The Real Cost of Dismantling Public Eduction with former U.S. Secretary of Education, John B. King
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This is Smart People Podcast, a podcast for smart people, where we talk to smart people, but not necessarily done by smart people. Hello and welcome to Smart People Podcast, conversations that satisfy your curious mind. Chris Stamp here. Thanks for tuning in. So what happens when a presidential administration sets its sights on dismantling public education as we know it?

I mean, that is kind of what's happening, right? In this episode, we unpack the alarming reality behind current efforts to slash funding for the U.S. Department of Education. This is a move that could dramatically reshape student aid, civil rights protections, and access to quality schooling for millions of Americans. Former Secretary of Education John B. King Jr. joins me to explain what's really at stake in plain human terms.

We are also discussing King's new book, Teacher by Teacher, The People Who Change Our Lives. In this book, he explores how educators, often overlooked and underpaid, are the quiet heroes holding up our democracy one student at a time. And now, as schools and teachers face historic pressure, his perspective is both urgent and inspiring.

As I mentioned, John served in President Barack Obama's cabinet as the 10th U.S. Secretary of Education. He has been a high school social studies teacher, a middle school principal, a college professor, and the president and CEO of the Education Trust. So if you are a parent, a student, a taxpayer, or just someone who believes in opportunity through education, this episode will help you understand why this moment matters.

and how you can help protect the systems that make a difference. Let's get into it. Our conversation with John B. King as we talk about his brand new book, Teacher by Teacher, The People Who Change Our Lives. Enjoy. The Department of Education is in Trump's crosshairs right now as he's seemingly working towards dismantling it.

As the former U.S. Secretary of Education, how do you view his perspective and how do you feel about it? Look, it's really heartbreaking what is happening to folks at the education department. You're talking about a building of career civil servants who often were themselves teachers and principals who signed up to do public service for the federal government because they wanted to help.

And now they're being laid off. They're living in fear for their jobs. What I think the administration is missing is the critical role that the department plays in two ways. One,

It provides resources that are critical for schools, students, higher ed institutions. You're talking about the Title I program that provides billions of dollars for K-12 schools that serve very low-income students. Without that money, you're talking about teacher layoffs, the loss of AP classes and extracurricular classes, larger class sizes.

You know, the department also provides funding for services for students with disabilities. Without the department, you're talking about longer wait times to get speech language services, students who may not get any services at all and will struggle academically. The department also runs the Pell Grant program and the Federal Student Loan program. Those are crucial for low and middle income students being able to access higher education.

So one thing the administration is missing is these programs are vital to the health of the economy and the health of our democracy. But the other thing they're ignoring is the tradition of the department being a civil rights agency. It's the place you go if students are not getting what they need.

And that history dates back to the civil rights era. You know, the first major federal education legislation was the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965, where the federal government was responding to states and districts' unwillingness to integrate schools and unwillingness to serve African-American students equitably. And so...

you know, without the department to be that vigilant guardian for civil rights protections, students are going to be hurt. I think a lot of people might be unaware of the specifics of the role the Department of Education plays versus state government on education. You just alluded to, I think, two components, right? So as you talked about things like Title I, services for disabilities, et cetera, and then it's

foundations in civil rights. From your vantage point, again, previous U.S. Secretary of Education, obviously sitting in room with a president and talking about this. Do you feel that this move is primarily due to its foundations in civil rights? I mean, do you think it's an action, it's an anti-DEI, anti-woke action?

attack, but hidden in the guise of saving money? It's definitely, I think, a smokescreen to talk about saving money or making government more efficient. Look, everyone would agree there are programs that could be improved. There are activities that the federal government is engaged in that are not the most productive. And so you could have a surgical strategy around that.

But this is not that. This is acting with a meat cleaver. And they're doing it, yes, I think because of attack on DI and wokeness and a misinterpretation of what civil rights really means. But I also think there's a very strong anti-government element that

that has always been a part of our country's politics. And, you know, the using rhetoric like this is going to give education back to school districts and states. Well,

Most of the resources and the vast majority of decision-making already happens at the local and state level. But you need the federal government to be that vigilant guardian for whether or not students are treated fairly. And that's not just about race. That's students with disabilities.

There was a time when schools would simply ignore the needs of students with disabilities, put students with disabilities in the basement of the school and provide them with few services, if any. That was changed by federal engagement, right? And so you don't want to lose that. You think about Title IX and women's sports. There was a time when colleges were

really under-invested in women's sports. But the enforcement of Title IX, the critical role of the Office for Civil Rights, the Education Department, helped change that. And today, opportunities are quite plentiful for women in sports. And we see that even now turning into a growing professional women's sports industry, thanks to civil rights enforcement.

What is just striking me is how directive an assault on the most vulnerable people in our society. This is, I know it's many people, but one thing you highlighted disabled children. How does that ever get the marketing spin of, we are going to make government more efficient by, you know, really dismantling the, the, the soul or the primary organization that is in charge of that. I don't even understand how it gets there.

to that level. You're so right. And part of what's so dark about all of this

is we should be having such a different conversation as a country. We should be asking, what more can we do to make sure that students with disabilities are successful? What else can we do to make sure more of our students learn to read well in the early grades so they're successful in high school and college and careers? How do we make sure that we have the best education system in the world, that we're competitive with the strongest countries

countries economically in the world. And instead, we're talking about dismantling the education department. It misses that this should be a national imperative. And yet, we don't hear any of that. I haven't heard a single idea from the current administration about how to make

education better, how to help more students enter and graduate from college or get access to great career preparation so they can fill all these empty jobs that we have in areas like advanced manufacturing or healthcare. Nothing, nothing about that. Only a focus on

cutting and dismantling. I don't know all the things that go into the role of U.S. Education Secretary, but you served in that post for part of the Obama administration. Do you sit like in there and advise the president on things? Is that the role essentially? Yes, definitely. And, you know, I was fortunate to work with President Obama who cared very passionately about education, was deeply interested in it.

I'd also say that the Secretary of Education in some ways is sort of like the Surgeon General for education. You have this platform where you can help to lift up issues that the country should be grappling with. For example, when I was Secretary, one of the things that I tried to lift up is the sad reality that we still have schools in the United States that use corporal punishment. It's terrible.

And I wrote a letter to governors, state superintendents of education and school districts asking them to stop that practice, which we know from the evidence is bad for students, very damaging to the culture of schools. Even today in America, there is a student who's being disciplined by their teacher or their principal hitting them with a wooden object.

And people maybe don't know about it. And I wanted to use the platform to say, this is something we should change about American education. What is it like when you're in there? Are you trying to guide? Are you trying to influence, pitch, sell, represent? What's it like? Some of all of that, I would say...

you know, President Obama's decision-making approach was very thorough and methodical. He really wanted to understand all the information, the pros and cons. So in many ways, as a cabinet member, you're providing the president with

the full landscape of information so that they can weigh the choices. And the president would often say, he only gets the impossible choices, right? If they're easy ones, they get dealt with

At the agency level, the things that come to the president are the things that are really hard, that involve tough trade-offs. But the president was very clear on seeing education as a top national priority and wanting us to lead on improving outcomes. And that was a very clear North Star for all of us. I want to go back to the role of federal versus state, and specifically, why can't the federal

Assuming, and I think the podcast I listened to this morning that I was telling you about the daily said, you know, about 90% or so of school funding, I think comes at the state level. Why can't the state handle everything they're doing now and just pick up the 10% of the federal? What, what is the necessity to have both intervening? Yeah, I think that maybe the easiest way to describe it is if you think back, um,

to the famous Norman Rockwell painting of Ruby Bridges being walked to school when her local school and state is refusing to allow her entry to school because of her race. She was walked there by federal marshals. That there is a federal role that is about

vigilant protection of civil rights when states and districts try to do the wrong thing. When I was secretary, I remember very well a case we had at the Office for Civil Rights, a school district where they had an advanced STEM high school that was providing great opportunities to students, and they had almost no Latino students.

And so a civil rights complaint was filed. We investigated it. And what we found was the information only went home in English. And so if your parents were not English speakers, you might never know this program existed. And so the simple thing that we worked with the district to do was change how they sent materials home so that the materials were translated so that

folks in the Latino community who are Spanish speakers would get good information about this program and have the opportunity to send their children to it. That's a small thing, but life-changing potentially for a student who gets access to that high school. And it took the federal government stepping in and saying,

This isn't good enough. All students have to have equitable access to opportunity. Eczema isn't always obvious, but it's real. And so is the relief from Ebbgliss.

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very specifically actually picture the one with the federal marshals walking her into school. And what's wild to think about is if you look back at that, you would say, man, were we as a country finally becoming on the right side of that piece of history, you know, at the, at the federal level, like think about the way we're structured and the way our government works and

Maybe, maybe it was too late, you know, and maybe it shouldn't have gotten there, but at some point the ability to do that and enforce it, I think most people, if not everybody,

Listening would be like, yes. How are we here? Like, I'm genuinely curious. What could they possibly be talking about in the Oval where this makes sense? You know, I think part of the problem is the current administration does not appear to have a decision making process that is grounded in what's the impact of this decision on people.

everyday Americans. Yes. Okay. And I think that's as true in education as it is in air traffic safety, right? You know, when you're talking about making huge cuts to the Federal Aviation Administration, when you take that out of step, well, what that means is air travel is going to be riskier for Americans all across the country. Who wants that?

Or when you're talking about making huge cuts to the Medicaid program,

That's people's health care, right? Or this conversation about cutting the SNAP program, which provides food assistance to people who are hungry. Not only is that going to mean some folks will have less to eat, it also is going to have a devastating impact on agriculture and farmers. And so you look at this administration, you wonder who's raising that, who's saying, you

What's on the other side of the ledger? Obviously, you have Elon Musk and Doge saying, well, we're just going to cut these things. There'll be this many fewer employees. There'll be this many fewer dollars spent. But who's on the other side saying, but here's what it's going to mean for the people?

And, you know, I hope that members of Congress on both sides of the aisle will step up and say these cuts are unacceptable because they will harm our constituents. That remains to be seen. I mentioned my wife was a public school teacher for something like 15 years, and it is an imperfect system. It's an imperfect place, right, public school. One of the things that I learned

have seen or heard is kind of the, as we brought about more standardized testing, trying to make sure no child left behind, we create bureaucracy where, although well-intended has negative consequences. So I have three young boys, two in elementary school right now,

And when I go into my kindergartners, meet the parents or whatever it's called, and they start telling me about his grades, I'm like, okay, just pause for a second. I don't care about his grades. I want to know, is he a good human?

Do you think that this is a little bit of backlash into that? I don't know if it's over testing or losing some common sense in education, even if that's not the job of the U.S. Department of Education. Yeah, look, that's fair. I think part of what's happened is we sort of get into a debate that frames, I think, a false choice between, you know,

You have no assessment and no way of knowing how folks are doing and no accountability for whether or not schools are helping students learn and particularly helping the most vulnerable students get the support they need.

So that's on one hand. And on the other hand, this idea that you'd have, you turn schools into places where testing is the sole focus of educational activity. And I'd like to think that neither of those makes sense, that there's a middle ground where you say, yeah, we need testing.

a periodic check on how we're doing. Are we serving our students well? Are students prepared for what's next? Are we closing the gaps that we sometimes see for African-American students or Latino students or English learners or students with disabilities? But a deeper understanding that the way that we get those desired outcomes isn't through

measuring more frequently. There's a saying about farmers. Now, I'm a kid from Brooklyn, so it's always dangerous to use a saying about farmers, but there's a saying that you don't make the pig fatter by weighing it more often. And so, yes, you need the measurement.

But you're not going to get better just through the measurement. You're going to get better through amazing educational experiences, teachers who are getting students excited about reading and helping them do interesting science experiments and explore the history of fascinating places and times around the world. And if we do those things well,

then the outcomes will follow. And again, I think we certainly across the education sector in some places got a little lost around that. And you saw such frequent use of multiple choice tests almost on a monthly or even more frequent basis in a way that made school

less meaningful for students and ultimately didn't help academic outcomes. How much influence is the federal government able to have on public schools versus state? Definitely way more influence at the state and local level, right? You know, we've got 13,000 school districts in the United States. Really the, the, the,

the biggest driver of what happens in schools is the local school board. Got it. Okay. Then you have states. So depending on the state, you know, that 90% figure is a mix of local and state. Some states, it's a little more district, a little less state, some states the other way around, but that funding is coming at the state and local level. So you have, again,

much more influence there. At the federal level, you're sort of setting the rules of the road and the way the federal role works, that 10% that the federal government puts in, which varies a little bit. You know, there are some states that are as high as 20%, but that portion from the federal government, uh,

really moves people to follow the rules of the road. And we tried in the Obama administration with the Every Student Succeeds Act, which passed in 2015, to say we're going to give a lot of space, but we still need some guardrails. And those guardrails should be that we have that periodic check, how are we doing?

that we pay attention and require states to pay attention to how groups of students are doing, students with disabilities, English learners, low-income students, and they're transparent about it so that there's a way that the public can say, hey, this school district is doing incredibly well serving low-income students. Let's see what they're doing and how do we scale that to other places?

And I think what's happened now with the Trump administration is you have a situation where they're saying, throw out those rules of the road. Just let states and districts do what they will and remove that guardian role of the education department. I'm so glad we're having this conversation, and I hope it reaches enough ears because, again, I think so much of our decision making is simply based in

misunderstanding, imperfect information, or the lack of ability to focus on this. I didn't even have, even with an educator in the house, a great understanding. So I believe that

Most like the vast, vast majority of public school funding comes from state collected taxes. So real estate taxes, personal property tax. Is that fair? Along with the local, right? Along with the district level property taxes. But that's right. Yes, it's not federal. Federal is only about 10% on average. Okay. So say almost...

All of the funding comes from revenue collected by local state taxes. If I'm then taking what you've said and thinking about that is essentially what the federal government is doing, looking at where do we have school systems where the revenue they're collecting is just less than enough to support the school and then

We don't just give them money, but we give them resources and guidelines to say, hey, look, this area, this district has less resources than this one. And as a federal government, we want to ensure everybody has a chance. And so we're going to reallocate some of the resources there at its most basic level. Is that the pretty large part? I think that's right. And, you know, I,

When you look at a state like Mississippi, that's where the federal government's putting in, on average, a little bit higher share than other states because the state is a poor state. It's harder for them to generate resources. And so the federal government is saying, hey, we're going to make sure that these schools serving low-income students have a little bit more in federal dollars so that they can provide an adequate education

education. And that's why I say if that Title I were to go away, you're talking about teachers who would be laid off. You're talking about advanced placement classes that would be canceled in high schools, extracurricular programs that would be canceled throughout K-12 in those Title I schools. And no one has yet articulated why would that be good for America? Why would it be better for America if low-income kids got less education?

How would that help our economic competitiveness if we had fewer low-income kids who are gaining the skills they need to be gainfully employed? Exactly. I've almost run into this road where it's going...

I don't think there is a logical, well-informed argument other than potentially government is inefficient. Therefore, the less of it we have, the better. And I think what I'm starting to hear a lot of is this is true to an extent that the government is pretty darn inefficient in many areas. However, let's make that move as a country, but let's do it in a rational measured way. And I think that's,

People have just gotten sick of bureaucracy to an extent, and they hear about the budget increasing, and they hear about taxes going up and just say, fine, screw it. Do something. Because something is better than nothing. I think too many people feel like there has been no progress, even though I don't know how much of that is true. That's right. That's right. And if you look over the last...

30, 40 years, there's been so much progress. When you look at achievement gaps for students by race, tremendous progress over this last quarter.

30, 40 years. The department was created in 1979. So a lot of progress over that time. Now, that progress really stalled out beginning in 2017. And then we had COVID. And the reality is student performance today is below where it was before COVID. And that, I think, is a sign that we haven't made up for

that COVID learning loss, if you will. And so that's a sign that we need more urgency, more leadership. We should be saying, hey, which are the schools that have helped kids make up ground? What are they doing? How do we share that with the rest of the country? One of the things the Trump administration is cutting is the research work that the education department does. They're canceling the research grants.

How does that help us? How does knowing less about what works to help students make progress make us a stronger country?

Why aren't we making more common sense improvements? I know you talk about it a little bit in your book, but for example, I've seen more teachers wanting out than wanting in. And when I look at it, it's classroom crowding over measurement, over emphasis on certain things, just pressures, working really long hours, pay, not keeping up with other things.

And so the first thing I was going to ask is like, why can't we make some obvious changes? Start there. Well, look, I think the status quo is always very strong. Right. And so any change is going to meet with some resistance. I think we are.

haven't been as committed as we should be as a country to prioritizing education.

When you think about whether it's teacher salaries or what we invest in our schools and our school buildings, we haven't put that at the top of our list. And so it's not surprising that then people are discouraged from choosing teaching. If you think to yourself, well, I'm not sure I'll be able to pay back my loans from college.

And you visit a school building and a high needs community and you see water dripping from the ceiling and you see that there's only one counselor for 700 kids. And, you know, you're going into a school where there's a lot of students have experienced a lot of trauma and there's a lot of mental health needs. You look at that and you say, I don't know if I want to take that on.

And I think we really need a paradigm shift to say the most important thing we can do for the long-term future of the country is ensure an excellent education for every child and invest in our teachers and our schools. You know, I think I describe in the book how my teacher at PS 276 in Canarsie, Alan Osterweil, saved my life. He was my teacher in fourth, fifth, sixth grade.

My mom passed away, started fourth grade year when I was eight. I lived with my dad. My dad was very sick with Alzheimer's. And so home was chaotic and scary. But the thing that saved me was school. And Mr. Oswald made his classroom this place that was safe and nurturing and engaging. And

The things he did, I remember like yesterday. We read the New York Times every day in his class. We did productions of A Midsummer Night's Dream, Shakespeare in Elementary School. We did a production of Alice in Wonderland. We went to the museum and the ballet and the aquarium. You ask people now in many high needs districts, what are you doing in terms of field trips? And they say, oh, it's very rare. We don't have much of a budget for that.

And yet, for me, that was the one time I got outside of my little world in Brooklyn and got to see more was through those field trips with Mr. Ostrewild. And so I think about him a lot. And I know there are Mr. Ostrewilds in schools all across the country, and we need more of them.

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And that's what a lot of what your book is in service to. I have to mention this as you were telling that story. At my high school,

We had a teacher. His name was Mr. Costello, John Costello. And he was also a family friend. And I knew them. We knew them very, very well. And he died suddenly in a car accident a couple of years ago. Young, too. He just retired.

And I went to his funeral and I have to say, I'll never forget it because out of every, all the funerals I've been to, which is unfortunately, you know, at this point in my life, uh, enough, there were thousands of people, different people took turns getting on stage. Many, uh, talked about how he saved them from suicide.

drugs. They took in some kids and like high school kids and helped them get through high school as a family on, you know, a teacher's salary. And I just remember thinking, man, like the impact of this one person and it can really there's very few professions in which that can happen.

And so one, I just wanted to say a shout out to him for those listening who know him. But two, the thing that frustrates me is I feel like as a society, we are taking away and stripping and demeaning all the jobs and hobbies that people do because it matters in favor of just the things that people do because it's capitalistic progress. People teach because they want to teach.

There's almost no one who's like, I don't want to be in this profession, but I found my way there. There's a million of those in accounting. I know them all. Okay. Like there's a million, but why, why do we not support the ones who are like,

I'm doing this literally to make society better. It's quite frustrating. And I imagine I'm not saying anything to you that you don't know, given the positions you've been in and the topic of the book. You're right. We should revere teachers. We should be looking for opportunities to celebrate and lift up teachers' positions.

And people who choose to do work with young people. I also think about school counselors. My mom was a school counselor. That's a very hard job. We should be celebrating those folks, but instead we don't. And we should be looking for opportunities to help more young people see that difference you can make. What you're describing about Mr. Costello, that's what I want the freshman in college who's not sure what path

they should choose. And they're thinking, maybe I'd be interested in teaching. I want them to know that story because I want them to see the incredible impact that a great teacher can have on really generations of students. I remember at my father's wake after my father passed, I was 12, and a guy came to the wake. He was older.

He had been my father's student 50 years earlier, and he hadn't seen my father in that time. But he saw the obituary in the newspaper, and he wanted to come to the wake just to say how grateful he was for the difference my father had made in his life as his teacher. And that always stuck with me, you know, as I figured out what I wanted to do. I always thought about what an incredible thing

legacy that was. So the book is Teacher by Teacher. That's the name of the book, and we'll link to it. Subtitle is The People Who Changed Our Lives. Why did you write it? Really because I wanted to tell the stories of the incredible teachers that I had that made such a difference in my life, and also to tell the story of teachers that I've worked with. I've had the privilege as a principal, as a state commissioner of education, as secretary of education, as

I've had the privilege to work with a lot of incredible teachers, and I wanted to tell their story. And hopefully there are people who will pick up the book and decide teaching is for them, whether they're in college or maybe they're in a career that they have mixed feelings about. Like some of those accountants you were describing who are not feeling fulfilled, they're not feeling fulfilled.

Yes.

really care about the future of the country and read the book and say, you know what? I'm going to show up at that school board meeting. I'm going to talk to my local legislator about the investment we should be making in our school. It drives me crazy how little recess time they get. What is going on with that? Like, why can't we just go, look, little kids need to move.

Or, or for example, they aren't allowed to go outside when the wind chills below like 28 or something. I'm not talking zero. I'm talking, you know, like what, don't you think that's kind of another one of these issues where we're going, uh, we're over. And again, I'm not saying that's federal level. I'm just asking for your opinion specifically on like recess outside time and like coddling of children. Yeah. Yeah. Look, we, we want, uh,

childhood and school to be joyful. Recess is part of that. Movement is part of that. And your wife was a kindergarten teacher. My wife was a kindergarten teacher. You can do a lot of movement in the classroom too. Yes, you can. The idea that you're going to have a five-year-old, a six-year-old sit at a desk staring at the front of the room for hours on end, that is not right.

There should be opportunities. You know, when you go into a kindergarten classroom, you want to see that students are building with blocks and Legos and they're learning math through that. But it's active. It's hands on. Right. You want students who are doing science experiments. And that's not just true for the little ones. That's something you want throughout. Right.

You know, I describe in the book a teacher I worked with when I was a principal who turned his classroom into a cell in order to teach students the different parts of a cell.

Not a jail cell, like a microbial cell. Exactly. For sixth graders, so that they would understand what are Golgi bodies. That's an important thing to learn in sixth grade science, but you don't just have to memorize it from a textbook. You can actually move around the classroom and have this hands-on learning experience.

And I think our schools would benefit from that and our students would benefit from that. As not being a teacher, what prevents them from doing more of this? I have this notion that if I ask many of them, they would say it's external restrictions.

Maybe it's maybe it's as I think through it, fear of litigation or being sued or too many children in the classroom or things like that. Are we just not letting teachers do their best work or is it more complicated than that? You know, look, I would say there's definitely that fear. So

Sometimes it's fear of the rules of the school district or what will my principal think if my principal comes in the classroom and students are moving around the room. But some of it is also how we approach teacher training. I don't think we do enough to emphasize what hands-on learning can and should look like. We want, obviously, teachers to know the content.

but we also want them to have a vision for what deeply engaged learning looks like. I remember those productions that we did in elementary school so well because it was so engaging to be in this Shakespeare performance. And think about the level of vocabulary that we were learning. It wasn't a distraction from core academics necessarily,

it was delivering core academics in a memorable, powerful way. Last question for you, given that there's going to be people that listen and are aware of what's happening at the federal level and with education, but might not know the details, and this might be the place that they're going to hear it. What do you wish they knew about what's currently happening in the

the chance that the Department of Education starts to really lose its ability to operate? What would you like people to know about? Look, two things. One, that the stakes for the country are so high. You know, my predecessor, Arne Duncan, he will often say that the military is our best defense, but education is our best offense.

And the stakes, if we are not investing in the education of low-income students through Title I, if we aren't looking out for our students with disabilities, if we stop making it possible for low-income and middle-income students to choose college, our economy will be worse.

Our national security will be worse. We are in a global race in artificial intelligence, for example, in renewable energy. We can't win that race if we aren't educating our students. So one, I would just want them to realize the stakes of undermining our national commitment to education. And then the other thing I want them to know is it doesn't have to be this way.

Members of Congress on both sides of the aisle can stand up. The Trump administration can't eliminate the Education Department by executive order. They need Congress to do that. The Education Department is written into law. The appropriations from Congress, the funding, that is in law. So they need Congress. And that means that everybody can reach out to their representatives and tell them why they care.

You don't have to push them to vote one way or another on a thing. Just tell them why you care about education, why you care about the Title I funds that go to one of your local schools, or your experience as a parent of a student with disabilities and what those services meant.

or how Pell Grants or student loans made it possible for you to have your career. Just let them know the stakes so that they are conscious of that when they're making these decisions. I appreciate that. Well, John, again, thank you for being on the show. The book is Teacher by Teacher, The People Who Change Our Lives. Where else...

Can people find you or are you out there kind of continuing this education? You have a website that you're active on? Yeah. So at John B. King on X is maybe the easiest place to find us. And then we've got a teacher by teacher pages on Facebook and Instagram where folks can check us out as well. Perfect. We will link to those. John, thanks for being on the show. Thanks so much.

A thank you to this week's guest, John B. King. The episode was hosted, as always, by Chris Stemp and produced by yours truly, John Rojas. John's book, Teacher by Teacher, The People Who Change Our Lives, is available wherever books are sold. All right, now onto the quick housekeeping items. If you'd ever like to reach out to the show, you can email us at smartpeoplepodcast at gmail.com or message us on Twitter at smartpeoplepod.

And of course, if you want to stay up to date with all things Smart People Podcast, head over to the website, smartpeoplepodcast.com and sign up for the newsletter. All right, that's it for us this week. Make sure you stay tuned because we've got a lot of great interviews coming up and we'll see you all next episode.