Discuss the first Farsi immersion pre-school in the country, located in West Berkeley, which runs as a non-profit and also has outreach programs to help other communities create similar schools
TRANSCRIPT
Speaker 1:You're listening toK , a l x Berkeley 90.7 FM university and community sponsored radio. And this is method to the madness and show from the public affairs department at Calex that explores the innovative spirit of the bay area. And we're always happy to see data about the bay area because we love it. So we want to understand it more. And of course the 2010 census data just came out and I thought, I read you a few statistics that are interesting about [00:00:30] our diversity. We have three and a half million white people in the bay area. That's a slim majority, 52% congratulations to you. 1.2 million Asians, 1.3 million Hispanic, half million black and a million didn't change of the rest of us. The rest of the world population all thrown together here and experimenting with the American dream for many barrier residents whose families immigrated relatively recently. The challenge of adapting to [00:01:00] America while preserving a link to your heritage is a tricky task. But one local woman has made it her mission to create a new model for how to pass culture down to future generations. Please stay with us to hear her story. And uh, today we have with us [inaudible] y'all, them and Deb are from Gulistan kids, a preschool in west Berkeley as the first preschool of its type in, is it the country? Yeah, in the country. It's a Farsi immersion program. So welcome y'all to thank you. [00:01:30] And so y'all know, we'd like to start off the program about, um, talking through the problem statement. So you, you kind of came to this realization that there was a problem and you wanted to start, you started a nonprofit to solve the problem. So give us the problem statement.
Speaker 2:Well, it happened organically actually. Um, I had my first child. Um, I am married to an American man and I live in Berkeley and I don't have any local family prisons speaking [00:02:00] family. So I um, uh, I was working, um, but after a while it was hard to manage working and I needed childcare for him and I couldn't find anybody. I couldn't find the daycare, school nanny, I was looking everywhere. So they are out there, the nannies. But um, I put a posting in the Berkeley parents network listserv here and um, the only other person that responded was another parent looking for the same thing.
Speaker 1:And you were looking for a Persian speaking to any, [00:02:30] is that right?
Speaker 2:Anything, any type of childcare that would be person speaking. Okay. I asked, you know, I said and nanny, daycare, co-op preschool, anything. And that was the only response I got. So she told me why I'm looking for the same thing. Will you share with me what you find? And um, we ended up meeting and from there started a playgroup. Um, and the people in that playgroup, they are all looking for the same thing. They, and basically what we was support [00:03:00] and teaching our children our language and passing down our culture. I think we all lived in this sort of vacuum. We didn't really know many run INS locally with kids. And um, and from there it became the subtle, uh, regular weekly gathering and then it became a co op and had a life of its own, but we weren't even incorporated yet.
Speaker 1:So, um, a lot of the, I consider you an entrepreneur, right? Really you're really starting a new thing from scratch and a lot of the entrepreneurs that we speak with on the show have this moment [00:03:30] of inspiration where you mentioned you kind of had competing professional things in your life and you had to make this choice that how did did, was there this moment, this magical moment where like, yes, this is what I'm going to do because that's a big cliff to leave leap off of. Right?
Speaker 2:Yeah. No, it sounds crazy as far as I can remember. I don't think there was a magical moment. I think it really did take a life of its own by the time, by the time that I, we made this [00:04:00] decision because we did it as a group. I wasn't the only one involved. We had that playgroup, original playgroup was very involved in the co op. Um, but by the time we got to that juncture, um, I was working my butt off and I had a newborn child and I was just in survival mode basically. Um, and it was really, I got to a place where I had to make a decision, which one did I have to stop either my work or the school and I couldn't give up [00:04:30] to school because I felt like it was too important. We were all really intertwined in it. By that point, our kids were just really thriving and w they began to have strong identities as Iranians. And it was amazing. It had exceeded all of our expectations in terms of the impact that it had on our kids.
Speaker 1:Now, one of the things that I think is really unique about it is that you are, you're teaching your kids Iranian culture, but you guys all [00:05:00] were born and raised here or raised here. You're mostly American, right? So you're first generation, is that they're right?
Speaker 2:Yeah. Yeah. Some of us have lived there a little bit. Most of us. It depends. We have a little bit of everything. Yeah. Some of us lived here our whole lives.
Speaker 1:Okay. So you all had this very strong desire to teach. And was it Iranian culture or was it Farsi? What was the act? Was it the language mostly?
Speaker 2:I think for me it was the language and I think it was more than that. [00:05:30] It wasn't even, it was about our kids, but it was a lot. It was about us too. It was, you know, when you, as you know, when you have a child, um, especially for young mothers, but for both parents it's very isolating. And so here you are in this phase in your life where you feel very isolated. You're just, it's a whole other world that you'd send this little bubble and you're already feeling a little bit uprooted before you have children, when you're by cultural, but then you have a kid and you're just like, what? Where [00:06:00] do I belong in this world? So I think it gave us a sense of, of rootedness or you know, gave us some, some like a place where we, we could connect with people that were similar.
Speaker 2:So that was as a, from a parent's perspective, um, and for kids, I think it was more about language. I think so. I mean language and culture are really very intertwined as well. Very connected. Um, this original playgroup was [00:06:30] meeting, were you guys meeting in the same place every time? We are meeting weekly in a park, so you'll see the natural progression. We'd meet weekly in a park and then the rays, rainy season started and they're like, well, what are we going to do now? We didn't want to stop. So we contacted the person center, one of our founders, um, her sister was involved with the pre one of the founders of the person center in Berkeley and they let us use their space. I went to a week and then we were like, well this is great. But I personally, I was like, well, I still need the childcare.
Speaker 2:This [00:07:00] is really fun. But you know, so we brought in a teacher and then the parent would rotate with the teacher and then eventually brought in a teacher's aide who's actually still with us now. And um, and then we made a daily, a daily program is starting to rent the space of the person center and then we outgrew the person center very quickly. My kids were there when you guys were just at the Persian center. We had, I think about eight different kids had different schedules. So I think we're about eight to 10 kids total that were involved. [00:07:30] Um, but we had a waiting list at that point. We weren't even anything, you know, word of mouth. People found out about it. Yeah. Yeah. And then even then people would email me and ask me, people from other cities would ask me if there was anything similar in their area.
Speaker 2:And that's when I did the research. I found out there wasn't anything anywhere. And very early on as we decided to take it to the next level, it was clear that we needed to help [00:08:00] other people create some of the programs because they were coming to me for advice and guidance. And I, I didn't want to turn anybody away. Um, so when we were filing our five, a one c three applications, we made that as part of our mission to help other communities and to be a resource for families, other schools and educators and communities to say, Oh, I want to talk about that a little bit later in the show. This is method to the madness [00:08:30] on KLX Berkeley 90.7 FM to university and community sponsored radio. Thanks for listening. My name's Eileen is art. And today we're interviewing Yalta Middelburg, executive director of Goldstone kids. And I wanted to ask, so you, um, you started to have these eight kids at the Persians Center and you did the research and found there's not really any program like the one you're trying to create. So the next step I would guess would be to create a curriculum.
Speaker 1:Is that right? So how, how do you go about creating [00:09:00] one out of thin air?
Speaker 2:Well, we did everything all at once. Um, there were a lot of moving pieces at the time. First we had to find, um, well actually when we're at the Persian center, the curriculum was very teacher directed, um, because we didn't have a big picture in mind. But then when we moved into our current building, we started to, once we started to settle in more, we started to develop a much more rich curriculum that was, [00:09:30] you know, just much more developed. And now it's actually quite unique and, and um, robust, I guess I don't know what the right word is, but, uh, so to answer your question, there were, it wasn't like, you know, let's sit down and tackle the curriculum. It was, okay, we got to fill the space. We've got to fill now. We had extra space, we had to get more kids, we have to figure out scheduling and, um, how are we going to deal with invoicing and, um, of the logistics that go [00:10:00] behind running a nonprofit and all the logistics of running a preschool program.
Speaker 2:Um, and an afterschool program. We're not just a preschool, but also an after school program. That was starting then because some of our founding kids were going to kindergarten. Um, and so in the beginning it was just sort of winging it, but then as things started to settle in the school, then we could really put our, a lot of work can do it. And it's, um, it was a collaborative process with the teachers and, [00:10:30] um, various teachers in various stages of our development. And now it's almost complete. Like we run on an annual, um, we have an annual curriculum and it's a monthly theme, and though it's going to continue to evolve and become richer, it's pretty much set. We've, we, we came back full circle in September, so that's great. Now we're repeating. That's wonderful. So what are some of the themes? Like what do you guys go over with the kids? So we start, [00:11:00] um, in September we start with me, myself and my community. And then, and October it's me and my body. And so unit on health and hygiene and your senses as well. Um, and then in November, it's, um, different careers and vocations and how they relate to community. Then we move on just in December, we take a little bit of break and we talk about seasons [00:11:30] and holidays and cultures. Um, and we have a
Speaker 1:all, is it all [inaudible] like, um, it related to Persian culture or how you're, it's just, you're talking about you're teaching the kids. He's are, and what ages are the kids? It's
Speaker 2:so the kids are two to five in the preschool program. And then after school we use the same themes for the whole school. After school it goes up to fourth, fifth grade. So you're teaching a kid some universal things that they need to understand, but it's all in Farsi. [00:12:00] Right? That on the same sentence. This is Farsi English. But um, to answer your question about culture, uh, we do have a social cultural day on Fridays for the morning programs where we learn. Um, we basically teach them about one culture every week. It's actually, we used to do it just basically pick a culture out of a hat, um, every week. And then it felt like they didn't have much context. They learn about Japan and then France next week. So now it's uh, [00:12:30] over a two month period we cover one continent and every week on Fridays they're, their food relates to that culture, the projects that they have that they relate to that culture so that they have an idea of the whole world.
Speaker 2:So what I tell people is that this is a program that's um, that's like if you imagine your ideal preschool or afterschool program, whatever it is, it's just ideal program that just happens to be in Persian. It's not, the focus is not teaching kids Persian. They happen [00:13:00] to learn it just by being there and being immersed in it. Yeah. And to that point, you guys have non Persian children who are now attending or on the wait list, is that right? Yes. Yeah, we do. We do. We can't bring them in all at once because when you've children who don't respond in Persian, then the, it affects the dynamic of the class. So we bring in a few at a time, one at a time per class. So you sorted out with eight kids in the playgroup, the person center, and now you guys have evolved to, [00:13:30] uh, how many kids?
Speaker 2:We've over 55 55 kids and you no longer in the prison center now and we have a waiting list to 2014. Wow. Yeah. Yeah. School's good business. If you can figure out that it's actually, you know, people say that. And I do think with, uh, with a more traditional model it can be, but with our model, it's actually not, we operate at a deficit every month. Um, and the reason being [00:14:00] is that in order to ensure that the children are fully immersed in Persian and they're not all speaking English all the time, we have a really low teacher rated child to teacher ratio. So our staffing costs are much higher than any other school. What is the ratio? It's one to three for toddlers and one to four for preschoolers and for afterschool kids, which kind of, what's the standard ratios for preschoolers? Preschool is going [00:14:30] to be one to four to windows eight. And, um, oh, preschool one to four is actually very rare. Sorry, toddlers, it's one wonderful. Anyway, um, for preschoolers legally one to 12, but I think most people, it's about one to eight. For most schools when to 10, they'll have like a class of 20, sometimes with two teachers.
Speaker 1:Wow. So the reason that you do that is, and the reason that you've, you're configured as a nonprofit, which is, that's unique in their preschool [00:15:00] world, right?
Speaker 2:Yeah. Yeah. There are some there. It's not rare, but it is, it's not, it's not the most common.
Speaker 1:And what's the reason that there's a, there's a, there's a vision behind it, right?
Speaker 2:Yeah. The couple of reasons. One is that, um, I wanted all the decisions that were made for the organ, for the school to be based on what's best for the school and not to be, um, [00:15:30] influenced by, by profit. Uh, the other, um, is that I wanted the school to become, um, lasting organization that if I were to leave, that it would come, it would still be here. And, um, and also I'm just not a business person, wasn't my thing. But, uh, and, and also, um, practically speaking, knowing that we were going to have a deficit, we'd need to fundraise and it would be very difficult to do that as a for profit [00:16:00] organization. We thought we figured that out after we made the decision to be a nonprofit.
Speaker 1:And you were planning the deputy because you wanted the load ratios to be able to get the kids to speak for us. Yeah. Yeah. You're listening to k a l x Berkeley 90.7 FM streaming on the worldwide web a k alx.berkeley.edu. This is method to the madness I show from the Public Affairs Department of Calyx that explores the innovative spirit of the bay area. I'm your host Ali Nasar and that was an old [00:16:30] Iranian folk song by the name of you who are like the long moon in the sky. And I played that because today we're talking to Yeldon Metabo, the executive director of Gulistan kids, the first Farsi immersion program for preschoolers in America located in west Berkeley. Back to our conversation. And uh, I wanted to ask you about, um, some success stories. So you see all sorts of kids coming in with varying levels of [00:17:00] exposure to Farsi. Right. Can you share maybe a story or two of, of kids who have come in and really, cause you know, everybody always says, oh, kids are sponges at that age. You tried it, you see that?
Speaker 2:Oh yeah. Yeah, they are. Yeah. Um, boy, I wouldn't know which one the [inaudible] there's one in particular that stands out. Um, is actually a college friend of mine has, uh, three kids. [00:17:30] Yeah. Three kids and lives in Pleasanton, Pleasanton and has two older girls. I think they are about seven or seven and nine, something like that at the time. And a little boy who, Amir, who is, who was five at the time. And uh, he's to a Tunisian woman, adorable, wonderful woman who, who's learned to speak prison and their kids didn't speak Persian. Um, I think the older girls understood a little bit, [00:18:00] but then really not a lot. And uh, at one point my friend was like, this is, this is like our only chance we gotta get these kids to learn Persian. And so I told them, well, bring Amir here. It was his last year of preschool and I'm your did not understand a word.
Speaker 2:I'm like, you would just need to say hello. How are you to him? Any kind of like, yeah, I have this look on his face. I'm such a sweet boy too. So he, he uh, he decided, okay, we're going to do, I was like, if you [00:18:30] do it, he has to come here a lot to get full exposure. So they made the commitment and they drove to Berkeley from Pleasanton every day and he worked in the South Bay. So it was a, it was insane for them, was hard. And they had two older girls that were in school in pleasant and we'd get out of school, right, like half an hour before I'm here, we'd get out of school. There's a lot of driving involved. Um, within a month I'm your understood everything. And then within, by the time the second month ended, he [00:19:00] was fluent and he was with us his whole last year of preschool. And by the time he left, he was just this totally fluent kid. And one day Allie came to my office and um, he just, he came in and he just just choked up and teared up and he's like, it's changed our relationship. I was like, I told you, but it did. It was just changed the dynamic of their relationship because they connected in a different way. It was really special.
Speaker 1:Yeah. That's what's so special about what you're doing is that, um, [00:19:30] you know, people who speak multiple languages understand that there's concepts that can be talked about, ideas that can be talked about in another tongue that you can't really talk about it in English. This is different level of connection. It's not just cause English is lacking. It's every language has its own words. It's culture. That's true. I never thought of it that way. Um, and so I think one thing that's I wanted to talk about with you is that you have a program as part of goalless on kids or it's separate and um, [00:20:00] organization, the Colab,
Speaker 2:it's part of the same organization, but it's like a, it's a department, I guess you would.
Speaker 1:Yeah. So a part of your organization that is dedicated to helping other communities and not just Persian, Farsi, speaking communities, anybody, anyone embraced this idea of, of creating immersion programs, preschool immersion programs. So talk to us a little bit about the, the Colab,
Speaker 2:the colab. We used to call it the resource center and people [00:20:30] weren't apparently the resource center and just do and doing it for anybody. So we did a little bit of brainstorming and came up with the name, the heritage language collaborative and it's exactly what that is. It's, it's collaborating with people, be they families or other or communities who want to promote their heritage language in the next generation of kids. Um, so we work with families with any background. I just worked with an Taiwanese [00:21:00] family and helping them maintain the bilingual home in different, you know, that we all have different challenges in doing that and helping them overcome those challenges. And then working with educators of different immersion programs. Um, our hope is to host workshops for starting off with local immersion schools, but then eventually national schools and developing best practices, cause they don't really exist in that field.
Speaker 2:[00:21:30] Excuse me. And it is an emerging field. And then finally working with other communities. Um, and that involves both helping other communities, start schools, be they small co-op programs all the way to like a real school, um, and also producing teaching materials and books and audio books and some music cds. And, um, so right now we're in the beginning phases. I've been doing this [00:22:00] work for the last three years that we've been in our new building and we became a nonprofit. Um, but it's been hard to do that and run the school and the afterschool program, um, and tried to keep a nonprofit afloat in this economy and have two kids.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Yo, by the way, you have two kids. I do that too. Yeah. Um, so okay. My native tongue is Ooredoo. Okay. So let's say I came to you and I said I want to start or do language school. You refer to best [00:22:30] practices. What are like top three best practices for listeners out there? We hopefully have dozens and dozens of languages listening to us right now. So what are the best practices that you can give people? Just, just, you know, a few choice nuggets.
Speaker 2:Well, as a parent I can, would you like to know as a parent? Sure. As a parent it would be to um, work, be consistent and um, enable your children to develop the muscles and the habits to [00:23:00] speak to you in your native tongue. Um, damn, one technique uses like a sang, it's called the sandwich method. If you have to use English, then you use your native tongue first than English than the native tongue. So if you, you're speaking about a ball and the child doesn't know what a ball means, you would say TUPE in person, ball, TUPE. And um, another one is to really prompt a child to respond to [00:23:30] you in that language. Um, if they insist on speaking English and they always, every child will get to a point where they'll want to speak English to their parent. Don't. My second child hasn't gotten to that yet. It's interesting. Um, you, you just have them keep repeating it and in my case in person and prompting them to repeat it and you just keep doing it over and over again until they do it sounds painful and terrible. And it sounds like you have a terrible relationship with your kids, but it's just, it's just [00:24:00] a little bit of effort. Like everything else in parenting that eventually becomes very natural and it's actually less work than if you were to be a little bit looser about it in the beginning. Less disciplined about it.
Speaker 1:Okay. Good tips. Thank you. Um, so last question I have for you is, I love to ask this of innovators, entrepreneurs, what's the vision? So you're working real hard. It's been three years and you've come a long way. You 55 kids that you're, [00:24:30] you're giving this amazing experience too. So five years from now, what will it look like? And both from the Goldstone perspective but also from colab.
Speaker 2:Well, in five years we will have helped build, why are we say 10 years, 10 schools? So not sure it's five years in five schools cause it's, yeah, 10 years is easier for the colab. Um, so yeah, we'd have schools [00:25:00] all over the country, not us personally, but there would be schools that we will have helped establish however we can through consulting and sending them materials. Thanks. Um, and we'd have books published, several books published and audio cds and music cds, and we'll have an annual workshop where we host people coming in from different parts of the country [00:25:30] and brainstorming together and the school, oh, I shouldn't even say this school. There are some, there been discussions and requests from parents and other educators talking to me about, um, starting a charter school k through eight. And I've been, you know, I, this, it was, it was a big, big challenge to get to where we are now.
Speaker 2:My family paid a price for it and my [00:26:00] husband was very patient with me. Um, so it's, it's hard to say yes, but it's really hard to say no to. So we're, we're exploring that and my hope is that in 10 years we'll have a team that can do that. And I can help and we'd work, we'd collaborate and it could be a Gulistan school locally. Um, I'm not into having call stands outside of the local area, um, because it's hard to manage all of that. But yeah, maybe there'd be a k through eight school in Berkeley.
Speaker 1:[00:26:30] I'd like to thank Yelderman Debra for being on the show today. To learn more about Gulistan, you'd go to Gulistan kids.com. That's g o l e s t a n kids.com. This has been method to the madness on care Berkeley 90.7 FM. You can learn more about us@methodtothemadness.org and to take us out today, we're going to let a kid from Goulston give us a little Persian nursery rhyme, said to Beethoven, oh, humans in life, be kind to each other here on [00:27:00] Kale x, Berkeley.
Speaker 3:Bye. See you. Bye. [inaudible] mine. And I need that. [00:27:30] Bye guys. A need.
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