Heidi: Welcome to The Fluent in Floridian Podcast. We are so thrilled to have you on our program today.

Erin: So thrilled to be here and to just get to hang out with you. That's always a bonus.

Heidi: I know. Exactly. So we're going to talk a little bit about your past, your present, and where you see children's issues and the work that you're doing in the future. Right?

Erin: Absolutely.

Heidi: So let's kind of start at the beginning. Right? So you've been in Florida a very long time, but you grew up in Georgia. So what was your journey to the Sunshine State?

Erin: So I am very much a Georgia girl at heart and I always thought that would be where I would stay. After I came out of college as a crazy, passionate advocate for children, I had zero idea of what I wanted to do. And through a lot of prayer and thought and trying to get myself together, I landed in a temporary position as a preschool teacher, thinking I would just do that until I figured out what I wanted to do, completely fell in love with it, never left the field. And at the time, my husband was working here as well, and my daughter was about to start kindergarten. So I very reluctantly made the move to Florida, thinking I would never love anything as much as I loved my Georgia hometown.

And what's crazy is besides my adamant loyalty to my college football Bulldogs, that loyalty has stayed. I actually would say I'm a full Floridian now. I actually don't have as much connection anymore, which is so strange to even say out loud. I never dreamed that would happen, but I call myself a Floridian. I know more people in Florida than Georgia now. I actually know more people at my grocery store now than I do in my hometown, so it's amazing how that commitment just shifted, and I'm absolutely in love with what we do in Florida, especially around young kids. And the people are just really amazing, so I'm very happy and proud to now be a very avid Georgia Bulldog fan Floridian.

Heidi: I love it. I love it. So where did you go to college? You mentioned that. Where did you go to college?

Erin: So that's how I found my love of Georgia Bulldogs, is I am a Georgia Bulldog. That's where I went to school at the University of Georgia, so through and through fell in love with the whole atmosphere and the whole school, but that's why I've kept that loyalty throughout the years.

Heidi: Do you have football tickets, season tickets to the games?

Erin: It's in my professional goals to have the ability to pay for a ton of athletic events for my children and season tickets, but we're not there yet. It's coming soon I think after college for them. Yes. No, we go up as much as we can. And I actually took my kids to their very first playoff game, where the Bulldogs beat Ohio State to go on to win the national championship.

Heidi: Yeah. You see how she's letting everyone know.

Erin: Just make sure we're clear on that. So I have set their standards very high for football games, so I'm just not sure if I want to take them to a real one at Sanford Stadium because it may be a bit of a letdown, but I wish.

Heidi: So when you were growing up, what influenced you to decide that you wanted to be a teacher or you wanted to work with children?

Erin: It's funny because it's actually kind of what didn't influence me that I had to overcome as an adult. So I grew up in a lot of crazy, my mom was a single mom of two very young children, married four times, not necessarily always the best choices in marriages. And so I had this desire that I wanted to be impressive and I wanted to overcome where I came from. And so with that, I actually went on to the University of Georgia thinking I was going to be an attorney because attorneys are impressive.

Heidi: Yes, they are.

Erin: And so I went to Georgia to be a political science and philosophy major, and did my first internship with my uncle, who was an attorney. He was going to give me a partnership after I got out of law school, and hated every single second of it.

Heidi: Really?

Erin: And he told me at the end, "I think you need to get on the other side of the law, which is writing the laws and being a part of the policy development because your heart is so passionate for this work, and you can't change much on this side." So I decided then what was the next impressive job I could do, and decided I wanted to be a chiropractor.

Heidi: A chiro-

Erin: Right. I know. I think we need a moment of pause.

Heidi: What's impressive about-

Erin: They make a lot of money. They help people. People are like, "Ooh, you're a chiropractor." That's actually how it happened in a doctor's office, where someone I grew up with was a chiropractor. Her mom was telling the story. And my mom said, "Oh, that's so impressive." And I was like, "There we go."

Heidi: It stuck. Right.

Erin: And so because I came in as a sophomore and had taken heavy loads, actually had done all my prerequisites to get into chiropractic school, and my roommate was a child and family development major, and so I could major in whatever I wanted at this point, and I was like, "That looks fun. They have colorful rubrics. That's my people." So decided that's what I was going to do until I got to chiropractic school, of course. And went to my first class, called my mom and said, "This is it. This is exactly what I'm supposed to be doing for the rest of my life." And I was 19 and never looked back.

I loved the idea that kids are born with this amazing untapped potential. And if we do it right, especially in the first five years, we can give them dreams that no one in their family has ever dreamed before. And we can take trauma and rewire their brains to get through it. And I just for the first time saw so much of what happened to my childhood, and I had this incredible mom. And so got to see so much of who she taught me to be in her, which the story about my mom, she was a single mom with two young kids. And programs like these and an incredible family wrapped around her, and she went on to become the first firefighter, paramedic, and EMT in our county that was a female.

Heidi: Wow.

Erin: She was a rock star. And so having that trailblazer mom and coming into a space that's like, "You can come in and rewrite stories for people who their story is somewhat written for them at birth."

Heidi: Yeah, oh, wow.

Erin: It just lit my heart and I've never looked back.

Heidi: What an amazing story. You've had a lot of positions I guess in your early career. What is it that led you to where you are today?

Erin: So I started as a preschool teacher, like I said, temporarily until I found what I wanted to do, and again, completely fell in love with it. And I think what's been really fun, and again through lots of prayer and guidance has been getting in a field, learning it top to bottom, left and right, getting to a space where I'm comfortable, and that seems to be when the next move happens.

Heidi: Interesting.

Erin: But what's happened is as soon as I got comfortable as teacher, my director at the time knew I was crazy passionate and had a huge heart for this field, and so she at 26 was like, "I want you to come be a part of leadership. I believe in you. I see you. I want you to come and be a little bit more in your dream space than where you are now." So I did that, and six months after I got on the leadership team, she had an opportunity that she couldn't give up, and I was the director of this giant preschool at 26 with a brand new baby.

Heidi: Wow.

Erin: And again, with a lot of support from amazing teachers and the rest of the people on the leadership team, I was able to get the knowledge top, bottom, left, right, all of it. Got to the point where I knew the answer to every question, no matter what came in the day, I knew what was going on. And my husband took me to lunch, he saw this position pop up on the state system for the Department of Education, and it was managing all of the regional staff in the early learning space and their trainings and what supports we offered. And he took me out for lunch and said, "This is your dream and you're going to apply for this job." Now for those of you who know me and my husband, I'm the bossy one, so this was not a normal conversation for us.

Heidi: Yeah, obviously.

Erin: And so I did, again, lots of fear because I knew being a director all the way through.

Heidi: How old were you at this time?

Erin: I was 29.

Heidi: Oh, wow.

Erin: Actually, I was 30, I was 30 at this point.

Heidi: You were 30, okay.

Erin: And got the job at DOE, and then again you'll see this pattern, six months in, the manager of the massive subsidy program for the state left, had an opportunity she couldn't pass up. I was the next default, so I got it temporarily. And then at the same time, the new leader was coming on. And he let me keep it in the interim until he got his feet ready to go as being the new leader. And after he got settled he was like, "Hey, you're doing a pretty dang good job of this. Do you want to keep it?" And so anyways, that's how it went down. I kept that job, I ended up adding the VPK program as underneath my scope.

Heidi: Yeah. Let's talk a little bit about the VPK. I mean, were you there in the early beginnings of that?

Erin: I wasn't there at the very early in 2005 when it started. But I did, I came in around 2016, so it was right around its 10 year anniversary, but a lot was changing at that time.

Heidi: Right. Yeah. Tell us a little bit about that. That's fascinating. In the area that you're in, I mean, we know that we need to get kids into schools or into learning programs very early, starting at three if not sooner, so talk about that.

Erin: Yeah. What's really incredible about getting to do the space from the classroom, I started in an infant classroom and actually kept those kids all the way through until they were four and just kind of added to the class. They're graduating high school this year, which is making me feel very old, but it's still very exciting. But the brain development that happens, especially in the birth to three space, is so incredible. And so doing the management over the school readiness side of the job first helped me understand even more than what I had experienced in real life, which is so much of the brain is wired at three, and even more at five.

But when you look at the brain wiring that happens zero to five, where some statistics say anywhere from 80% to 90% of the brain is wired before they even walk into kindergarten, so when you think about that from a space of investment in education, we're almost doing it backwards, where the most wiring is happening in those youngest years and it's the least funded part of our education sector. So anyways, VPK was in the process of adding new quality standards. We had already them in the school readiness side. So I got to be a part of that and really putting new policies in place that focused a lot on how teachers interacted with children. And it was really great because the message that at that time Representative Grall sent by doing that was, you have to really be able to treat our children well, teach them well, and care about their development to be able to serve them. And we hadn't had that before, so it was fun to be a part of the implementation on the state level.

Heidi: That's awesome. And you know I have a new grand baby, so every time you tell me a little nugget, I go, "Raven, do this for Eli, do this for Eli." And so yeah, I appreciate that a lot for sharing.

Erin: I love it.

Heidi: So then after that period of your career when you helped set that up, what happened after that?

Erin: So I started getting a lot of calls about potentially coming out and recruiting ... Recruiting, coming on and representing the early learning coalitions in the state. So those are our entities locally that operate all the early learning programs from supporting the providers, training, coaching. They are similar to what you see school districts do, but very different in how they operate. But I had the opportunity to go and be their voice and I had grown to love so many of them in that process of implementing these new systems and fighting through the days where we wanted to cry in the corner. And so there was a lot of trust and relationship built there, so it was just a really clean move.

And also, again, I had gotten pretty comfortable at the state. I knew the answers to the questions.

Heidi: That's your trigger. I know all the answers. I'm comfortable.

Erin: Yes.

Heidi: And then a new path opens up for you.

Erin: Absolutely. And my North Star is always: Where can I do the most good for the most kids?

Heidi: I like that.

Erin: And so this gave me another angle that I hadn't learned yet, and so I got to come into that space with them and represent them after that, and learn so much. You just don't realize what you miss on the implementation level when you're doing it from the state level, so that was an incredible learning experience for me to see what it looks like when your boots are on the ground.

Heidi: Yeah. So tell me about something that was really eye-opening for you that really fueled the work that you did there.

Erin: Well, one thing that helped me be very humble was I got to see a lot of the things I put in place at the state level that were really bad ideas. And so when I would sit in meetings and we would talk through implementation, they would be like, "I don't understand why we do it that way." And I would be like, "Ooh, my bad."

Heidi: That is so good as a leader to recognize that, Erin.

Erin: Yes, oh, my gosh. It was an incredible learning experience, but obviously surrounded by these amazing, brilliant humans, who their heart was truly to help the work be better, so what a great environment to get that lesson in. But then also, hearing the stories about somebody in Escambia County, and then somebody in Miami, and then somebody in Pinellas, and learning about out systems that we had built for a really long tine were making it everywhere. I used to always say that whenever somebody's at my funeral, I want them to say, "There are kids that will never realize what their lives are like now because of work that Erin did." That's where I want to be in a space in my career. And I got to hear stories of that and real life action stories of the blood, sweat and tears we put in at the state level, and that the work we did actually was making it and meeting the intentions that we had thought of when we were just dreaming it up in the conference room at the department, so that part was really fun.

Heidi: Wow. So after your work with the early learning centers, is that when you moved to the Children's Forum?

Erin: Yes. That one was a big North Star of most good for most kids because the forum has a bigger reach when it comes to being able to work nationally. And so it was just this organization again with same thing, untapped potential seems to be my ... I'm a little addicted to untapped potential, and so there was a ton there. And it had a great leader and it was ripe for growth. And so we have this building full of early childhood nerds and some amazing fiscal and HR and IT people too. But it was just this great opportunity to go and dream bigger. And since again, I knew Florida top, bottom, left and right at that point, it gives me a space to dream a little bigger and to take things that we've learned the hard way and the easy way sometimes, to national groups and say, "Hey, we've done that. Let me help you with this," or, "Hey, can we work on this from a different angle? Because this is how we made mistakes." 

So it just feels like I get to be more in the pay it forward section of my career, but also, there's a lot of room for innovation. And I sit in a space where I don't represent anybody. I'm not bound by all of the things that come with being a representative of an agency, or an entity, or an association, so it gives me a little more space to just kind of be riskier and do things that ... There's risk in everything, but obviously it gives me a little bit more space to make mistakes without other people having an impact, or just there's a little bit more freedom in that space to take risks and dream bigger.

Heidi: You know I want to know, tell me a risk.

Erin: Oh, gosh.

Heidi: I bet you have several.

Erin: Yes.

Heidi: But which is the one that you're most proud of?

Erin: As far as where I'm at here, we have some new ideas that we're thinking about in how we talk about our field. And how do we get our field on the same page so that we're able to say in a streamlined manner, "Here's what it looks like to be an educator in our field. Here's what it looks like to have a professional credential in our field"? And to be able to kind of help communicate that, believe it or not, is very risky in our field because we've had such just kind of segregated ideas of who we want to be, where if you're ...

One of my dear friend, Marika, tells me you know what an LPN is, you know what an RN is. And they don't cross over. You know exactly what they do. But in the early education space, it's all over the board.

Heidi: Wow.

Erin: And so it's fun now because I can kind of push the boundaries a bit on identity and who we are as a field, but also go ask questions of anybody I want to at any time, and spend tons of time with them, sitting on couches and having coffee with them to understand who we are as a field, where I don't always have to be in a space where this is what falls under the umbrella of how we think or how we're wanting to be represented. I kind of get to push that line a little harder and say, "What if we said this and rattle the cages a bit?" Where it just gives me freedom to be a little bit more, I hate to say the word provocative, but kind of that's what comes to mind, the ability to kind of ask hard questions and spend a lot of time with people who, when you're in these other jobs, you don't have as much time to spend time with the people that are doing the work. So that risk doesn't seem super risky, but it really can be in the space.

And then in some of my previous lives of career, doing some of the systems that are kind of faux pas for what we do, but being able to ... I love those spaces where we can try something new, but stress people just enough to where they can handle it, but keep them safe in the process, that tends to be some of my favorite spaces to work. And I get to do that very regularly now.

Heidi: Yeah. I think The Children's Forum, most people don't think about this side of the organization that you're talking about. We're more familiar with Children's Week. And so I'd like for you to touch a little bit on Children's Week because you've made some adjustments to what we typically see at Children's Week. I think it's over 20 years now, right, that's it's been around?

Erin: Yes, it has.

Heidi: I mean, I remember it from when I was a young cub reporter back in the press corps. So when we talk about taking risk and changing things, what did you do differently with Children's Week?

Erin: Well, one, we had a lot of your brain, which was very helpful, lots of, "Heidi, should I do this?" Calls, which are so valuable to me. But one of the things that we did a little differently is I think our message has been a little stale across the field, not in Children's Week alone. Children's Week has always been a really vibrant week. But we wanted to push the message a little bit deeper to: Why should we care about kids? And what is it about this week that is so special? And one of the things that we highlighted a lot was trying to make the world a little smaller. I said that a lot because we have these amazing people who can inform our work so deeply, but they're terrified to come to the Capitol or come talk to the agency heads.

And we are just primed right now in this amazing space to have incredible people in both spaces. And so to sit and watch the head of DJJ and the head of DCF talking to our youth award winner about how he wants to empower students to take political activism seriously and take a space as a leader even though they're young, and having them give him advice on the steps of the old Capitol, it's just exactly what the week should be. And we also did a lot of pushing to take the time to see people. We had a lot of people who do a lot of really good work. And we get together and we tell them all how important children's issues are. And they're like, "Right, we know this."

But our message was different this year in the sense that we just wanted to remind them that there's just too much at risk if they give up. We need them and we need advocates on days we will want to sit in the corner and just tuck it away and say, "I don't want to do this anymore." And we'll get told no, but there are stories, I mean even like mine, that we have to remind people. Again, back to my story with my mom, I told this story at Children's Week. But when my mom got sick, she passed away really suddenly and it was unexpected.

But I was at her service, and I had someone come up and say, "Your mom pulled me out of my car when it was on fire and I had a wreck. Your mom saved my dad's life because she talked to me over speakerphone and told me, reminded me how to do CPR as my CPR instructor. And I saved my dad's life with your mom. Or your mom did CPR on my dad and he had a heart attack." And I just heard story after story, and I just internalized that so much because to me, if my one mom can do that much and trail blaze all of that, what is going to happen from the people in that room? What is the power that we have in these people who are serving children in that untapped potential stage and their families? And how much good is going out in the world? And it always inspires me to think, "Gosh, all this work I'm doing, I can't even see the lives that are going to be different because of it," but then those kids are going to turn around and have these crazy powerhouse stories.

And so that was a huge part of our message in Children's Week this week, or this year, was don't forget the scope of what you're doing because there's so much power in that room. There's so much power in that week. And we're bringing the people who aren't going to get the advertisement on TV, aren't going to get the Facebook post that goes viral. But these are the kids, or these are the people that are setting the tone for stories and dreams. And we make that a big message throughout the weeks so that everyone left a little bit taller and just rejuvenated because they can't give up. We just can't with everything that's at stake.

Heidi: Not with our kids. And I think that's what I appreciated so much about being at Children's Week this year is that the energy was so high. It was so positive. And to see every single agency leader engaging with people, it made them real, not what you see in the headlines, but these are real people. And they were just out there having a great time, talking with the kids, talking with the families. And I felt like we were removing these perceptions.

Erin: Right.

Heidi: Does that make sense?

Erin: Absolutely.

Heidi: That was my key takeaway.

Erin: Yeah. Again, making the world smaller, being able to see that we're all just humans. And they care just as deeply. And even though they have different parameters of what they can do in their leadership roles because we all have our lanes, they did everything they could to be so human that week. And we got emails after from some of them saying, "We're in next year. What else can we do? We want to read. We want to be a part of this." And having the lieutenant governor come to the dinner.

Heidi: Yeah, that was remarkable.

Erin: Saying, "I care about this."

Heidi: Her presentation was so good. Her speech was so good.

Erin: Again, to see somebody, I would say, "I want somebody awesome telling them that they're awesome," because it just means so much more when you hear somebody saying, "I see you. And we can't do this without you." And I felt like the week was just full of nuggets of people doing that and having those moments. And I had some people say, "I'm fan girling. I got to hang out with [inaudible 00:23:12] and she gave me her cell phone number." And I'm like, "Fantastic." That's exactly what this is about. So it had a little bit more intimacy to it, even though it absolutely exploded with the amount of participants.

Heidi: Right, right.

Erin:

So it was a fun week to watch roll out. And thank you for all of your help. We could not have done it without you.

Heidi: It is a cause that we certainly believe in and always have, so thank you for the opportunity.

Erin: Yes.

Heidi: We have a lot of people that are going to be listening and watching. And children's issues are such a big deal because we're talking about the future of our state here. So if they're watching or they're listening, what is their best step to get engaged, to improve the lives of our future leaders, our school children? I mean, our preschoolers, our babies, right?

Erin: So one of the lenses we talk about a lot at The Forum is we want people to know us, like us, and trust us. And when we think about this work, I think our first milestone is for people to know us. I think we've almost got that complete. People know that early education is an issue now. We're on the top of the New York Times, the first page of the New York Times. We're popping up on news channels and you're seeing this crisis, especially with the pandemic, really highlighting that issue, so the know is there. I think our next step in this for people who are wanting to get involved is to help us spread the word of the why so that people will like this field and understand its importance.

We spout off, "Oh, 90% of the brain is formed before you go into five, or before you go into kindergarten at the age of five," but at the same time, you can sit and talk to people and they're like, "Third grade reading rates, third grade reading scores, third grade reading scores." And I'm always quick to say, "You have the biggest correlation between third grade reading scores is kindergarten readiness," so we've already baked the cake at kindergarten. So I think that's the space we need to get into, is making sure that people understand that this is the most critical sector of our educational system and we've got to invest in it.

And so then I would say on the trusting side, we have to then get ourselves together as a field to make sure that we are articulate and organized and providing quality at every angle that you look at the lens, whatever angle you're looking at through the lens. And so I would say if you're coming from just a parent side, come in and understand the work and be a part of the team that spreads the message. If we shut down first grade right now, everyone in the world would fall apart. Nobody could go to work. Everybody would have a ... It would be a riot on the streets. But we know more brain development is actually happening in here than in first grade.

We're not funding it. So I would equate it to: If you knew I had the cure to leukemia, but I only gave you half a dose, how would you take that? So that's what we've got to get, is more people who are fighting for the full dose and for the full importance, and walking around every day saying, "This education is so critical," and whatever it looks like, whether a family wants to stay at home with their kids, that should be an option. But what if they can't, and they don't have the skillset, or they're working three jobs? That child should have the same opportunities of education as the same person who had the choices. And so this is the field where we get to do that and we need all of the voices around us having that same message.

Heidi: Yeah. So how can our viewers and listeners find out more about The Children's Forum?

Erin: We are flchild.com. You can come and see our website or find my email. I'd love to have tea and coffee, tea for me, coffee for you, and just sit and chat about out. Come be a part of Children's Week and hear the message. The Children's Forum is an organization, but we love to be the one that just boosts the message, so I'd love to get people familiar with the message and they can learn us as a default. But definitely visit our website, look at all of our programs, and email me and let's have tea.

Heidi: Yeah. And I remember you telling me that you all are positioning yourselves to be a model for the rest of the country, and you're already doing it. I mean, you have organizations reaching out to you. Tell us a little bit about that as we close our conversation here.

Erin: Absolutely. One of the things that I think is really tricky is sometimes we have to do what's right for the system even if it's hard. And I have a building of people who do what's right for the system even when it's hard. And so we want to be the ones that answer the call, whether it be policy, program, research, we want to be the one stop shop that you can come to for anything in this space and have a full team support around you to get it done. So we have a few entities like that nationally. They obviously can't cover the whole nation, so we're hoping to get in there. But the fun thing I think that's different about The Forum is almost our entire staff came from the classroom.

Heidi: Wow.

Erin: So we have lived experience of people who are then paying it forward and giving advice on how they've seen things, but also, how we can make the system better, but doing it from a place of, I've been there, and we can do this together. So that's my dream, is to fit into all of those places and answer every call, whatever it is, in the early childhood space, so that we can make a difference for the most kids.

Heidi: Yeah. Well, I know you mentioned that once you know all the answers, then all of a sudden, you have a shift. I hope you don't know all the answers for a little bit because I think the work you're doing is so remarkable, and your energy and your passion for this is just so, it exudes you. And before you even walk in the door, I could feel it coming. Right? I was so excited when I knew you were coming over.

Erin: Thank you.

Heidi: So I just want to thank you for everything you're doing for Florida's children. It really means a lot for me as a mother and now a grandmother, so thank you.