Feb. 6, 2024

Living the dream with Author, educator, and parent Barbara Ann Mojica

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Unlock the Secrets of the Past: Join historian, author, and retired educator Barbara Ann Mojica as she reveals how history is not just about old stories, but a treasure trove of lessons and tools for educating today's youth. Dive into an enlightening conversation on the Living the Dream podcast with Curveball, where Barbara shares her personal journey and offers practical advice for parents to inspire, motivate, and teach their children through the powerful lens of history.

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> Speaker A>Welcome, um, to the living the dream podcast with curveball. If you believe you can achieve, cheat, cheat.

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> Speaker A>Welcome to the living the dream with curveball podcast, a, uh, show where I and a few guests that teach, motivate, inspire.

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> Speaker A>Today we're going to be talking about educating the youth, as I am joined by historian, author, and retired educator, Barbara Ann Mohica. Barbara has tools that we could all use as parents who have kids to entertain, inspire, and educate our kids. And she says history is the key to education. So we're going to be talking to her about her experiences and give some tips and best practices on, um, trying to educate our kids as best as we can. So, Barbara, thank you so much for joining me today.

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> Speaker B>Thank you, Curtis. I'm very happy to be here. Thanks for inviting me.

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> Speaker A>Why don't you start off by telling everybody a little bit about yourself?

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> Speaker B>Okay. Uh, I have a pretty traditional story, uh, at the beginning of my life. I was born in, uh, New York City on the border between Brooklyn and queens to a, um, lower upper, well, I would say upper lower class family. Uh, my parents didn't have a lot of money, um, and, uh, we didn't have a lot of resources, so I made persistence and stubbornness and determination a, ah, really big part of my character. So both of my parents, uh, were children of the depression. Uh, neither of them finished high school. Uh, they both worked very hard to make ends meet, and they were great parents.

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> Speaker B>I, uh, didn't have, uh, the opportunity in sight, uh, to be able to go to college, uh, but that changed, uh, when I was in high school.

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> Speaker B>So initially, uh, my parents thought, uh, that it would be a good idea for me to pursue a business career. So when I, uh, started high school, I was going along that course, and I met a, uh, teacher, uh, who changed all of that for me. And of course, she was a history teacher. She was, uh, dynamic and, uh, she made everything come alive.

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> Speaker B>I had always loved history because I was interested in learning about people who had the opportunity to explore, to travel the world, to learn about different cultures, to learn about, uh, different countries, to experience so many different things. And she, uh, pulled me aside and told me that I really needed to go to college. And she said, you can find a way to do it. So I started taking courses to prepare myself for college. And, uh, at the time in New York City, there was an opportunity in the public, um, university, the city university system, to gain entrance, uh, by merit. So if you had really good grades, you could gain interest and get admittance to school. So I worked super hard, uh, and I was able to graduate pretty near the top of my class, and I gained entrance to my first choice. So off I went, uh, to, uh, hunter college. Worked, uh, hard again, graduated in three years, took summer courses, and, uh, was, um, again surprised by another teacher, a professor this time, who took an interest in me. And, uh, unbeknownst to me, I, uh, was given a scholarship for graduate school. So I was able to get my master's degree, uh, in history.

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> Speaker B>So that's the beginning of my story.

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> Speaker B>And from there I decided I loved history, I loved research, but I wanted to be more connected with people.

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> Speaker B>I wasn't kind of one of these ivory tower types. So I went into education, and, uh, I did that for many years. I taught children, uh, everything, uh, from k to seven. But then I realized again that there were problems with the educational system and there was so much lacking and that the needs of so many children were not being met. So off I went again back to school, and I took a degree in special education, got certification this time in special education. And I started doing that, working with children with very, very severe needs, like, uh, autism, m, um, crack cocaine babies, children with physical disabilities and so on.

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> Speaker B>Uh, I was offered the opportunity to be the director of the preschool in which I was teaching. So, back to school again, and I got my certification as an administrator.

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> Speaker B>And I did that for many years until I had another opportunity to, um, work on the other side of the fence. And, uh, I began working for New York City as a special education administrator, where I had the opportunity to, uh, directly evaluate children and secure, um, the services that they needed, uh, for their special education program. So I did that for a while before, uh, being laid off in a reorganization in New York City and then going back to teaching and being, um, working one on one, uh, with children again. So my career had twists and turns. Uh, it was all very enlightening, very informative. It allowed me to help a lot of children in a lot of different ways, to connect with parents, connect with teachers, connect with therapists who were working with these children.

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> Speaker B>So I had the opportunity to work with speech therapists, physical therapists, occupational therapists.

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> Speaker B>And all of these people had one goal in common, uh, to help meet the needs, uh, of children, uh, who, uh, really had a multiple of issues and needed a multiple number of resources in order to solve their issues. So, fast forward, end, uh, of my career.

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> Speaker B>Uh, I finally retired after 40 years of teaching. And now being retired, that didn't last very long, of course. So I decided I was going to combine my passions of love, of history and kids, and I would write children's books. So that's what I started doing. I started writing, uh, history books for children in an entertaining and inspiring and critical thinking aspect. Uh, so I combined all of those things, um, with a funny, uh, interactive character who entertained children, uh, along the way, while asking them critical questions and asking them to put themselves, uh, uh, in these periods of history with these people and explore different ways of thinking about problems of the past, how we could apply them to the present, and then how we could form some kind of framework or legacy to make a better future. So I guess, kind of, in a nutshell, that's my story. As to how I got to where.

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> Speaker A>I am today, well, you do say in your bio that history is the key to solving today's problems. So explain what you mean by that.

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> Speaker B>Okay, well, history to me, uh, my character, who narrates my book, little Miss history, who, of course, is based on a younger version of me. Uh, and the character has a saying, a model. If you don't know your history, you don't know what you're talking about. And by that, I mean we are all a composite, uh, of so many different things.

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> Speaker B>So when a child is born, a child becomes a member of a family. That family has a history. That family is the embodiment of cultures, traditions, um, so many different things, a part of their heritage, and they're also a part of a community. And what does a child do as a child starts to grow, and his curiosity is sparked, starts asking those who, what, when, where, why? Questions. And they're all connected to history because the child wants to know, where do I fit in? Who am I?

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> Speaker B>Uh, where did I come from? How do I belong? Who am I connected with? And all of those things are a part of history. So history to me, is something that is evolutionary.

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> Speaker B>It began a long time ago. And the seeds of that are first in our family and our local community. And then as we learn about our family and our local community, we use that information to be able to solve some of the issues that we have today. And then ultimately, as we grow and connect the dots, we are able to formulate some sort of framework to create a better future. And that's where the critical thinking comes in.

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> Speaker B>Because critical thinking is so much a part of studying history and so much a part of studying anything. And critical, uh, thinking means being able to focus on a problem, an issue. It could be a person, it could be an event, it could be a time period. And it means trying to find the truth.

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> Speaker B>So testing solutions, uh, asking questions, um, and then making the connections, putting things into context of, uh, what else is going on at the time, how are people communicating those issues? And then after examining all of the information, and by information, I mean the real primary source information, not opinions, uh, not anything but real truths that are happening, going through that information, reasoning it out, discarding what isn't true, and then eventually pulling all of that information together and coming to some kind of conclusion. And I think so much of that is missing in our schools today. We're not teaching children how to think critically. Uh, we're not asking them to think beyond the obvious. We are too much concerned with the common core and teaching to the test and having all of our children learn in the same way, very specific information that doesn't encourage them to think about what is the importance of this information?

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> Speaker B>How can we use this information to apply it to new problems and new issues that are going to come up today? And our schools are surely lacking in that. We're not teaching our children about the basics of, uh, where we came from, how our government was formed.

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> Speaker B>There are issues in our past that were not handled the right way. They could have been handled better. How should we have handled them?

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> Speaker B>How could we have handled them? What could we do now to look at these approaches and, uh, to take everything together and apply what we learned? So we take the bad, we take the good, we put it all together to try to understand and learn from it, and then we apply it by having the information that we need to be able to think critically, not to form one sided opinions, uh, or to go along with what our friends are thinking, uh, but to really use our own judgment.

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> Speaker B>Another thing that's, uh, a problem today is our social media, because children today want instant information. They are used to getting the answer by typing in the question and then seeing what pops up. Then they look to see, oh, what's the answer? They take the first answer that they see, and to them, they accept that as truth. They're not applying critical thinking skills to that.

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> Speaker B>So there are so many pressures, uh, with social media, with our children who want to fit in with friends who are being fed, um, one side, because the social media platforms and the algorithms are giving them one side of the story, and they don't have the opportunity to think critically. So that's what I am trying to do in the books I write, in the teaching videos that I do on YouTube, uh, in the resources and curriculum ideas that I provide to parents on all of my websites and social media platforms to try to give them the tools to be able to help their children to do this type of critical thinking.

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> Speaker A>Well, speaking of tools, what can we do as parents to better help our kids be leaders of tomorrow?

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> Speaker B>There are a lot of things that parents can do first. Uh, of all, parents can just ask their children open ended questions. Never, uh, accept the yes or the no, or I don't know, or, uh, nothing.

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> Speaker B>What happened today in school? Nothing.

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> Speaker B>Uh, they have to, uh, get into the habit of asking questions like, um, what's your favorite book? Why did you like it?

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> Speaker B>Uh, how did it make you feel? Um, uh, just asking them their opinion on things. And of course, our parents are very busy, but you can get these things in sitting, uh, at mealtime or in the car or at the store or while you're waiting online. Um, children want to know that their ideas are valued. Uh, and parents can do that.

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> Speaker B>Ask them, m what are you proud of?

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> Speaker B>Or, um, what's your opinion on this? Just noticing things in the community.

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> Speaker B>Uh, walking around and suppose you go to the park and, uh, the swing is broken. Uh, you could ask the child, oh, the swing is broken. Um, what do you think we could do about that? Getting them involved in community events. You're going to a meeting about something that's going on in the community. Bring, uh, the child with you.

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> Speaker B>Let the child experience opportunities for discussion. Um, and, uh, it's a process, but it can be introduced in very easy, limited amounts of time.

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> Speaker B>Having, uh, a time set aside, uh, with the family for just having time to have an open discussion, just talking to each other, shutting off the phones. And of course, some parents are as guilty of this as the kids are, but just having 15 or 20 minutes a day where this is our time, where the phones are shut off, where we just sit down and talk, and then gradually increasing those moments in times, uh, and making it a little bit longer. A little bit longer.

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> Speaker B>Um, giving kids that example of being curious stimulates their own curiosity.

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> Speaker A>Uh.

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> Speaker B>And, uh, setting those boundaries shows them that there are some boundaries, but they're not unreasonable boundaries. Show your child, uh, that leaders.

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> Speaker A>Uh.

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> Speaker B>Have to take charge, but they also know when to step back. Show them that there's fairness and there's negotiation. So sometimes your child may really want to do something and your first impulse is to say no. Um, uh, child asks you to go to a birthday party, and it's at night because, uh, the parents work later and they have to have the party a little bit later than maybe would be the normal time. So the child asks you to go to the party and you say, no, it's too late.

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> Speaker B>Uh, maybe you can, ah, find out the reason and negotiate that.

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> Speaker B>Or maybe once in a while, parents can make an exception to show, uh, that they're fair and they're flexible. Uh, giving kids responsibilities, that's a part of leadership. Uh, every leader knows that a leader has to work just as hard as those who are under him or under her, and sometimes twice as hard as those who are under them. So show that each has to have certain chores and responsibilities. That's a part of training them, uh, to become a leader and, uh, understanding that it's okay to fail and it's okay to be wrong. Parents, uh, can show that they're not infallible, that sometimes they make mistakes and don't be afraid to admit to the child, I'm sorry, I was wrong about that and be open to, uh, a discussion upon that.

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> Speaker B>Because children need to learn to accept failure as a part of life, and parents should show them that that's okay, because many times we learn a lot more from our failures than we do from our successes. And again, that's an important, uh, part of leadership as well. So these kind of like creative life skills that I call them creative life skills because they're, uh, things like developing curiosity, uh, developing, uh, persistence.

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> Speaker B>Teach kids that sometimes we're going to fail, but persistence is a good thing. And by pursuing something, maybe it'll work out, maybe it won't, but it's a good habit to, not to give up right away. So if you encourage children to pursue their passions, like nurturing a hobby or, uh, trying, um, out for a team or learning a musical instrument, uh, that gives children an opportunity to practice something and to see that there is a way to improve. If we work hard at something, that doesn't mean that they're always going to be the virtuoso or the most wonderful, but they get the idea that I can do it. And if we learn to push children just a little bit, but not too far, because some parents overreact and they want their child, of course, to be, uh, at the very top, and they go to the opposite extreme and they don't know how to accept that the child isn't, number one, they overreact with their children. So we have to encourage our children to try to be persistent, but know how to pull back, uh, when we're making the expectations too great for them, we're pushing them, um, beyond their ability to succeed in something then we're going to frustrate them. Uh, but we can always remind them of their successes. So if a child feels upset by not progressing or feeling like he's failing in something, we can always remind them of something else some other time when they did something else well. So we have to resist, uh, the idea of rescuing the children from every little pitfall, from every little time when they're failing. Giving them the opportunity to push themselves, but then not expecting things that are beyond their uh, abilities or their frustrations as well.

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> Speaker B>Those are just some of the things. Um, there are so many other things, uh, we can use our family to make connections. So when, uh, something happens, we can say, oh, that happened in such and such a year. That's when grandma was a little girl. And we can encourage them to make, uh, connections between events and people that they've read about or studied in school. And then if you encourage them to plug in the dates and look at the experience from members, uh, of their family or people in their community that they're familiar with, they begin to get kind of an overall picture.

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> Speaker B>So they see that there are overlapping events and how history, uh, seemingly can be related to things that at first glance might seem unrelated. And as they learn more and more, they enhance their comprehension and develop, uh, a greater worldview. And they can see the bigger part of history, how these things are all connected and uh, related. And that in turn helps them to encourage critical thinking because they can see the things that are, uh, connected more easily. And then they'll be able to create their own parallels and they'll be able to come up with their own examples, uh, of how other things fit in.

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> Speaker B>So it's kind of like a blossoming, uh. I really like timelines and getting kids to use a period of time to help them see, um, events, people and the whole overlapping of how things might come together.

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> Speaker B>Then again, grandparents can play a big role because, um, I say that grandparents, uh, uh, always play an indispensable role in a child's life, even though today some of the grandparents might not be as close as they once were. And we live in a society where uh, we no longer have the extended family model where everyone lived very close to each other for the different generations. But kids look at grandparents, um, as a kind of um, bridge, a kind of unjudgmental network of support, uh, because they're a little bit more distant from their grandparents than their parents. They don't see them as quite, ah, as judgmental. And the grandparents are kind of the guardians of the family traditions, how things have been passed down from generations. So they can go to their grandparents and ask them to tell stories of what it was like when they were growing up. And, um, the kinds of schools they went to, the kind of events they went to, uh, maybe even a different language. Their grandparents may be familiar with a totally different language, uh, and it gives them an understanding of their roots, their identity, and that's all, again, a part of their foundation. And then their grandparents have so much more experience than their parents, and they can look at their grandparents, um, for practical life skills, teaching them how to do things, uh, that they've had a lifetime to learn, whether it's a skill like, ah, a mechanical skill, or it's, um, experience with career choices. You know, how grandparents may have had different careers and be able to talk to children about, uh, the benefits and the pitfalls of leading different types of lifestyles and living, uh, in different kinds of situations. So I think grandparents, too, can be an important bridge in opening up a child's experiences, to be able to think uh, critically and to examine, uh, the possibilities of different ways of handling things. So again, more opportunity to do critical thinking. They may have completely different outlook, um, on the problems of today because their experiences leading up, ah, to today and living in such different situations, because our technology and how our communication has changed so dramatically in just so, uh, a few decades that they are able to open up a child's world to, uh, again, to history, to how things would have been different had they grown up just 30 or 40 years earlier.

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> Speaker A>Well, tell us about your book and tell us where we can get it and what we can expect to find when we read it.

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> Speaker B>Well, my books, and there are now 15 of them, uh, are all, as I said, encouraging children to think critically, to look at people, events, places, and to, uh, express their own thinking and opinions. So some of them are very familiar places like the Statue of Liberty or Mount Rushmore. Some, uh, of them, uh, are at the homes of presidents. So I take the children to Monticello. I take the children to Mount Vernon, where George Washington lived. I take them to Hyde park, the summer home of FDR. Some of them are connected with other disciplines. So they are not only talking about history, but they're talking about nature, uh, and, uh, exploration, where they might find history, but they will also find other subjects of interest. So I have a book on Sequoia national Park. We talk a lot about science in that book. We talk about the history of how the native Americans guided the first explorers to the park. Uh, but we also talk about the differences of the sequoia and the redwood trees, how they grow, um, the nature, uh, uh, of, uh, wildlife in the national parks.

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> Speaker B>I, uh, have, um, books that explore different problems in history and how they were handled, uh, perhaps in an most perfect way. So we talk about native american rights. In my book about Mount Rushmore, we talk about how the native, um, Americans are now building their own monument. Not to the presidents, but they're building the monument to crazy horse, the chief, ah, of the Lakota Sioux, whose lands were taken from them very wrongly because we gave them a treaty, told them that we were giving them the land, and then we took it back. Uh, we asked children, what do they think about this? Was it right? Was it wrong? So then we talk about the Un, and we talk about modern indigenous rights. We talk about things like the environment. So, um, we talk about, uh, how many of the national parks today have pollution.

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> Speaker B>How should we be handling that?

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> Speaker B>What can we do to solve some of these problems? We talk about African Americans. We talk about how, uh, on the battleship, um. Uh, the african, uh, american, um, Alonzo swan was given a bronze star.

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> Speaker B>He stayed and rescued the ship from a japanese kamikaze attack, and then he was given a bronze star. Almost his entire unit was wiped out. He, uh, thought that the unit needed to be vindicated. And for 50 years he labored until he was finally awarded the naval cross, the highest honor. We talk about the north Pole. In my North Pole book, we talk about little known, uh, Matthew Henson, who accompanied to Perry to the North Pole. And not only did he accompany them, he pretty much planned all of the explorations, uh, and was instrumental in getting him there. So he was really the first african american explorer. So we talk about people, uh, in with Lincoln, Anderson, Rufford Abbott, the black surgeon who tried to get into the union, uh, army in the civil war and couldn't, but then worked in an army hospital, became a friend of Abraham Lincoln and his wife, uh, all kinds of things that children don't necessarily think about, maybe not know about, uh, and we ask them to think critically, to come up with their own solution. So those are some of the books, um, and some of the opportunities for children to develop critical thinking. I also have a YouTube channel where I do my own teaching. I do mini videos, uh, to stimulate critical thinking on all kinds of subjects, not just history. It might be math, it might be language, it might be fact and opinion, encouraging children to be able to tell the difference between facts and opinions, uh, exercises to develop critical thinking and so on. And then I have other resources on my social media, uh, for parents and teachers to use. I have a blog where I recommend children's books.

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> Speaker B>I write advice articles for parents and teachers, uh, and develop curriculum resources for them, uh, to look to. And maybe if they decide they could use them, they can use them as well. So, uh, my website is kind of like a one stop for go ahead.

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> Speaker A>And give out all of these.

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> Speaker B>Um, the website is very easy. The title of my book series, it's little miss history travels to. And then whichever book we're talking about travels to Ellis island, the north Pole, the Statue of Liberty, the website is simply littlemishistory.com.

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> Speaker B>And from that website, uh, you can look at the books, you can look at the reviews, you can see where to purchase them, but you can also get all of those other resources. So you can click on any one of my social media channels. Uh, you can get to my YouTube channel and access the videos. You can get to my LinkedIn channel, my blog, uh, my Pinterest board, any of those. Uh, just click on the link and they will be taken to that link. Or they can contact me directly because I have a pop up, um, where they can message me, or they can email me directly at that, uh, email.

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> Speaker A>Okay, we got about five minutes left, so close us out with some final thoughts. So let us know about anything that you're working on that's upcoming that people need to know about.

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> Speaker B>I am working. Uh, the next book will be, uh, Alaska. And we'll be going through the southeast passage, which is, uh, the interesting part of Alaska. We'll be looking at the old mining towns. Um, we'll be looking at, um, the, uh, glaciers. We'll be looking at the native american groups, uh, and some native Americans have, um, their own customs and traditions, which are very different and very strong still today. So, uh, we'll be, uh, looking at the history, the wildlife, the different types of environment. Alaska, of course, is called the last frontier. Uh, it is a, uh, very interesting place. Uh, and so much opportunity for children to learn about so many different things, whether it be nature, uh, uh, whether it be geology, whether it be the native american group, the many, many native american groups who still live in, uh, around Alaska and who still live in very traditional ways in many aspects.

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> Speaker B>So it's a good contrast of an opportunity to see how the past has played such an important part in developing Alaska, and then also to see what's going on now and where is it going to be going in the future. Because there are so many directions, uh, that could be possibilities for its future.

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> Speaker A>All, uh, right, ladies and gentlemen, littlemishistory.com. Check out everything that Barbara's, too. Uh, you can help your kids out with this information.

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> Speaker A>Go pick up all of her books and check out our YouTube channel and everything that she's up to. If you have any guests or suggestion topics, Cjackson 102 at Cox. Net is the place to send them.

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> Speaker A>As always, thank you for listening. And Barbara, thank you so much for joining us.

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> Speaker B>Thank you so much, Curtis. I enjoyed our conversation.

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> Speaker A>For more information on the living the Dream podcast, visit www.djcurveball.com.

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> Speaker A>Until next time, stay focused on living the dream. Dream.