Ashley Fallon of Empower4Life educates Nestor about helping local kids find shelter so they can learn

The local teachers and helpers powering up Empower4Life provide educational and resource programs for children experiencing homelessness, including partnering with shelters and schools. Ashley Fallon and Trish Woodward join Nestor at Pizza John’s in Essex for “A Cup Of Soup Or Bowl” week to emphasize the importance of addressing basic needs to ensure children can focus on their education around the beltway.

Ashley Fallon from Empower4Life and Trish Woodward from Camp Opportunity discussed their efforts to support homeless and at-risk youth in Baltimore, Harford, and Cecil Counties. Empower4Life, founded by Jennifer Koco, provides educational and resource programs for children experiencing homelessness, including partnering with shelters and schools. They emphasized the importance of addressing basic needs to ensure children can focus on their education. Ashley highlighted their initiatives like the holiday drive, back-to-school drive, and summer camp. Trish shared details about Camp Opportunity, a summer camp for children who have experienced abuse or neglect. Both organizations aim to empower and support these children to overcome their challenges and succeed.

Action Items

• [ ] Organize and run Empower for Life’s annual golf tournament as a major fundraiser scheduled for May, including volunteer coordination and fundraising logistics
• [ ] Host volunteer group sessions at the Kingsville office to pack care packages and program materials (coordinate schedule, prepare materials, and run the session)
• [ ] Continue and expand the Take Action Thursday initiative to include additional partner organizations so weekly needs from shelters and schools can be met
• [ ] Coordinate the holiday project for the third weekend in December, including overall event planning, community sponsorship logistics, and assigning Santa for the event

Outline

Introduction and Segment Overview

• Nestor Aparicio introduces the segment, mentioning the location at Pizza John’s in Essex and the sponsors involved.
• Nestor talks about the upcoming schedule, including visits to Acosta’s and Timon, and the final day of the show.
• Nestor mentions the previous segment with Trish Woodward from Camp Opportunity and the Maryland Lottery’s Candy Cane Cash giveaway.
• Nestor explains his booking process for guests and introduces Trish Woodward to introduce her friend Ashley Fallon.

Empower for Life and Ashley Fallon’s Background

• Trish Woodward introduces Ashley Fallon, explaining her connection to Empower for Life and its founder, Jennifer Koco.
• Ashley shares her background, mentioning her teaching role at Kenwood High School and her involvement with Empower for Life.
• Ashley explains the mission of Empower for Life, which aims to help homeless and at-risk students in Baltimore, Harford, and Cecil Counties.
• Ashley discusses the challenges faced by students experiencing homelessness and the organization’s efforts to support them.

Challenges and Solutions for Homeless Students

• Ashley describes the various forms of homelessness students face, including living in hotels or moving from home to home.
• Ashley explains the role of Empower for Life in working with schools and shelters to provide support and resources.
• Nestor shares his personal experiences growing up in Colgate and Dundalk, highlighting the poverty and challenges faced by children in his community.
• Ashley emphasizes the importance of addressing the basic needs of students to ensure they can focus on their education.

Empower for Life’s Programs and Community Engagement

• Ashley details the educational programs and activities Empower for Life offers at partner shelters, including yoga, Pilates, and other engaging activities.
• Ashley explains the impact of these programs on the children, helping them to stay motivated and engaged.
• Ashley discusses the importance of using appropriate terminology, such as “unhomed” instead of “homeless,” to avoid stigmatizing the students.
• Ashley provides information on how the community can get involved, including volunteering and donating to Empower for Life.

Holiday and Back-to-School Drives

• Ashley highlights the organization’s major events, such as the holiday drive and back-to-school drive, which provide essential items to students in need.
• Ashley shares the success of the first overnight summer camp for children living in poverty, which was held in partnership with Camp Opportunity.
• Ashley describes the impact of the camp on the children, including activities like goat yoga and swimming.
• Ashley encourages the community to support these events and get involved in volunteering.

Teaching History and Media Literacy

• Nestor and Ashley discuss the importance of teaching history and media literacy in schools.
• Ashley explains her approach to teaching history, focusing on making the content relevant to students’ lives and teaching them critical thinking skills.
• Ashley emphasizes the importance of teaching students how to discern between real and fake news and the impact of social media.
• Nestor shares his own experiences with media literacy and the challenges of teaching history in the current political climate.

Empower for Life’s Impact and Future Plans

• Ashley discusses the future plans for Empower for Life, including expanding their programs and reaching more students in need.
• Ashley highlights the organization’s recent recognition, including being named a CNN Hero, and the impact of this recognition on their work.
• Ashley encourages the community to visit the Empower for Life website, sign up for the newsletter, and get involved in their programs.
• Nestor and Ashley conclude the segment by emphasizing the importance of supporting organizations like Empower for Life and Camp Opportunity.

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

Empower for Life, homeless youth, educational programs, Baltimore County, social media, volunteer opportunities, holiday drive, summer camp, media literacy, civics education, community support, partner shelters, resource projects, childhood poverty, advocacy.

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SPEAKERS

Ashley Fallon, Trish Woodward, Nestor Aparicio

Nestor Aparicio  00:00

Welcome home. We are W, N, S, T, am 1570 to Baltimore. We are Baltimore, positive, positively here at Pizza John’s. We are in beautiful Essex, back River, neck Road, my childhood haunt for pizza down here in the homeland. But Dundalk is represented here. Trish Woodward’s. Here she is from Camp opportunity. She’s been my friend for a billion years. We went through that in the last segment. I did not cry, but I came close. It’s all brought to my friends at the Maryland lottery. Candy Cane cash is our giveaway for now. I’m down to my like last few I actually got some leftover Raven scratch offs here. We’re gonna be Acosta’s on Friday and Timon, and then we’re shutting this thing down after five days in a row. So I get everything out for next week. It is a cup of soup or bowl also brought to you by friends at GBMC. And we had them here earlier talking about all sorts of domestic abuse and crazy things that are going on in our world, trying to save the world, make the world a better place. Trish does kids at camp opportunity and Trish, I’m gonna let you introduce your friend Ashley, because just some of these what I do in the old days, when I didn’t have any listeners, is I would beg everybody to come on and beg everybody to tell everybody. Now what I do is I book my friends on a little bit out, and then about a week before, I just throw it out to the cosmos, and I’m like, I’m doing pub Super Bowl. Anybody want to come hit me? And then people like her recommend people like you. And then other people recommend other people. And the next thing I know, I wind up having good people introduce me to more good people. That’s right? Is that right? That right? Yeah, what is empower for life? And how did you find Ashley?

Trish Woodward  01:30

Oh, so I knew about Empower for life since it started. So Jennifer Koco’s is the executive director there. She couldn’t be here today, and she started it. She was a school what was she? What was her teacher? Yeah, health teacher. And she just found through students in the system that they were living in homelessness, and decided she could not do anything about it. And so she started in Power for Life. And then along the way, Ashley was one of her students. So Ashley Fallon and Ashley has been along for the ride.

Ashley Fallon  02:05

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So Kevin, High School. I’m an Essex Girl, blue birds.

Nestor Aparicio  02:08

This ain’t your first time at Pizza. John, not now. You know I I grew up Colgate and Trish grew up in Eastwood, every my mother, my step brothers, every neighbor I ever had, older brother and sister went to Kenwood. So in I went to Colgate Elementary. 1973 I was going to go to Kenwood. 70 470-576-7879, I was going to go to Kenwood. 1980 I went to Holabird. And they’re like you might be going to Dundalk. So we wound up getting switched out. But everybody in my neighborhood before 1980 was Kenwood, so I believe that was going to be a blue bird at one point. Had that turn out for you over there.

Ashley Fallon  02:52

It’s great. I mean, I teach there now, actually your husband is my boss. Yeah. What do you teach?

Nestor Aparicio  02:57

History, oh, civics. Here we go. Yep, these kids understand the Constitution. They sure do. All right, show up every day to learn about it, all right. Well, make sure the President understands that too. One step ahead of him. I’ll try. I’ll try. Yeah. I mean, I understand where we are. What is in

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Ashley Fallon  03:13

power for life. So Empower for life again. Is the brainchild of Jen. So she will us in BCPS as a whole, we see kids that are experiencing homelessness, whether that is, you know, literally not having a home, or whether that is jumping from hotel to hotel, or whether that is, you know, even from home to home of it’s not a parent or guardian in Essex anywhere. We also work with shelters partner shelters within Harford County and Cecil County as well. So we work directly with the school system, and then we also work with partner shelters across three counties, Cecil, Baltimore and Harford.

Nestor Aparicio  03:50

Entryway to this is trying to negotiate who has this problem, right? Like, I think in any case, thing I’ve learned so much, and, you know, we didn’t grow up in the best shape in Colgate and Dundalk, right? I mean, you went school a couple years after me, Trisha, not about four or five years apart. When I was a little kid, first and second grade. It’s early 70s, some of the kids in my school, like, got free lunch, and they had a ticket. Every day. They had tickets. And, you know, I wanted a ticket because it was a free lunch. And you’re six years old, and you don’t know, seven years old, you’re like, Jimmy Richie, they get they get free what? Mommy, Daddy, well, you don’t want a free lunch. They’re here, okay? And trying to explain this to someone young, I’m 50 years out on that, and I still go back and think about the kind of poverty that maybe I grew up with. It didn’t, I didn’t that. I didn’t know about that. My parents would invite kids to our house to have meals. I very rarely went to anybody else’s house to have a meal, and I don’t even my parents were my parents lost their son in 1969 they adopted me. They adopt they fostered other children. My parents were like salt of the earth. Feed anybody. Probably the reason i. Do a cup of Super Bowl, quite frankly, but I wouldn’t have known who really had a bad circumstance, homelessness, though, and Colgate. I think we would have known that to some degree, because we all lived on top of each other in row homes. We all played little league and let you know somebody went to school and they didn’t have a home. I think we would have somebody would have figured that out. How does that happen in the modern world? Like, how do you find out that this is a problem, unless a child, or even their parents admit it?

Ashley Fallon  05:31

Um, so with BCPS, there’s usually so Jen’s job now is a people personnel worker, so she’s working directly with and for the advocacy of students who are unhomed. And so she is

Nestor Aparicio  05:44

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unhome That’s a word I’m not, you know, that’s a that’s a new word for me, unhoned.

Ashley Fallon  05:49

Yeah, wow. We just don’t like homelessness as a general. You don’t want it to become the identity of the students or the kids that we’re dealing with. And so they are kids who are great and have intelligence and empathy and, you know, caring nature. They are showing up school Absolutely, and thus start showing up to school every day. We’re trying to make sure that the barriers that are in place for them are, you know, limited, that we can make sure that they have every chance that they have to break cycles of what the things that they’re dealing with, the trauma that they’re dealing with, so that they can, you know, prosper.

Nestor Aparicio  06:25

So how do we find you? Give me websites. Help me out here. Give me the whole background. What can folks do to help you? Absolutely.

Ashley Fallon  06:31

So we are at WWW dot Empower for life. Md.org, we are very big on social media. We make sure that we are trying to engage every aspect of the community. So whether that is adults, children, teenagers, we want to make sure that everybody knows that they have the ability to give back to those around them. And so we do a lot of different projects throughout the year, the biggest being our educational programs. So we take a team of trained professionals, whether that be teachers, social workers, school counselors, and then people who have, you know, niche hobbies, so, yoga teachers, Pilates teachers, pound fish. You already got me going here, absolutely so. And what they do is we take a team into each of our five partner shelters once a week, and we do activities with the kids, and we get them up, we get them moving. Because the conditions of the shelters, although they are there to do something great in providing the shelter, a lot of the programs are geared towards adults, and so we go in there and make sure that the kids have something to get them up, to get them moving, to get them motivated, to get rid of some energy. And our team loves doing it, and they’re just so passionate about the things that they do and how they do it. And, you know, the kids respond equally as loving back to them.

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Nestor Aparicio  07:51

You mentioned shelter houses, shelter party. Educate me on that absolutely. So we learn words and terms here on how, you know, like, like, just more appropriate ways to maybe deal with it, certainly more modern ways than saying homeless, right?

Ashley Fallon  08:06

Absolutely, absolutely. And so we are capturing the major transient shelters in Baltimore, Hartford and Cecil County, our biggest being Eastern family resource center that is right behind Franklin Square. And we just want to make sure that even in their transient nature, we are meeting kids where they’re at. And we, addition to the educational programs, we are also providing resources, so toiletry, items, clothes, bed sheets, things like that, anything that we can help outfit where they are, where they’re sleeping. We also do a back to school drive where we provide school supplies, a book bag, a new outfit before school starts, as well as a huge, huge, huge holiday drive in which we our community sponsors each kid that you know is either in the shelters or our school system, and you know, they have gifts under their tree.

Nestor Aparicio  09:03

So this is shelter over by Franklin Square. You said that’s one of them that would feed your school or overly or imagine all of the above, all the above. Okay, how many people are we talking about here? And we are talking about kids who have parents correct, and their parents are there with them, correct. So these are not orphaned children, correct? Okay, so usually single parents, sometimes both.

Ashley Fallon  09:27

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It’s a mix. It really just, there’s no bounce to it. It’s just what kind of situations each in particular kids is dealing with, and then usually their siblings. So like our pbws, who work hard and BCPS, are dealing with pub pupil personnel, all right, yep, that’s what Jen is, okay?

Nestor Aparicio  09:46

I yeah, I got it. Okay. Go ahead, yep. So they are just, would this be like a traditional guidance counselor, as I would know it, as a kid back in talking, no

Ashley Fallon  09:53

different, an expansion of that. So school counselors, they are doing the hard work on the ground, but it. Just a different set they’re dealing with. This course

Nestor Aparicio  10:03

needs a little more complex, let’s say, is that fair to say, Yeah, more complex issues?

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Ashley Fallon  10:09

Yes, they’re dealing with, you know, I would say high, higher up issues. So they’re dealing with things like matters of residency. They are dealing with the court systems. They’re dealing with, you know, higher county systems and school counseling is mainly they’re doing the hard work on the ground in the school. They assist Gen, but P, P, W and school counseling work together to make sure that the kid is getting what they need.

Nestor Aparicio  10:35

How many people are Hispanic like me on the east side of town? Most my our elementary school is 74% Hispanic, and the kids in the neighborhood have the shades pulled down like Anne Frank, and that’s what’s been going on in this county because of the creep run in the country. So I’m not you teach history for a living, so I’m sure you’re well educated on that, but that concerns me as much as anything when I when I go through the neighborhood I grew up in that the shades are pulled down because every kid is afraid of being treated like Anne Frank, and I that that’s a new place for me, even in a couple of years from where we were last year, the year before that and the year before that. What’s going on the east side? How many of these children are and families could be of Hispanic descent? I mean, obviously citizens too, right? I mean, you know, presenting as much as what people believe. We don’t have kids in school here aren’t citizens, right? I mean, like, that’s part of, like, being able to figure this out so that we are safe, right?

Ashley Fallon  11:32

Yeah, absolutely, and we don’t tend to, we try to make sure that we are just meeting the kids as humans, yes, so we don’t really rely so much on the statistics as to how many kids that we’re helping or what demographic they represent, or anything like that. It is just, you know, what are the needs of this child and how can we help them? And I would say, you know, we tend to when we first started, we cater towards school age children, so five and above, and now, because of the nature of our shelters and the siblings that are coming with, you know, we’ve had kids in our educational programs that are a year old, and they just come and they just want to play and be loved, and, You know, they just want to engage with their siblings. And things like that. So although our programming is mostly geared towards five and above, we have found that being inclusive of everybody just helps better the you know, Aurora that you know is around the shelters for inclusion, absolutely like that, absolutely. And, you know, we also launched recently an infants and toddlers program. So we have a teacher that came to us who has a passion and licensure in early education, early intervention. And so we are actually running a program at one of our partner shelters that really targets, you know, specific strategies of you have this little baby, they’re beautiful, they’re, you know, the world is their oyster. And, you know, how can we help them, and how can we make sure that they have the skills and development, you know, to continue to grow, so that, as we’re seeing them,

Nestor Aparicio  13:16

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social, shelter, right? Shelter, air, the things we all need, right?

Ashley Fallon  13:20

Yep, and I think that’s the big thing with Empower is when Jen started it, it was, you know, my kids at school are not learning, and it’s the same now, even in my classroom and Derek’s classroom. And you know, if kids are not if those three basic needs are not met, you know, it’s really hard for me to tell them that history is the most important thing that they’re supposed to be focusing on in the 90 minutes that they have me, or in the 90 minutes that they had Jen when she was a teacher at Kenwood as well. Like, it is very hard for us to say content over basic needs, and so that is kind of hungry, can’t learn absolutely and so, you know, Jen really took that and hit the ground running with it in terms of, you know, I want to make sure that I’m eliminating barriers so that kids feel like they can secure education in a comfortable way. Yes, absolutely.

Nestor Aparicio  14:08

Ashley Fallon’s here. My dear friend Trish Woodward’s also here. She represents camp opportunity. You hear that when the last segment we’re doing, empower for life, teaching kids to get happy nothing somebody from the website here, empower for life, md.org, is the way to do that. Mission is a Baltimore, Maryland based 501, c3 nonprofit organization that serves Baltimore and Harford County. Harford County, that’s I didn’t know that. I mentioned that homeless youth through programs to teach them how to get and stay happy and healthy. The mission is to serve and teach children to develop the skills needed to be healthy and productive in school, feel empowered to overcome challenges they face and aspire to learn, grow and succeed the rest of their lives. Pretty succinct, right? Absolutely. So how can people help you out? You got events going on? Get out to the website. Get the calendar. What’s first thing up?

Ashley Fallon  14:55

So the next thing that we have coming up, aside from the launch of our educational program. Times, which we launched in March. We the next volunteer opportunity would be our golf tournament in May. I know a lot of you like golf, absolutely. Who doesn’t love

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Nestor Aparicio  15:09

golf? I’ll drive the beer cart, but

Ashley Fallon  15:12

so that is one of our two major fundraisers. So a cool thing about Empower for life is we just celebrated our 10 year anniversary last year, and we rely, we do not rely on state or local or federal funding.

Nestor Aparicio  15:28

CNN gave you that big award. Absolutely gave me a word. October 17.

Ashley Fallon  15:32

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There you go. Yep, I’m telling you, she’s a superstar. So in 2017 she was named CNN Hero. And if you asked me, every year since then is the same, like she just grows and she just grows the programs and, you know, makes sure that every kid she meets, you know, is taken care of in the best way possible.

Nestor Aparicio  15:52

That’s what I love. That’s absolutely did I get it all in? Did we miss anything here?

Ashley Fallon  15:55

Um, yeah, I think that the biggest thing is just visit our website, sign up for our newsletter, we just with our 10 year anniversary. We just launched a newsletter where we’ll be sending out, save the dates, things that we are going to be doing we are last year for the very first time, we partnered with camp opportunity here for sharing camp Spencer over the summer. And so camp opportunity did a two week segment, and then we took the last week, and we were able to host our first overnight summer camp for kids that are living in poverty. And it was the most impactful, you know, event that I think empowers hosted so far.

Nestor Aparicio  16:36

And people in that circumstance don’t meet other people in that circumstance, right? I had a feral cat colony on here. It’s not like that. People who are homeless don’t necessarily interact with other people or had those challenges to come together, right? Yeah. I mean, they living in a shelter that’s a similar environment.

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Ashley Fallon  16:53

Yes, yes. But one of the things that empower has expanded along is that we’re also dealing with kids that, you know, have homes, but they are living in severe poverty, so they’re not within the shelters, but they are, you know, the heat might not be on, yeah, they’re also dealing with, you know, they don’t know where their next meal is coming from, and things like that. So, you know, it was a lot of a mix of the kids. So we had kids that are coming from our partner shelters, and we had kids that are coming from extreme poverty conditions in BCPS as well. And so I just it was the most impactful for both the kids and our crew that we took in there. And, you know, everybody stayed overnight, including the staff. And it just the kids loved it. We did goat yoga. We did Ninja Warrior course, little goats, baby goats are big, um, they were baby goats and they were the cutest thing. They were the

Nestor Aparicio  17:48

people love baby I did yoga with kangaroos once

Ashley Fallon  17:53

on Easter shore. That sounds amazing as well. Kind of

Nestor Aparicio  17:56

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poop near where else? Yeah.

Ashley Fallon  17:58

Well, you get that? Yeah, I, I

Nestor Aparicio  18:02

don’t need to mix. I can go visit the goats and then do the yoga. It’s like the people do the yoga and the wine or the yoga and the art. Just the yoga is good, and I’ll do the art later. Yeah, I don’t mix things like that.

Ashley Fallon  18:12

Absolutely. Goat yoga for these folks, they loved it. I’d love it too, but I wouldn’t get much yoga done. Yep, I can’t really say much yoga got no, that’s what

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Nestor Aparicio  18:22

I’m saying. But, I mean, who cares? There’ll be no yoga being done, you

Ashley Fallon  18:26

know? Yes,

Nestor Aparicio  18:28

pizza and yoga. Eat the pizza. Yoga won’t get done, right? So we got to be careful with that. Yeah? Goat yoga. All right.

Ashley Fallon  18:34

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Goat yoga. We had an Olympic sized pool, and we had kids that learned how to swim for the very

Nestor Aparicio  18:40

first time she does that in the summer

Ashley Fallon  18:41

too, yeah. And that kind of stuff is just, you know, that’ll be a memory that they have, that’s core for the rest of their lives, and that’s what you’re smiling, yeah, yeah, it’s really what we’re here to do.

Nestor Aparicio  18:54

Ashley Fallon’s here you teach history. You’ll stay into another segment on American history. And absolutely right. Which one do you like? Which one you like?

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Ashley Fallon  19:05

Number one, 225, what’s your biggest just in terms of the Bill of Rights you would term any of them right now, it’s the First Amendment. You’re big first Yeah, yeah.

Nestor Aparicio  19:15

I’ve been freely speaking for a long time, maybe trying to take it away from me. Yeah? Yeah, yeah. Somebody told me earlier, we stop.

Ashley Fallon  19:24

I’m like, stop. What? Yeah, like, just stop.

Nestor Aparicio  19:28

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Well, I was talking about the criminal running the country raped and stop. No, that’s what she said, that I’m not stopping. We’re not gonna so I like talking about important things. So absolutely teaching, let’s go off in power. Let’s talk about history for a minute. What did what does it? What do you teach? What grade

Ashley Fallon  19:47

right now? So BCBS is doing a curriculum change. So, um, okay, yes, I can

Nestor Aparicio  19:53

tell you it’s been 45 years. I did seventh grade. I did American history. Eighth grade, I did. Manifest destiny. Ninth grade, I did world history. That was how I you know, seventh grade was more Bill of Rights, Constitution all that. Eighth was more like How the West Was Won. And absolutely, you know, the American Journey from the revolution through World War One, World War Two. We didn’t touch much on Vietnam, because it was a little, I mean, what to say about it? Controversial, yeah, we won the war that we should have got in. We killed a lot of people in the melee we all talked about. So that’s how I learned history. And everything since then has been media literacy. Absolutely media literacy. I had, I partnered with Coppin State, so I had a young lady on just talking about media literacy, something to hear a 19 year old junior, you know, cop and talk to me about media literacy when I’m thinking like I was the guy putting the newspaper together. And I always say to people, is the greatest thing in the world that ever happens work in the paper, because I have sort of an internal bullshit detector that kind of came with Is that a fact? Is that true, fact checking, all of that media literacy is, is the thing that I see missing in my social media, in a general sense, that they weren’t paying attention. In seventh grade history with Mr. Schlee, or eighth grade with Miss Simkins, or ninth grade with Mr. Metzger, 10th grade with Mr. Thomas. I mean, I remember all my teachers. I remember the subject matter because I my dad stood in soup lines in 1929 when Herbert Hoover lied to him and never voted for Republican again. My dad was from Scranton, Pennsylvania, settled on the corner here at Mars estates. Was married at Mark Mount Carmel. He was the one that was going to send me to Kenwood. They lived on Taylor Avenue in Essex. So my whole background was Essex, Joe’s in hands corner. You hear that? Yep, nobody only Essex people know that. That’s Joe’s in hands corner. So the Thunderbird, I was telling that story the other day here about the milk shakes. Remember that when kids so the history part of America and what’s taught in school, and what reality is, I wonder what you’re allowed to teach. That’s kind of where I am at this point, because it’s bizarre what’s going on, because what you’re allowed to teach is true and right, but the guy running the country says it’s wrong. That’s kind of crazy. I don’t know how conflicted I could be as a 16 year old if Miss Simpkins and Mr. Mr. Metzger were telling me one thing, and Ronald Reagan was telling me, No, what the teachers telling you is not true. That’s a weird place to be, and I never thought we’d be there. But as a history teacher, I have to put you on that.

Ashley Fallon  22:23

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I mean, I think that there is nothing, I mean, aside from my work with Empower, there is nothing I love more than teaching, and there’s nothing I love more than teaching history and interacting with my kids and the brilliance that they bring to my classroom. And so I think that, you know, it’s not so much about what I’m teaching. It’s the skills that they’re building while we’re learning it. So, you know, BCPS is very you know, they provide curriculums. They make sure that, you know, we are teaching diverse voices that we are, you know, talking about women and people of color and people that have been the history is generally left out. And they do that because that’s history. You know, I learned

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Nestor Aparicio  23:01

about Martin Luther King on the street Absolutely, because they wasn’t coming in Colgate elementary 1976 Believe me, it just wasn’t. Yep.

Ashley Fallon  23:10

And so, you know, my job, how I see it, is to teach them to have the skills to, you know, when they see news, how can they tell, you know, if it’s AI, if it’s real, if it’s truthful, if it’s honest. And you know, we spend a lot of time doing that, and they really do try to do that, because they’re on social media and they’re young and they’re, you know, they know that they’re impressionable. Like, that’s not something that is, they’re ignorant to they know that they’re impressionable. But, you know, they’ll be on Tiktok and they’re like, you know, Miss Fallon. This is AI like, I’m so proud of you, because that is, you know, you could just see a video and believe it as fact. And you know, I always tell them they’re not getting anything out of that, if that’s what they’re doing. Like, if they see something, they need to investigate and make sure that they’re getting it from multiple sources and specials are credible, absolutely. And you know, they are. They’re the age of social media. You know, I was the digital age. I went to school in the 2000s

Nestor Aparicio  24:08

2010 I would have cheated on all my term papers.

Ashley Fallon  24:12

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Well, that’s I, you know,

Nestor Aparicio  24:13

calculators came in 70s and early 80s. They got on the watches. And that would have happened five years earlier. I never would have gotten a times table question wrong. You know what I mean? Like, literally, I go back to doing times tables in 1978 by 1982 we had calculators. Everybody in school had one on their watch. Absolutely. I’m like, how’s the math teacher gonna hold this? And that was 45 years ago. I can’t imagine AI videos. But specifically to the Constitution and history and what is and what isn’t and what was, and the Holocaust and civil rights and redlining and just all of these issues of controversy along politics in America that are not based in fact or media literacy or history or anything that you would have ever been commissioned to. Each that are being propagandized. I don’t know there’s other words. So when a young person comes up to you and says, My dad, he said, Man, he’s got a gun in a truck, and he loves jumping, and Trump said this, and you’re like, but that constitution says that, and the my history class says that, am I? That must be a really difficult place to be for any teacher, I think because it’s everywhere. It’s not it’s left or rights, everywhere

Ashley Fallon  25:26

here absolutely. And I think, like, you know, that’s my job is not to tell them so much what the Constitution is. It’s, you know, my first question, if you know, I had a student that came up and said, that is, what do you think about that? You know, what are, what is? Why are you thinking Absolutely? And then, you know, encouraging them to, you know, seek out that information. Like I’m there as a resource. I will never not be there as a resource for them, but my job is not to tell them what it says. My job is to give them the means to show them how to find it, and they take that with them post high school too. Like we’re getting them ready for college. We’re getting them ready for the job force. We’re getting them ready for trade school. Or, you know, whatever they decide to do, military, all of that. And you know their job no matter what. And that’s my favorite part of history, is it’s going to be relevant to know this stuff and to know their rights, and to know, you know what they can and cannot do and how to do things safely, and you know, all of that kind of stuff. And you’re seeing that right now with, you know, the protest with ice and all of that kind of stuff. Like, kids have a voice. They know they have a voice. They want to be, you know, kind of they want to make sure that they’re doing it right, and that they’re doing it impactfully and safely, and, you know, speaking up for their peers and things like that. And so my job is not so much to tell them what to think, or, you know, what something says. It’s the hand of the Constitution. It’s to give them the tools to be able to seek it out, and, you know, make their own opinion about it. How long you be teaching history? Eight years. Eight years. Still a teaching baby? You do seem

Nestor Aparicio  26:55

a little younger for us, I’ll give that. But since Trump was elected, I started this show with a history teacher, Mr. Moeller from Dundalk High was

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Ashley Fallon  27:05

a history teacher. My husband teaches at Dundalk high. Well, became what you teach, Math.

Nestor Aparicio  27:10

Math, all right, I know it’s right on up to algebra one. It’s over with. For me, I’m lost.

Ashley Fallon  27:15

He teaches AP Statistics, yeah, you know they’ve kicked me out of

Nestor Aparicio  27:20

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the Dundalk Hall of Fame for that. But I think when it comes to like history, and once Trump got elected, and I started thinking about running for mayor in 1819, I put Baltimore positive together, and Mueller’s bringing all these people at educators, politicians, left side, right side, city, county, everything, it really and Don and I talked about this a lot, because when I took history, I’m trying to think it was called Social Studies, right? That’s what the term was, social studies, and my parents would call it history. That’s what my parents are. You taking History, Social Studies? And you know, of course, that sounded a little to Dr King, and a little to 1979 or whatever, but civics was probably what it was called, 1935 when my parents went to school. Then it became history, then it became social studies. You call it, what do you? Said? You’re a history teacher, what do

Ashley Fallon  28:09

you Yes, what’s called, I teach World History and US history, but the social studies is just encompassing things like government and psychology. And you know, in college, when you’re taking those classes, you’re taking philosophy, you’re taking criminology, like any of those fall under Social Studies. And so social studies is the broader scope of it. So because Baltimore County offers electives and things like psych, you know, criminology, juvenile justice, those things are not necessarily history. History plays a large component in them. But lot of law, yeah, law stuff, absolutely. So, you know, if that’s a track, yeah, your

Nestor Aparicio  28:46

10th, 11th, 12th grader, and you’re thinking about that, I would just say civics as a word to take away from history, social studies, whatever we’re gonna call it, civics. I would say Schoolhouse Rock, you know, like, literally,

Ashley Fallon  29:00

schoolhouse rocks. We love us some bills. This is a bill of rights.

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Nestor Aparicio  29:03

What we’re Yeah, this is what the country is founded on. I think it’s the most and I’ll kiss your butt a little bit. It’s most important thing to teach. Has got to be they got to have English. To have that. Yeah, they got understand the language. So English is what my first thing. But I can’t think of anything more crucial this minute, that for the country, for bringing the society together, for where, whatever Civil War we’re headed to or we’re in. I won’t die on the side of the pedophiles, but in a general sense, understanding civics and media literacy. So if I take nothing else out of the segment, including a powerful light, which we’ll get back. But when I get a history teacher, really teaching, I don’t meet people like you much. Absolutely, to get out more often, I gotta go to peach.

Ashley Fallon  29:48

Come on, high school, yeah, they won’t let me in over there. Let me the Dundalk. Fair enough. Fair enough. Yeah, I just, you can’t just walk into school anymore. It sucks, right? Yeah, yeah. But it’s, you know, our. Jobs keep kiddos safe. So all right, just got to make sure everybody come in and lecture. Yeah? Well, I’m definitely gonna make them listen to that last line you said about how histories should be their favorite class. Like, I’m gonna make them history better be your

Nestor Aparicio  30:12

favorite class. Yeah. Well, okay, we’ll end on this, and we will end on Empower for life. But what makes history so important? Miss, History teacher, what’s wise history? Why do we who cares about what? Who cares about the hall? Who cares about World War? Who cares? Why is history important? Because I could play the jerk 14 year old boy she knows absolutely. She met me when I was one.

Ashley Fallon  30:37

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You know, I think that the biggest thing I tell my kids is we’re dealing with relevancy. Like, my favorite things to teach in the classroom are things that we can really look and they can see in their world. Like, you know, if I’m trying to teach about something from 1700s my kids are like, Miss Allen, come on, right. And I’m like, I know it’s far, but you know, last week we did a lesson on redlining, and a part of that lesson was, was redlining in Baltimore, and, you know, my kids, they, you saw their eyes light up in Dundalk, I 19, yeah, it’s a relatively new concept. You know, it’s at least Yeah. And so other people in the audience who don’t

Nestor Aparicio  31:17

know anything about it, because I didn’t know anything about it till I was 50, yep. Really, I didn’t, you know, yep.

Ashley Fallon  31:22

It’s just, it’s definitely a new term that’s come there. And the first thing that came up was redlining Absolutely.

Nestor Aparicio  31:27

Better understand that dude, because, you know, there’s neighborhoods you went into they said that’s a black neighborhood, that’s a white neighbor, that was a black neighborhood, that was a white neighborhood, and it was designed that way. It was designed that way by the government, designed that way by the banks, designed that way by lenders, designed that way by society, signed that way by guns in some cases, and some oysters, but that was the oyster. Yeah. I’m a history guy,

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Ashley Fallon  31:48

all right, man, yeah. And so we just like, you know, showing them that the work, like, the things that I’m teaching are not just, you know, hey, this isn’t a book and I’m teaching it to you. It’s this has real life implications on our world. And you know the world as you know. And most of my kids are the next election they’ll vote in. And so it’s not so much again, how do you vote and what do you vote for? You it’s just giving them the confidence and know, letting them know that they, you know, need to vote well. They need to be educated when they vote, teaching them why Voting is important and the things that it has attached to it. And you know, they’re taking government. They’re taking US history. They’re taking world history. And kids care about this absolutely. It’s just they do

Nestor Aparicio  32:34

when they’re still young, somebody’s gonna take care of me.

Ashley Fallon  32:38

Absolutely no, no. And, you know, so just history is important because it’s relevant, and it teaches us that, you know what could happen. And you know, speaking again, I’m, I’m a new mom, so I have a six month old at home, and history is important because he’s, I’d like there to be a world for him, and, you know, for the kids. You know this, right? You know,

Nestor Aparicio  33:01

8

we were talking about, it’s, uh huh, uh huh. First Steps talking about it, right?

Ashley Fallon  33:05

Yep. And in a couple years, he’ll come sit with you, and he’ll, he’ll talk with you about, you know, where he thinks the state of the world is, and, well,

Nestor Aparicio  33:11

how we fix the world we want it all. And Trump died under a prison and all these people,

Ashley Fallon  33:16

I It’s, it’s, it’s scary, it’s a lot, it’s, I think what I found with my kids, you know, they’re seeing this stuff on social media, and those they’re seeing stuff on the internet, and it’s heavy, and it’s heavy for us as adults.

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Nestor Aparicio  33:29

It’s really heavy for me. You know, this week has been heavy. I believe that as I sit here, he’s not under a prison like I cannot, I cannot fathom that this is going on. I cannot fathom it.

Trish Woodward  33:45

I You’re talking about the Epstein’s every

Nestor Aparicio  33:50

part of me, yeah, and I’ve sat here and talked to domestic violence people today. I had her resiliency on yesterday with a young lady that was entrapped in that life that could have easily been dragged into a hotel and onto that island 20 years ago, like it’s unbelievable. And I would just say history aside and your children and empower for life, you can’t gotta listen to women. Man, gotta listen. It’s gotta listen. And that’s the problem we’re having here. It’s a gender problem, it’s a power problem, and and it’s also a history problem. It’s an education problem, it’s immediate liberty. But I’m glad that you’ve brought me some power in feeling like these kids care about history, because I often think like I’ve met their parents. Have you read a book? Have you please? I’m trying to help you. I’m not the bad guy on social media spreading the gospel of the Constitution. You know? I’m just literally, there’s a reason it’s never been this way before, because this way is not right, and I feel that, and that is something that begins at 3am when I wake up, and it’s based on being so well taught in Baltimore County,

Trish Woodward  34:52

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I can tell you, at Kenwood, they have the best social studies department in

Ashley Fallon  34:57

the county, better than Dundalk. They are. I’m an Essex Girl, Nestor, they

Trish Woodward  35:01

do, they do amazing work. They’re getting those kids prepared.

Nestor Aparicio  35:06

I am at peach John’s. I’m not at squire. So more, but not the one in dundalonia. Ashley is here from Empower for life. Md.org, tell me what you do real quick, because we’ve been on the history topic

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Ashley Fallon  35:17

Absolutely So aside from my history, I am the volunteer coordinator for Empower for life. I also manage our large scale resource projects.

Nestor Aparicio  35:28

What would a volunteer do? Tell me, as a coordinator, if I want to volunteer, what does that mean?

Ashley Fallon  35:32

Absolutely so we have multiple big events throughout the year, holiday project, back to school, golf tournament, summer camp, but we also will, because we’re giving care packages, we make care packages as well as program packages, where we’ll bring groups in, whether it’s a sports team, whether it is a group that’s looking for a corporate getaway to give back, and we will bring them to our office in Kingsville, and we will just, we kind of do like a little powwow about what Empower is why we do what we do things like that. And then we get down to work so we pack care packages. We are doing positive affirmation notes, so that, you know the people at the shelter is both young and old, know that they’re loved.

Nestor Aparicio  36:16

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This is temporary. We’re gonna get we’re gonna continue to move forward, right?

Ashley Fallon  36:19

Yep. And then I always give my plug for the holiday project is the best day of the year. What is that? It is usually the third weekend in December. All right, so we’re right up on cruise Christmas week. All right, yep. And so we probably had 1500 people coming together in one weekend. You have a Santa, huh? Santa? We do this year. I have voluntold Derek that he is Santa. Kids don’t know Well, yeah, he’s, he’s fake Santa, not, right, real guy. He’s good.

Nestor Aparicio  36:54

All that. Yeah, late, late work, all right, so people can come out for that and absolutely that. Yeah, toys, things, anything, right?

Ashley Fallon  37:01

Take Action Thursdays, yes. So other programs that we have that aren’t as much volunteer driven, but they are you can give through donations and sponsorships and things like that. We have a couple initiatives. First is take action Thursday so we partner with our partner, shelters, the school system, and basically it runs on a what are the needs, and how can we help? And so we reach out to these organizations, and we’re like, is there a specific need that you have? And so we will make a post, whether, depending on who gets back to us, and it might be a family who’s lost everything in a house fire, or it might be, you know, a teenage sibling that is restarting out with her younger siblings and has nothing There’s trauma involved Absolutely. Or it might be, you know, a like supply need for infants and toddlers program like it varies when shelters were facing potential impact from the snap cuts. We did a food drive, gift card drive, making sure that the food pantries at our partner shelters had

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Nestor Aparicio  38:11

people have no idea with vulnerable populations like I’ve never had a day in my life where I didn’t know where my next meal was coming from. Fortunate, yeah. You know, living a good life. You know, we’re in the upper 2% of the world like having that, and there are people everywhere that around us, and we wouldn’t know it, and that’s you’re there to serve them absolutely.

Ashley Fallon  38:30

And so take action. Thursday is just really, you know, it’s a fruit of that. It’s making sure that we are meeting needs on a weekly basis. Our coordinator, Amanda, really does a good job just, you know, bringing together the community. We’re actually in the process of expanding that now to include and be able to ask and meet the needs of additional partners in the community.

Nestor Aparicio  38:52

Sort of measure it every Thursday, kind of, sort of, right? Well, yeah, like,

Ashley Fallon  38:55

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and, you know, I will say Our community is, they are. I don’t even have the word for it, we will put an Amazon wish list up, and within 30 minutes, we are getting phone calls because people want to purchase more things off the gift list.

Nestor Aparicio  39:08

But Amazon says they put all my friends at the Washington Post out of business yesterday. That’s the end. Yeah, that’s the end, yeah. And it doesn’t people lose their career yesterday after 30 years, and they’re the people that would be investigating this nonsense, yeah. So it’s, yeah, I don’t again. I the last week has been pushing me to the edge. Yeah, you know, I mean literally so, and it’s all history based, and it’s all civics based, which is why you’re so important and Power for Life. Md.org, she’s doing great things in Baltimore County, teaching over here, Ken would lose that your baby.

Ashley Fallon  39:41

That is my baby. Oh, looks like you. Look at that. Thanks. I can’t wait to play that for my husband. How old he’s six

Nestor Aparicio  39:47

months. Does it look like your husband more than you? Huh?

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Ashley Fallon  39:50

No, I’m not. I’m not saying that this kid looks like you. Thank you. Well, it’s yours. It should look like you, yeah? But everybody says he looks like my husband.

Nestor Aparicio  39:57

She died with my kid last year. He didn’t look yeah. Maybe 38% me, but not 51 Trish warports here, she’s camp opportunity. Tell everybody what you do.

Trish Woodward  40:05

Trish camp opportunity is a summer camp experience for children ages eight to 11 who’ve experienced abuse or neglect.

Nestor Aparicio  40:13

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She said that before, that’s really what is in power for life that succinctly, you better get it right off the web, I got a mission statement.

Ashley Fallon  40:24

We actually just changed our tagline to lifting limits, lighting pass. And the idea is that we wanted to make sure that we were broad scoping outside of teaching kids to get happy and healthy. That’s pretty

Nestor Aparicio  40:37

good goal, though, absolutely happy and healthy. I’m like, How do you do better than happy and healthy? And it will

Ashley Fallon  40:41

forever be a part of what forever be a part of what we do. It’s forever embedded in every program that we have, and, you know, every cool thing that we do, but we’re just, you know, it kind of branches off of our Ignite program, which is a program for children that are not living in poverty, but who come together to learn about other humanitarians and how they can help their community, and that’s geared usually ages seven to 14. And so it’s getting the next generation really involved in giving back and things like that. And so our new tagline kind of plays off of that a little bit with the lighting paths, just because, you know, Ignite, we’re igniting a change in future generations. And you know, that’s another thing. If you’re interested in getting your kids involved, we host a kindness camp over the summer that our newsletter just posted the registration to and save the dates and all of that good stuff. And our coordinator for that, Megan, does a great job in making sure that the kids are, you know, educated and excited to give back to their communities, and knowing and understanding what privilege is, and you know how they can use their privilege to help others, and you know things like that. And it’s just, it’s relatively new program, but it’s just had such an impact on the community around us.

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Nestor Aparicio  41:57

Well, no one’s ever made me want to go back to high school, and certainly not the chem would, but if I did, I want you to teach me civics, and I might come over for like, a little refresher course to make sure that I’m not full of crap when I’m out on

Ashley Fallon  42:09

social Uh huh. Got to make sure, keeping up on all the new stuff I keep googling it all,

Nestor Aparicio  42:13

make sure it’s all true. Media literacy, if we learn nothing else, we’re Pizza John. It’s all brought to you by our friends at the Maryland lottery of candy cane cash giveaway. Also, our friends at the GBMC of set aside on the road have a new sponsor. I want to scream about this. It’s foreign and Dermer. They’re out in the west side, but they go all over the place, fishing. H back, they were at my house on Wednesday making sure all the weird smells I was getting out in the woods are going away. They also do plumbing out there as well. They are the comfort guys. You’ll hear a lot about them, especially with Luke’s sports reports. Your pizza’s cold.

Trish Woodward  42:44

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I’m gonna eat it anyway.

Ashley Fallon  42:46

Uh huh, cold pieces best pizza. Yeah, I

Nestor Aparicio  42:48

don’t know about that, but I mean, they serve it hot for a reason here, so I’ll throw it back in here. Get it going here. Ashley Fallon, Power for Life, md.org, and my dear friend and life or friend. Trish Woodward, here from Camp opportunity. My opportunity is next to go get some pizza repeats. John’s back for more. It is Baltimore positive. We are wnst am 1570 Towson, Baltimore, telling some good stories. We’re doing a cup of Super Bowl on the Maryland crab cake tour. Stay with us.