Kate Reuther - Founder and Executive Director at Uptown Stories

Welcome to another Founder Wisdom Podcast. We have Kate Rutter with us today. Kate is founder and executive director at Uptown Stories in New York. Wanted to have her on the pod because it's quite interesting what she does. She helps children write their own book, which is something that is personally something that I value for sure, right? Because writing, the skill, thinking, and Creating your own stuff as a kid is very, how do you say, yeah, it increases your self-esteem, right? So Kate, welcome to the pod. Tell us a bit more about yourself and what you've been up to.

Sure. Well, I think first and foremost, I didn't want to be a leader actually when I started. My career. I love teaching, I loved working with kids, I love writing, but I didn't want that responsibility of being the one that, you know, the buck stops with. And that was partially because I didn't really like the way that schools were structured, how kids were forced to write effectively to a certain rubric, to a certain structure. I felt that creative writing wasn't given enough space in the schools, and instead my students felt like writing was something that was an assignment given to them rather than an expression of themselves. So I started Uptown Stories really as an experiment to see what would happen if kids were not forced to write. They did— they weren't being graded, they didn't even have to be there. But if they were given the tools and the space and the teaching to support them as writers and allowed to write what they wanted, what would they write? Would they even come? And so that first class led to a second class, to a third class, and then I realized I really needed to incorporate, and I decided to incorporate as a nonprofit because I wanted to be able to serve all the kids in our community. And it's a very diverse community financially, ethnically, in all, in all senses. So yeah, so that was about, uh, 14 years ago now.

Fascinating. Um, you started as a teacher, uh, for the public system, then you went as a private tutor, I believe. What justified that move?

Well, honestly, I was working as a private tutor when I had, uh, very, you know, infant children, and it allowed me to spend more time with them when I— it was a way of supporting myself when, um, I was no longer teaching in the classroom for that period. But, but I think that working with kids as an individual as opposed to working as a teacher where there are 32 kids in your class, uh, also made me recognize how, how different each student can be and, and really what happens if you, if you kind of tailor your teaching to the child as opposed to having the child tailor themselves to the curriculum.

But then you didn't have a stable financial income, right? What was the challenge of that?

I mean, that, that was very challenging. Um, at the time I was married, um, I had some savings, but, uh, I really had to build a new career for myself as, as a nonprofit founder. I had to create— at first I was the only employee, of course, for a long time, um, but to eventually begin paying myself a salary and to be able to pay other teachers and other employees. And now it, it feels— sometimes it's fun to kind of look back and say, oh, this, this is a real thing now, you know. It's not just an experiment. This is, this is an organization. We're serving 600 kids a year at this point, right?

And the model of private tutor, you have one teacher for one student, right? Like, it's complete opposite. What difference did you see in, uh, the outcome of your teachings, uh, via the, the students under that model?

It does. And I, I think that, I think that there's value in both. I think that being in a community, being as part of a group, is actually one of the essential pieces to learning how to write, because you do want to hear feedback from other people about what they thought or what confused them or what they liked. And If you're really working in isolation, that's, that's much harder to do.

And at what point did you get the insight that your student didn't like writing and that you needed to launch a company in 2011? Because there's a big gap between taking that risk, right, and launching something new.

I think that, uh, I had, I had a vision of a different way of teaching writing. I had an intuition that this was something that would appeal to young people because I knew that whenever I was able to do more creative writing in my classes, that that was always the place that my, my students were happiest as writers was when they got to write short stories, you know, as opposed to writing a 5-paragraph essay about the American Revolution. Like, that's where you really get to know a child as a writer, is when they get to create their own story as opposed to trying to prove something that has been proven 100 times in the same essay in the same way.

And writing a book as a kid, right? Because, uh, I mean, a lot of parents have books in front of kids, but when it's— I love like the meta aspect of you become a reader, then you're a writer, right? It makes the kid understand that there's something more out there. And other than being— rather than being consumers, they can become creators and entrepreneurs eventually, right? So how That is a huge leap.

I think that it's really important for young people to understand that they have the ability to write and say whatever they want to say. And especially now with self-publishing, it's so much easier, in fact, to write your own book, to print your own book. And I love the fact that many of our students have gone on to start their own projects, you know, to start their own online magazines, to work in publishing, to also work as speechwriters, to work as journalists, you know, to work in film. But even if you don't become a writer, a writer, you still need to know how to write. I think it's a way of thinking, it's a way of understanding yourself in the world and being able to communicate with people.

I've seen a lot of entrepreneurs publish their own children's book because I guess they spend lots of time reading them. And but yeah, me, my project with my daughter would be, uh, have her print her own book, right? I mean, we're in Mexico, so not sure if we could collaborate on this, but, um, yeah, no, that would be intriguing, especially with AI, right? It's like have some ideas and some creativity, have AIs write a couple, and then start filtering, deciding which one is best, and A/B testing the books on her and her little friends, which one's the most popular, and probably, probably publish the most popular one, right? And even sell it, and even teach her that, hey, you can sell it on your own website which you own, or give a big share to the big boy Amazon, right? Kindle. And start something from there, right? It's like a first product, a first notion of entrepreneurship, which is my full life mission.

Absolutely. I think it's entrepreneurship. I think it's, I mean, it's engaging them as politics, basically. It's engaging them as artists, as citizens.

Politics, double-click on that. How so? Well, because I think that I create an Orange Man book.

You could, you could create an Orange Man book, but I think that one of the goals of fascism is always to prevent everyday citizens from expressing themselves and manipulating how they, they think through overflooding media, which is the more modern version of it. Absolutely. So by empowering young people to use their voice, to share their voice, to create content or to write books, I think that that is ultimately a revolutionary act.

Yeah, and some kids will like talking about the environment, right? And I don't know if they're helping their little buddies start their lemonade stands or whatever. So no, I get what you're saying here. Um, it's interesting nowadays because It's like most people say to not talk about politics, but I think it's pretty much the other way around. It's like finding a way to talk about them and having a civilized and intelligent debate, which is not about being right but just about hearing other points of view and deciding in the end what, uh, course of decision you, you took, right? Like based on that information, rather than trying to eat the other opponent alive, which is not the name of the game, but, um No, it's super intriguing. What do you think of, uh, Alpha School, right, as a model? Have you studied Alpha School, Austin, Texas?

Like, oh, I haven't.

I think we talked about it last time, but yeah, no, it's a school for young, um, gifted students, right? Uh, but gifted is— it may very much mean on the spectrum, right? Like, uh, people that don't— may not fit socially but have a lot of talent, and they teach them entrepreneurship quite early on, how to start their own business, how to make money. I think— I mean, there's so much stuff that is not taught at school, how money works, right? Banks and so forth. Like, that's been hidden from people since pretty much forever. Meditation and sports and how to build relationship, how to build business, right? So school, Alpha School, teaches them that. And I'm very bullish on them. I think they're the fastest growing AI-first school there is right now?

I mean, I, I think that generally speaking, young people do want to learn. There's a lot of things that they want to understand and learn how to do, but they don't feel that they're being taught those skills in traditional school environments. Um, I mean, I have my own, uh, personal feelings about, you know, AI-driven schools or AI replacing teachers. But I think that like anything, it's something that we have to learn how to use to do the, the work that is— that is, you know, the— what I like to say is the robot jobs, you know, like let the robots do the robot jobs and let the humans do the human jobs, right?

Um, what will stay human then? Is my follow-up question to that, right? Like, because technically, you know, I get a lot on this podcast as part of my, uh, question, what will be the last human job? I get a lot like a nurse or a caretaker, but even that I feel is not true. I feel a robot has infinite patience, can demonstrate infinitely more empathy than a human. Um, also not all human empathy is like real empathy, right? A lot of empathy is like empathy teeter, which I'm not saying is bad, but I'm saying like nurses, I think they learn to just project empathy while internally they're dying, right? It's like, oh my God, I'm like 10 hours a day taking care of an old person that is sort of dying in front of their eyes. That's a hard job, you know? So, and I also feel that the robot could do a better job. So what will stay human is my question to you.

I mean, I wouldn't want to be taken care of by a robot nurse personally. If the robot's job—

would probably not even know. Okay.

But I think that's how scary it is. I think it's very scary. I feel like whenever I have these conversations, I want to say, have you guys not seen Terminator? Have you not seen The Matrix? This doesn't go well.

But that's Hollywood, that's not reality.

And it is, but I think that we're— I think that there is a reality to the way that we can't control the outcomes of giving machines power when we don't fully have control over those machines.

You know, we don't have control over anything. Is there current reality of things, right? And if we're gonna give— I mean, I view AI as our child, or children, or alien and very weird children, right? It's like, we don't fully understand it, how it got there, but it's very much us. It's very much like the full bulk knowledge of humanity. You stack like mathematics on top of it, and you get like magically gems on the other side, right? So we're still figuring out that magic, but It will have some of our defaults, obviously. We— it's still very codable, so it will be like better humans, if you want, like without like the, the negative side of things. I think ultimately we will merge with these things, right? Like, um, I think that's the finality. I don't think we should view them as like a separate evil thing, right? And the nurse, the nurse, uh, example is quite intriguing, right? Because that— I would rather have a robot take care of me than a nurse that, I don't know, neglects me sometime or is not fully there with me, right? It's the same analogy as like one teacher and one student. I would have one nurse that would be with me 24/7, give me full attention, stimulate my cognition, right? Ask me thoughtful questions. Well, most humans could not physically do that, right? So Plus it would be connected to my heart, right? It would know my, my vitals. It would know when shit hits the fan. So I don't know.

I think that yes, uh, a machine could do a better job of monitoring our vitals, our, you know, our blood pressure, administering medication, things like that. But I think that there is a human empathy element. I don't think a robot can show real empathy. I think that is a human trait because a robot is not a human. You know, they don't actually have emotions. They can replicate what sounds like emotions. But I think that our animals—

a lot of humans do that as well, replicate what sounds as emotions. I get what you're saying. They don't have stories also. They didn't live things, real things. Although realness could be argued, right? Like, we still, we still don't know the nature of reality. But, um, yeah, like, the human lived the story, right? And if the nurse sits down and tells, like, real life story, and there is that symbiotic relationship sometimes between nurse and patient, right, in which, uh, the patient lived like a full lifetime, the nurse is still young and might seek advice sometime and wisdom from the patient. And that's beautiful. Not sure how much percent of time it happens though.

I think ultimately we want to connect with other people. We want to feel known and we want to feel understood and we want to know other people. And I think that that's one of the basic goals of writing. I think that's one of the basic goals of existence. And even you, you may feel— I know many people do feel very deeply connected to their AI chat. But ultimately, that's not a real person. That's not someone that you can hold next to you in bed. That's not someone that, you know, you can feel the warmth of their hand. There, there's a— there, I think, is an intrinsic human quality, an energy that passes between people that can't happen between, uh, an AI and a person.

And on the technical side of things, there's still this very obscure thing called human magic, right? The nerd has like this gut feeling sometimes that something is wrong. And while the AI wouldn't have it, there's still like this completion, which is why I'm saying like the merging between both. In your case, where do you leverage AI in Uptown Stories?

Very little. I mean, we, we leverage it to help clean up our database, you know, to to fix formatting problems in our manuscripts, take out extra spaces. But for the most part, we, we don't really, we don't really use it except for automations or things that would be very tiresome for a person to do.

So the kid has to do the full creative heavy lifting.

Yeah.

Yeah, okay, which is good, which is good. I mean, for—

that's what they're there to do. That's— that, that, that is the process, is having an idea, brainstorming an idea, and writing a rough draft, and workshopping that draft, and revising it, and editing it, and, and publishing it. You know, you can, you can outsource all of those parts if you want to. But I don't think then you have written something in the same way. I think you've collaborated with AI perhaps on something.

You have some frameworks for creativity? Because I can imagine a kid that have, uh, writer's block, or maybe they don't have writer's block. Yes, adults, that's another cool question for you. But they, they'd be like, hey, I don't know what to write from here to— what, what do you tell them?

That's part of the class, is giving them typically little assignments at the beginning that are meant to provoke ideas or show them how a certain writer began their story, how they grabbed the reader's attention, or to show them how a certain writer uses dialogue or how a certain writer creates plot. And then usually by looking at examples by other people and by kind of— I think creativity happens when you're relaxed, not when you're working really hard at it, you know, when you allow yourself to kind of noodle around and get dreamy. And so you have to kind of provoke those experiences in kids by just Showing them some models, giving them some questions, seeing what bubbles up.

Yeah, maybe like, what happened in your life recently that was amazing, right? Or what activity did you do as of late that was super fun? What's— what are your top 3 favorite movies, right?

Yeah, it's like we start— the juice is going every class. We begin by doing what some teachers call Rose Thorn. I call good, bad. And it's just you go around the table and everyone says something good that happened to them recently and something bad that happened to them recently. And that's how you start every class is just by activating, like, what's going on in your life and why something bad.

I mean, I'm not saying we shouldn't— like, I'm for adversity, but is there like a framework of how to digest like a bad event to not kill their vibes?

Oh, absolutely. I mean, first of all, I'm primarily a fiction writer, but any kind of writing is built on conflict, you know. We— that's where stories come from, is from conflict, from people who want things that they don't have, or people who are trying to get away from something, you know. And we process our conflict, our problems, by writing about them, you know, by either dressing them up as different characters or writing personal essays about them or writing poetry about them. I mean, writing is a resource for you whether you're feeling happy and in love or sentimental because it's your parents' anniversary, or you're feeling terrible because your boyfriend broke up with you, or Sometimes kids in our class are going through really hard stuff, you know, like real stuff, and they show up to class because it's a place where they can let their guard down and, and have something to do with those feelings.

I don't remember sharing my feelings in primary school, in elementary school. I don't think that's something that was active back then, right?

It— I don't think it is in most school environments, but I think that—

crazy.

Yeah, I think that— I mean, for me as a teacher, the other thing is I want to know where everyone is in that room. If something terrible has happened to you, then I want to know that because that's going to inform how you're behaving, um, whether you're withdrawn, whether you're aggressive. Like, it it's in— it lets me take the temperature of the room as well.

But I know why they didn't ask me those. Like, I was pissed all the time at their system, right? I was like, I'm bored, uh, I'm smart, but you're not giving me enough space, you're not making me move enough, right? And if I would just call them out, and they— it's, it's not just that they didn't have a solution to their system, their system was established, it's government-based, it I, it literally cannot change, right? So even if I would have given feedback, they wouldn't have listened to it. And also back then, it, I guess, is like, oh, kids' opinions, not worth anything, right? But even back then, I was pretty smart, uh, it's like—

and you were bored, right? Yeah, very bored, right? And I mean, a lot of kids, especially boys, they, they have so much more physical energy, they But all kids, they, they need to move, they need to run around. I mean, one of the things that we do differently also is you don't have to sit at the table. If you want, you can go sit on the floor. If you want, you can go lounge on a bean bag. If you want, you can walk around the table while you're thinking. You know, some people think better that way. It's just about knowing what you need, you know, knowing how you think best. And that kind of metacognition, I think, is really essential for children to learn. How do you learn best? How do you concentrate best?

So what's the state of the current system? Is it as I described? Like, my education experience was like, what, um, 20, 30 years ago, if I started at 3, right? Um, how is— how different is the system now than 20 years ago?

I mean, are we— if we're talking about the New York City public school system, I think that schools have made a lot of progress in terms of understanding that social and emotional development is key to a child's academic success, right? You can't have one without the other. But I think that ultimately we are still doing a very old-fashioned curriculum that doesn't respond to the kinds of jobs that people are going to want, the kinds of things that kids want to learn. Um, I think that it's going to require some pretty radical changes to the curriculum. Um, I mean, I think we need to bring back more trade schools, for example. I think that young people really want to learn practical skills at this point, even in their personal life.

Worst case, you know, like how to fix a leak.

Absolutely. How to, how to garden, right?

How to, how to fix broken stuff, you know, like so, right?

I mean, mechanics, electricity, plumbing, like those are actually the jobs that are still in demand and much harder to replace. But, but I think outside of the kind of academics, it's just recognizing it's wrong to judge a child, all the kids, by the same kind of rubric. You know, kids are coming in with different skills, and kids are coming in with different backgrounds and different, problems. I mean, when I was in the public schools, I had some children who were homeless, some students who were homeless, and there was no, uh, accounting for that in the grading. You know, they were graded according to the same standards that children didn't even have books.

You know, it's like, how can they learn if they don't have books?

It's like, well, we gave them books that they have the books, but they have no place to do the reading, you know.

They have no place to do their lights, you know, or yeah, basic shelter, warmth, you know.

It's like just the security of knowing where you're going to live and that you're safe. I mean, you think about all of the mental resources that takes if you're living with that kind of fear and insecurity. So I just think that, uh, judging all kids by one standard and saying that there is a right and a wrong answer to everything, particularly in terms of, uh, writing and literature. You know, it's, it's not like math where 2 2 is 4. There, there is more than one way to write a good essay. There's lots of ways to write a good essay or a good story.

Yeah, and if they have such a tough background, it's like, yeah, merge to their realities, right? Like, they're their parents won't give a shit to help them, like, of like teaching them maths or vocabulary if they don't even have a shelter or smoking crack, you know. It's like, maybe, I don't know, teach them survival skills, you know. It's like, uh, 101 how to survive and how to go from there. Explain the— and in that case, obviously, like, foster parenting comes to mind. Like, it's like, if your parents cannot provide a shelter, it's like, damn. Not in a good place, um, for the kid, right? And it's like, maybe, maybe have a better shot at life with, uh, parents that are stable, right? Um, but it's a hard question or hard topic, but yeah, it's just education system is pretty ridiculous to teach them stuff. And they must feel like such, like, outsiders, right? Like, see their classmates live normal lives and being like, I don't even have a house when I I don't, I don't even have a home. I can't even invite you to play somewhere, right?

It's like, sure, yeah. I mean, I think at least in my experience, it's— no parent wants their— wants to be homeless, you know. There, there are always circumstances that lead to those really, really hard cases. But, you know, I also have students who have a a terminally ill parent, or, you know, kids who've had violence in their, in their lives, or severe depression in their lives. Lots of bullying, a lot of self-harm, a lot of— I would say a lot of mental health problems right now in quite young children.

Yeah, self-harm, right? Like, in my days, I can't name even one friend that was self-harming. Maybe they were in the background, or— but yeah, it was, it was rarer in my days, the self-harm thing.

Yeah, yeah. I think, you know, people have been harming themselves in different ways for a long time, but I think that—

I remember chewing myself on the floor for tantrum. That was beginning of like self-harm, but it was manipulative, right? It was to get attention.

Yeah, I think that there's a lot of good reasons to throw yourself on the floor. I don't, I don't think that counts as self-harm necessarily, but I certainly have thrown myself on the floor as well, and I think that that's, that can be a healthy thing to do.

I've thrown myself on the floor last Friday. I was running the mountain and I rolled an ankle, and I, I threw myself on the floor like if I was tree. I'm recovering from that right now. Hey Kate, thanks for, for being on the podcast. Uh, can you, uh, tell us where to find out more info about you?

Sure. Uh, you can find out more about me and Uptown Stories at uptownstories.org.

That was Kate and Charles Cormier for another Founder Wisdom