746)
Yes.

Mary Ryan (45:33.681)
Yes, yes.

Mary Ryan (45:44.6)
everything.

Anthony Codispoti (45:45.32)
All right, so you were there through COVID, coming out of COVID, like a tight labor market got way tighter. What are some creative things that you did that you found success with to help recruit and retain good people for your team?

Mary Ryan (46:04.357)
It’s not easy and it’s funny. just talked to my old boss yesterday about she’s got a they’re still recruiting for my position. And she asked about someone, you know, what do think about this person? It’s hard to know. It really is. You interview people. There are certain questions that I want to ask because I want to know your answer. One of them is what are you going to do in an emergency? So we have a question that, you know, what happens if

If a kid gets hurt and they’re bleeding, what do you do? And I want you to talk me through all that. I don’t want, I called the office. I want to know what do you do? So there’s things like that that you could find out. because I was a teacher, I wanted to hear. So how do you teach math? How are you going to teach a kid to read? What are you going to do that encourages children to write?

I want to know those things and I want to hear the specifics not, I have a writing center. I want to know what you do exactly. So it’s easy to weed people out that way because they don’t have an answer. Yeah, but even with that, had to, I’m so sorry. I have asthma medicine and when I take it, it makes my throat scratchy.

Anthony Codispoti (47:31.776)
Which should do the opposite. It’s supposed to make it less scratchy, right? It’s drying you out. That’s all right.

Mary Ryan (47:35.434)
Yeah.

Mary Ryan (47:39.087)
you think.

Sorry, I’m taking a cough drop. I had to get rid of two employees while I was in the position. One because we found out she had, so our preschools in Alport are created through our office of education in Riverside, which is amazing. Everyone there is amazing. So we are responsible to them because

They, we subcontract through them. This teacher had worked for them in another district, had come to our district, had gone back to her other district and taken stuff to bring back to her class.

And so we had to let her go. It wasn’t my stuff. She didn’t do anything to me, but it was the same, the office of education stuff. we had, and they both interviewed well. So you just don’t know. and, and, and again, just like you had asked, you know, how, did I feel about asking parents to pay their preschool bill? I feel like if someone’s not working.

especially because I have such a strong feeling of what kids need, then they need to go. And that’s, and I will tell you, I was a union rep for years as a teacher. I still feel that way. I still feel like if you’re not doing your job well, you need to find a different thing. Because kids only have one year to learn whatever it is you have to teach them that year. And if you don’t do it, you’re

Mary Ryan (49:24.815)
messing them up. And that’s not right. So yeah, you I just I was very strict about all that. It isn’t easy to find good teachers. It isn’t easy to, you know, find a good doctor. It isn’t easy to find a good dentist. It’s the same. But if you’re not doing the job, then

Anthony Codispoti (49:26.931)
Yeah, yeah, that’s good.

Anthony Codispoti (49:45.971)
Now, Albert’s a public school, right? Yeah. So in a public school setting, what, if any, did you have in terms of keeping your eye on the bottom line there? You know, making sure that revenue was here and expenses were here. Is that something that you were involved with?

Mary Ryan (49:46.477)
It is, yes.

Mary Ryan (50:02.007)
I was. I oversaw the preschool budgets. So there’s a big amount of money. It’s called universal pre -kindergarten money for TK and preschool. It was a pretty big budget, but there are very strict guidelines to how you can use it with anything like that. So anything that’s not just a regular money, there are some pretty strict guidelines.

So I had to oversee that. I had to oversee the actual preschool money that we got for running the preschool. There’s a lot of what you can and can’t do. I had to go to my boss, to the superintendent sometimes and say, yeah, we can’t spend it that way. It’s not in the rules. can only spend it this way.

Anthony Codispoti (50:55.976)
what were some creative things that you were allowed to do within those boundaries to help make those numbers work out.

Mary Ryan (51:04.021)
things like I could, I could buy things for, TK teachers to use in their programs. But if a teacher had a TKK combination class, which we try not to ever do, and that teacher didn’t have stuff, it wasn’t supposed to be for the K teachers. so I would, okay, I’m buying it for the TK kids.

If a kinder kid walks up and starts playing with it, I have no control over that, but I’m buying it for your tea cake. Yeah. Things like that. Hosting, telling teachers the office of education has a lot of good training. So I would tell teachers, go to this training, they give out free stuff. Go to this training, you’ll learn a lot about this and you’ll get a gift certificate. Go to this training, you know, that kind of thing.

You have to finagle stuff a lot of times. We have a language training coming up that we have to get subs for and we need four kindergarten teachers in with the TK teachers. Can we pay for that? Well, it’s a package pay. So yeah, we’ll pay it. And then if the four kindergarten teachers are there, there’s not much we can do. They’re there. It’s the TK training and the kindergarten teachers are coming in.

Anthony Codispoti (52:33.767)
Got it. Got to make sure you’re checking the right boxes and if somebody else happens to walk up into this room in this space when that thing’s going on, I’m not going to kick them out. But so you had a long storied happy career at Alverd and recently made the decision to retire. What was behind that?

Mary Ryan (52:41.007)
Yes. Yes. Yeah. Yes.

Mary Ryan (52:55.805)
The first thing was that in California as a whole, there’s declining enrollment. People aren’t having as many kids. People are leaving the state. Our state, California is expensive to live in. There’s a lot that we offer. There’s a lot of, it’s now a thing where every child gets a free breakfast and a free lunch at school if they want. That was never before. It makes our state more expensive to live in because

from your taxes. So there’s a lot of good to California, but I understand it’s not a state for everyone and that’s fine, but it means that enrollment has been declining statewide. There’s a ratio of administrators to teachers, so my job was going to be changed from certificated, just means that I have a credential.

Certificated management to classified management who don’t have credentials. I didn’t want to do that. And they put out a retirement package and I turned 60 and so I took the package.

Anthony Codispoti (54:08.721)
The stars all aligned, things were changing at work, there was a retirement package that looked good. Why not?

Mary Ryan (54:12.701)
Would I have stayed? Probably. Even if I went back to the classroom, going back into a classroom would not have been bad for me. It would have been great. I love kids. I love teaching. So that would have been fine. I would have done that. But once they said they had the retirement package, yeah, I’ll just

Anthony Codispoti (54:34.683)
And so now how are you spending your retirement? How many weeks into it?

Mary Ryan (54:39.677)
Just two. Two weeks. Well, part of it I’ve had, I’ve gone back into work and talked and, know, told them the hard part about my position at the district was no one knew. No one understood it. No one knew it. I would explain to people so they’d know a little bit more, but no one knows.

Anthony Codispoti (54:41.565)
two weeks into it. So what have you done these last two grand weeks?

Mary Ryan (55:08.793)
No one can actually just go in and just do it because they don’t know all the regulations. They don’t know all the extra stuff that has to go into it. So they’re still contacting me now and then just to say, hey, this is coming up. What do I do? I got a call from our, we have a family engagement person who’s amazing. He does events, but he also does parent trainings and things like that. He called and said, what is the difference between Head Start and State

because I have a parent that’s calling and I need to explain it to them. So I explain the difference, which is pretty much what I would be doing for districts as a consultant. If you’re not sure the regulations behind preschool, how it goes, there are a lot of regulations even down to four -year -olds get priority over three -year -olds in a preschool class.

I can walk you through all that. I can walk you through state funding. I can walk you through the different regulations and everything. that’s more what I’d be doing. And TK is changing minute to minute. TK doesn’t have state standards like Kinder through 12. They have learning foundations and they’re being changed right now as we speak. So.

So teachers are kind of like, am I teaching next year? So just explaining that not only the stand, the foundational skill, but what that looks like for a kid, how you would teach

Anthony Codispoti (56:47.345)
So I asked what you’re doing in this two weeks of your retirement and what I heard was I’m working.

Mary Ryan (56:51.911)
I’m still working. I’m still working. Not much, but just a little when they call. Mostly I’ve just been, I’ve started walking each day. I’m gearing up for a trip to France in a couple of weeks. So yeah, this, I wanted this month off. I think I will be, but I won’t be in that area. I won’t be in Paris. I’ll be in Southern France.

Anthony Codispoti (57:08.229)
That’d be nice. Where are you going? Will you be there for the Olympics? Is that?

Mary Ryan (57:20.315)
But I didn’t even realize until I saw something about the Olympics and it was about the same time. So yeah.

Anthony Codispoti (57:26.651)
Where will you fly into? Will you have to go through Paris and take? Okay, so maybe you’ll avoid some of the lunacy, the huge crowds. And then tell me about the new position you recently accepted with illuminated collective. What’s that?

Mary Ryan (57:29.199)
Much safe.

Mary Ryan (57:34.193)
Yeah, I will avoid parasol together. It won’t be in there.

Mary Ryan (57:44.079)
It’s a very dynamic agency. do a lot of work with schools. So for example, if there’s a principal that leaves and they don’t have anyone they can contact, eliminated and someone can fill in for that person until they get someone. The same with a superintendent. If you have a superintendent, you’re still looking for someone, they can fill in until you find someone. But they also have

training that they do. They do different trainings throughout the year. They do health and wellness training. It’s all the kind of stuff that needs to happen through education. So it’s very dynamic and I’m not exactly sure how it all will play out. What will happen at this point, I will probably work with Riverside’s Office of Education some.

But in order to do that, as a teacher, once you retire, can’t do any teacher -related, education -related work for six months.

Anthony Codispoti (58:54.938)
What’s that about?

Mary Ryan (58:55.409)
The way you get around that is, the way you get around that is you sign up with a consulting agency or you become your own consulting agency. And as a consultant, you’re not doing the teacher work, you’re doing consulting. It’s a thin line. I’m not sure if the state approves or not, but I think they don’t really worry about it because they probably have bigger things to think

So I will probably go into the Office of Education and do some training. am a, there’s an assessment, a classroom assessment that has to happen for preschool and maybe TK. And I’m trained to do it, but I’m also trained to train people to do it. So what will happen is if I work for the Office of Education, they will get a hold of Illuminated. They will make a contract with them for my services and I will go in

Anthony Codispoti (59:48.366)
Well, Salzank you’re well positioned for variety of opportunities that may unfold there.

Mary Ryan (59:53.955)
Yeah, once I decided I wanted to put out as many opportunities as possible. And even if it’s, you know, I go in and do some substitute teaching, I love kids, I’ll go do that, you know. I don’t want to work full time, but I want to be busy. I’m not a person to sit

Anthony Codispoti (01:00:11.181)
And this will give you more flexibility to sort of choose your schedule then. Mary, are there any specific mentors or books or life experiences that have been particularly helpful for you in your career trajectory?

Mary Ryan (01:00:14.107)
Yes. Yeah.

Mary Ryan (01:00:26.717)
I don’t think there’s any one specific mentor I can think of as much as just experiences I had with different people. As I said, when I work with the Office of Education, I’ve not had a bad experience with any of them and they’ve taught me so much. When I came into the position, I didn’t know how to, I had to open preschools from scratch and get them licensed through the state.

I had no idea. They walked me through it all. They helped me work on it all. So just all that, people that have come along at the right time and supported me and answered the right question. I think that’s important. I think it’s important to be open to all that because there’s no way I could have done it myself.

Anthony Codispoti (01:01:19.587)
Mary, I just have one more question for you, but before I ask it, want to do two things. If you’re listening today and you like today’s content, please hit the subscribe, like, or share button on your favorite podcast app. I also want to let people the best way to get in touch with you. What would that be?

Mary Ryan (01:01:36.221)
Probably through Illuminated would be the best way and they have a site online, they have a website so it’s IlluminatedCollective .org I think.

Anthony Codispoti (01:01:51.988)
We’ll make sure to put that in the show notes.

Mary Ryan (01:01:54.191)
Yeah, that’s probably the best way. And then if they get a hold of Alboard and ask, Alboard will get a hold of me.

Anthony Codispoti (01:02:02.431)
Okay, so last question for you Mary. We’ve already talked about a lot of the changes that have happened and are in the process of happening. What do you think are the biggest changes that are yet coming in the education industry in say the next five years?

Mary Ryan (01:02:16.411)
Early childhood is going to be huge. Just we would there’s a specific special education test and preschool test that not test that assessment that comes. We just found out TK will now have to do it for their children, certain children. So things I think they started TK and then they realized, wow, this is actually something that we have to watch and figure out.

All these things are happening right now. I foresee TK going to more of a preschool atmospheres, which means less kids. I had a TK class with 25 to 30 kids in it, which is me. They now have 24 kids. Well, they’re 12 to one. So one teacher for 12 students. And if they want the other 12.

They have an aid. So all of our teachers have a teacher and an aid in TK. So there’s only 24 kids. I think it’ll go down to 10 to one. That’s what the governor has promised and he’s working on it. I don’t know when it’ll happen, but I think eventually it will. In preschool, it’s eight to one. And if you’re gonna have four year olds in a class, it doesn’t make sense to have 12 to one in one class and eight to one in another.

so it’ll make it a little more even and it’s easier to be hands -on that way. I think all that child development stuff is gonna start becoming bigger even up until there’s a thing, PK3, with brain development more known with all the information we have now, kids need hands -on and understanding a different type of way up through.

third grade, even into 12th grade. If you’re teaching a new concept, the way that a child’s brain works, you have to teach it a different way sometimes. And all that learning of different learning styles and everything has really made better teachers. I think that’s gonna be big.

Anthony Codispoti (01:04:27.225)
Mary, want to be the first one to thank you for sharing both your time and your story with us today. really appreciate it. Terrific. Folks, that’s a wrap on another episode of the Inspired Stories podcast. Thanks for learning with us today.