>>Philip Shishkin: Education. Why and how
did you become passionate about it? I know
your mother was a school teacher.
>>David Eggers: Yeah. Thanks for having me.
Thanks for being here.
This is a very white room, isn't it? This
is about as white as it could be.
But I -- I mean, the walls and everything
is what I'm talking about.
[ Laughter ]
>>David Eggers: I was wondering what people
were -- but Gerald and I were saying, boy,
this is a really white room.
So we -- what a weird start to this. Okay.
No, my mom was a teacher. My sister taught
for a while. And a lot of my best friends
went into teaching after school.
But I grew up around sort of my mom, before
she got her certificate, she was a volunteer
in the school. So I was used to her being
at my elementary school. She put on all the
school plays, and she did art projects. And
she was always there. And everyone knew her
name. So it seemed a little natural to me
that, if the school is down the street, you're
somehow involved in it.
And, when I was living in Brooklyn, I was
-- for the first time in my life -- I was
about 30, and I was living as a writer just
being able to pay my bills doing that. And
I had a lot of flexible time on my hands.
Maybe too much time. With me and too much
time in a room sitting, pretending to write,
it's not helpful at a certain point. You sort
of go around the bend.
And so I would walk the streets of Brooklyn.
And there was a school there, P.S. 51, nearby.
And I always felt like, boy, I wish I could
get in there and be useful. I had so many
teacher friends that said they needed extra
help in the classroom. But there wasn't a
conduit there at that time in Brooklyn.
So, when we moved back to San Francisco, that's
when we decided to sort of create a space
where we could help public school teachers
that parents and students could come there
after school as a drop-in program. So we opened
this space at 826 Valencia. That's the address
and the name. And our landlord loves this,
because we can never move.
But we opened it as just a drop-in center.
And we had a sandwich board out front that
said, "Free tutoring after school in all your
English-related homework." And this is the
Mission District in San Francisco, so most
of the kids are from Spanish-speaking homes.
So the one catch was -- has anyone been there?
Has anyone seen this? A few people.
So it was zoned for retail. So we -- the landlord
said, "You can open your tutoring center.
That's great. But you've got to sell something."
And we thought, well, that's too bad. We had
no experience. We used to have a shop in Brooklyn
that we sold taxidermy supplies to the amateur
taxidermist. If you had found or slayed and
animal and you wanted to preserve it and honor
it, you could buy all your molds and glue
and all that stuff.
So, when they said you got to sell something,
we thought back. And said, well, we know all
these suppliers for taxidermy stuff. So we'll
sell taxidermy supplies. But it happened to
be next to the only other place in the city
that already was selling amateur taxidermy
supplies. This was a place called PaxtonGate.
So, when we were renovating the building,
it had a kind of a look of a hull of a ship.
So we decided -- somebody had the idea of
selling pirate supplies. We'll stick it to
the man. We'll sell pirate supplies. Wouldn't
that be funny? So we found pirate wholesalers.
There are many of them that sell eye patches
and planks and puffy shirts and striped socks.
So that's what we stocked the store with and
made it look like a place not about pirates
but where pirates would go. You know? Like
it's for working buccaneer. No images, no
cute kitschy stuff. It's, like, real stuff.
That's just what we did. We thought this is
just the front of the store, and behind it
was the tutoring center. What ended up happening
is right away -- we thought it was a waste
of space, originally. But, A, it did phenomenally
well. You know? I mean, within the first few
months it was paying rent and a salary. And
it was bringing all these people in that normally
wouldn't go to a nonprofit and see what's
going on. They'd come in. They'd say, "What
the hell is going on here? What are you doing?"
And then we'd explain it to them. And right
behind it they would see all these kids at
work on their homework. So we were working
one-on-one with their after-school homework
right beyond the pirate store. So, you know,
and then our volunteer base grew from a couple
hundred at first to now we have 1800 volunteer
trained tutors ready to work on location or
in schools all over the city. So it kept growing
in all these organic ways. Teachers would
say, "Why don't you come to us, if we can't
come to you?" Or, "Why don't you do field
trips and how about workshops at night?" And
the volunteers would say, "Let's do -- publish
student work or let's work on the weekends
and have a performance space for the students."
So we just sort of knew from the beginning.
I knew that I didn't know anything close to
what the educators in the neighborhood knew
and what the parents knew and what was best
for their students and kids -- all I knew
is I could create this space and maybe raise
an army of volunteers. And then the community
at large would tell us how to be useful.
So am I -- I should let you ask another question;
right?
[ Laughter ]
>>Philip Shishkin: I'm not wearing this white
jacket, trying to amplify the unbearable lightness
of being.
You helped produce a documentary, the American
teacher, that shows the challenges that American
public school teachers face. I think there's
a clip that we can perhaps play now. Then
we can talk about that a little bit.
[ Video. ]
>>> I used to tell people that the government
pays me to blow things up. And then they used
to ask are you in the NSA or the FBI or something
like that? And I said, no, I teach science.
>>> They are our public servants, but why
do I get a feeling that a lot of them are
more in it for serving themselves?
>>> I know that I'm a teacher in every cell
of my body.
>>> We can achieve brilliance, and we will
achieve brilliance. It's going to be a lot
of work, but it's completely doable for everybody
in this classroom.
>>> If they're here to serve our kids, why
does it seem they're only serving us a big
old bill?
>>> I had no idea how much money I was going
to have to spend out of my own pocket, because
I didn't get anything really.
>>> When I started tell my friends I wanted
to go into education, everyone immediately
said, "You went to Harvard, you should be
a doctor or lawyer. You should make money."
>>> Everyone is for that axiom that those
who can do, those who can't, teach. The proponents
of that axiom have never stood in front of
a classroom.
>>> Good morning, first grade.
>>> Good morning, Ms. (saying name).
>>> Teachers make thousands of decisions a
day. And they don't do it about an abstract
idea; they do it about the life of a child.
You can't imagine anything harder.
>>> Given the low pay and long hours, teachers
burn out at a rate unparalleled in almost
any other field.
>>> I feel like I giving everything I have,
but it's never enough.
>>> As the man, you're supposed to be the
provider. When you can't provide for your
family, you feel like a loser.
[ Video concludes. ]
>>Philip Shishkin: There's another part of
this movie that was not shown. Where a character,
one of the characters that's interviewed,
talks about his son who became a Verizon salesman
just out of college, and he's making more
money than a public school teacher. We have
to be extremely careful what we say about
people who sell cell phones for a living.
But the point that he makes is a very interesting
one. I think he says -- and paraphrasing,
not verbatim -- there's something wrong with
our society when selling cell phones is more
important than being a teacher.
How do you think we as a society can fix that
disequilibrium, in values, in compensation,
in motivation perhaps.
>>Dave Eggers: When we started 826, we started
giving teacher of the month awards to reward
public school teachers. And we just gave them
a $1500 grant, no strings attached. And we
hoped they would spend it on some things outside
of their classroom. Most of them ended up
spending it on their classrooms.
But -- and we got to be -- beyond the people
that I knew, my friends, who had quit teaching,
because all of my friends that I grew up with
that ended up going into teaching had quit
between the first four and seven years. They
had all quit because they couldn't afford
to live in San Francisco on their wages; they
were getting close to 30, and they were tired
of not having a car or not being able to afford
to live alone, and all of these things. So
they went into other things.
And I felt so frustrated, because these were
incredibly inspiring, gifted educators, and
they were leaving.
And then we found that these teachers of the
month, we've given about 70 awards now, about
a third of them, these were the very best
teachers in the San Francisco Bay Area, had
quit. So it just started driving us nuts that
the very best teachers that we knew kept on
leaving. And usually about age 30 or so, they
think, all right, now it's time to make a
-- you know, make some money where I can start
a family and buy a home and all these things.
It's not possible in the San Francisco Bay
Area for most people on a teacher's salary.
Then the research shows that 46% of public
school teachers quit before their fifth year.
So we did more and more research about it.
We did a book of oral histories and information
about this. And then it made sense to make
it into a documentary.
But it's startling. The economic cost of losing
so many teachers and so many of the very best
teachers, it's about $5 billion a year is
how they estimate the cost of this incredible
turnover. And if you look at comparative school
systems, like the three school systems in
the world that test the best, South Korea,
Singapore, and Finland, they treat their teachers
entirely differently. One, they pay for their
training. Two, they give them incredible support,
lots of autonomy. And the pay is, you know,
in most cases, 250% or so more than ours.
So there, for most college graduates in these
countries, it's the most esteemed profession.
Everyone's fighting for a chancing to a teacher,
because it's considered this, you know, incredibly
valuable and crucial and central profession
that has incredible prestige. We don't have
that here.
So their turnover rate is -- the highest among
those three countries is 3% a year turnover
rate. So if you think about all the institutional
knowledge that stays in the classroom, all
that stability that stays in the delicate
ecology of a school, all of these things,
and so we wonder why we can't gain ground
in our school system and why we keep falling
behind. It starts with paying well, compensating,
retaining the best teachers, and keeping them
in the classroom.
And so -- and, you know, the Bill and Melinda
Gates Foundation has spent almost half a billion
dollars on research. And after all of these
years of doing studies in all these different
ways, Gates came out and said the most important
thing is the teacher. Technology is good,
all these things, infrastructure. But really
we need to find, reward, and keep the best
teacher. It seems like a no-brainer, but nationwide,
there aren't really any overarching policies
to solve this attrition rate.
And so, you know, I'm in favor of a stimulus
package for teaching. Like, if we can spend
billions bailing out banks and things like
that, we do need at this point, which is a
really crisis -- we're at a crisis right now,
especially with budget cuts being what they
are, the schools state by state need a stimulus.
They need to be able to reinforce, build themselves
back up.
And this goes all the way to, you know, college
access and -- which is the other thing that
we're probably going to get to. Is that right?
I keep on blabbing on and on. You're doing
a great job, by the way, Philip, you really
are.
[ Laughter ]
[ Applause ]
>>Dave Eggers: You really are.
>>Philip Shishkin: Let's talk about college
access. Scholar match is the --
>>Dave Eggers: Genius.
>>Philip Shishkin: -- program.
>>Dave Eggers: Very smooth.
>>Philip Shishkin: That helps college kids
put up their ambitions, what they want to
do online, and invites contributions from
--
>>Dave Eggers: This is our wholesale ripoff
of Kiva and Kickstarter, two Web sites that
I thought were incredibly brilliant.
And I teach a high school class. I've taught
for about ten years. And so I write 20 college
recommendations a year. And I try to get my
students into college. And even when they
did get in, for so many reasons, a lot of
these kids don't qualify for state and federal
loans, or their financial situation is highly
unusual, and they had incredibly trouble navigating
the system. And even when they did get in
and they sort of had it figured out, very
often our students -- these are low-income
students in San Francisco that go to public
schools -- a few thousand dollars' gap for
us, growing up -- for me growing up upper
middle class, it's not a big deal. You find
that money, you know, people have uncles,
grandmothers, grandparents. For first-generation
students, that $1500 is the difference between
going or not going to school.
So again and again, I would have these kids
do phenomenally well in high school, they
would test well, they would get into U.C.
Berkeley or whatever, and they would have
this small gap, a gap that seems small to
us, and they'd say, "I'm going to work for
a couple years. I'll work construction. And
then I'll go later."
And these kids, I would check in with them,
and they weren't going to college. Two, three
years later, they weren't going.
So it became -- when I saw the success of
Kiva and Kickstarter and this crowdsourcing,
I thought, well, let's do that for students
in the community. People who care about them
can say, "I'm going to give $100. I'll give
$1,000." And you can send -- not only send
kids to school -- and this fall, we sent 53
to school with the help of hundreds of donors
in San Francisco. But the nice thing is that
we have a dinner where they get to meet a
lot of the funders, and we create relationships,
and sometimes they intern at the funders'
companies, and all these mentorships and partnerships
happen. But they see this crowd of people,
about half as big as here, that are invested
in them. And they say, wow, there's all these
people that are looking out for me, that care
about me. They don't know me, but they care.
They feel like I'm the future and they should
have a stake in it. And they feel like they're
going to let down a lot of people if they
don't stay in, if they -- you know. So the
retention rate for our students -- we've been
giving college scholarships in different ways
for about ten years. The retention rate for
our students in those programs is 99%. We've
only lost one student in 80. Because -- we
ask them why -- we make them write journals.
Every month, they have to report how they're
doing and all that stuff. We have regular
get-togethers where they come back and report
how they're doing. And they all talk about
having seen this sea of faces that cares about
them. And they feel a little bit of pressure,
you know, that this whole community is behind
them.
So that's what Scholar Match is all about.
>>Philip Shishkin: And the kids on Scholar
Match, how many of them are actually able
to secure the funding?
>>Dave Eggers: In the first two years of Scholar
Match, we've had about 45% success rate between
the students that post their profiles and
those that get funding, which isn't good enough
at all. And so we've been trying to figure
out why. We actually -- I did have this thought
that it was going to take off in some stratospheric
way and millions of dollars would be flowing
through the site. Is it -- I'm allowed to
say it didn't happen; right? Does that sound
like it's a failure? It didn't happen yet.
And that's why I think the brains in this
room would know why. I can't figure it out.
I'm not a Web expert. We've done -- we did
as well as we could. It needs to be improved
and scaled up, and ideally, it could go national.
But we've been incubating it in San Francisco.
And there's reasons why -- I think there's
ways that we can improve it. But I do think
people want to participate. They want to care
and invest in these students. So I think it
still has -- it's a germ of an idea that I
think will be very important. But it needs
to take that next step.
>>Philip Shishkin: Speaking about the brains
in this room, I think we have a couple of
minutes to take a few questions from the audience.
Would anyone like to ask Dave anything?
Are there mikes on the floor?
There's a mike in the aisle, over there.
>>> This is -- a number of points this morning
have been made about things that just make
sense but aren't happening. And you've talked
about a few of them.
Double the salary of most public school teachers
in America would cost about the same as the
cash for clunkers program. Mayor Booker talked
about how teachers in New Jersey, just because
they were the last in, are first out when
there's budget cuts, even though they may
cost half as much as a teacher who's been
around for 20 years and maybe doesn't have
kids succeeding as well. A friend of mine
wanted to go back and serve and give back
and teacher in the public school sector in
New Jersey because he had not been trained
through a certified teacher program, he gave
up on it and is now teaching at a major university
instead.
So my question for you is, why if there are
so many of these things that just make good
sense from a policy standpoint, from a change
perspective, how do we go about -- there are
a bunch of right people in this room, a lot
of capital represented in this room. How do
we go about actually implementing some of
these changes?
>>Dave Eggers: Boy, that's a good question.
I think you're right, though, about doubling
teachers' salaries. It's been proven. McKinsey
did a phenomenal study, if you want to see,
it's called closing the gap, and it's about
getting and keeping more of the best and brightest
in there. And they say now college students
who are juniors right now, they polled a thousand
or so from all over the country, how many
of you would consider teaching at the current
salary level, 4.7% would consider it. But
if -- when they ramped up the salary, how
much -- how many would consider it if you
did -- if it was this salary, this salary.
There would be a lot of people in this room
that would teach if it was commensurate with
law, with medicine, with a lot of these other
jobs, with technology, because it is such
an incredibly enriching and rewarding and
electric profession. Like, the two hours a
week that I teach a high school class are
my favorite two hours of the day outside my
family, of course.
But -- But people can't afford to do it. And
Teach for America starts them in the game,
and a lot of them stay. But they can't afford
to do it.
So I actually do think, that's what I think,
a stimulus where you can automatically double
the salaries. I mean, it would take a generation
to completely reform the system. But everyone's
ready to do it. And I think Arnie Duncan's
ready to do it, Obama's ready to do it. They're
ready. Everyone believes the same thing. Everyone
knows the same statistics. But it takes the
political will. And we still have a lot of
resistance from certain quarters that think
that teachers should be paid on a level of,
you know, more like a maintenance worker kind
of level.
And it's a very strange thing, but it started
because in this country years ago, teachers
weren't paid at all in most, you know, rural
communities. They were given room and board,
and that was it. And so they are not used
to it.
>>Philip Shishkin: Unbearable lightness of
being red light, unfortunately tells us we'll
have to wrap up this discussion. But perhaps
we'll continue on the margins.
>>Dave Eggers: You did a great job, Philip.
>>Philip Shishkin: So did you.
>>Dave Eggers: I'm really proud of you. Thank
you, all.
[ Applause ]
