SPEAKER_01 0:07

Each and every day, so that's all wait. Your very best, curtain leads to take the best you can, it's your life. Take a stance.

SPEAKER_03 0:31

Come on and live your best life.

SPEAKER_02 0:38

With Dr. Julia Royston.

SPEAKER_04 0:43

Well, hello, I'm Dr. Julia Royston and welcome to another edition of Live Your Best Life, where I'm always seeking to bring you people, places, tools, information, and resources to help you do just that. So you know how we do it over here. Get your phone out, get your pen and paper if you're old school like me, and uh write down her information, follow her, support her. Yes, she does have books. Do you have to ask? Yes, she has books for you to support and share and uh purchase and give to your grandbabies and the keys down the street, and of course, donate one to our two or three to the public library and the school in your area. See, I got that commercial all in one time. So I want her to formally introduce herself, tell us where she's from, um, tell us uh where we can find her on social media and her website. Take it away, love.

SPEAKER_05 1:34

Uh good. Hi, Julia. How are you? I'm Leah. Good to see you again. My name is Leah Power, and I've been in education for over 35 years. Um, I have been a classroom teacher. Well, I started as a paraprofessional. I've been a para, classroom teacher, assistant superintendent, uh, assistant principal, principal, learning coordinator. I've done uh just a gamut of everything there was to do pretty much in education. Um, currently I have a nonprofit organization and it's called Dominion Youth Incorporated. And you can find us on all social media platforms as Dominion Youth Inc. Um, you'll see a nice line there. So it's uh easy to spot. Um the way I got into uh education, uh, it was in high school. I started uh teaching. If anybody knows, uh little program by junior achievement called Making the Donuts. So I went to that's how long ago it was, yes. I don't remember that. I was in junior achievement, but I don't remember that one. There was a program called Making. Yeah, it was so old. It's called Making a Donuts. And so my um high school teacher had nominated myself and a young lady named Mary to go over to teach second grade students uh junior achievement uh lesson for a week, and so I kind of fell in love with teaching, but that wasn't my first role because I was in um business and I had an internship through um uh Brady Corporation at that time through a program called En-ROADS. And so when I started college, I went to I was in business marketing. But if anybody is in business and you take that accounting class and you don't have any pre-information, no previous information about accounting, it would take you out. I understand, I understand, I do literally so I ended up getting a C because the professor was like, Well, are you going into accounting? I was like, No, she said, Well, you just need this class to help you get into your marketing because I was gonna do marketing because I find myself marketing my material, so I had uh all that background information in that area, and so um talked to one of my uh college. We we had a program, Upward Bound, in uh tech university, and so which provided us so much support uh for minority students, and I had a um counselor there that met with us regularly because the regular college campuses counselors didn't meet with us, but he said, What about education? Uh changing your uh your major. And I said, Okay, I can do that, and I did, and I just kind of flourished and I took off, took off in education. I ended up being a super senior because I had to do five and a half years because I changed all that. Yeah, I was gonna say that that don't go with that. No, no, it didn't. So I ended up having another year and a half of college, but it was okay. I needed it. But once I got into education, I took off at 27. I was an assistant principal, so that's how fast I was growing in education. Um, did you have another question for me? Did I miss?

SPEAKER_04 5:02

As I say, I'm getting ready to roll one right through you. Okay. Now that's that's fast for 27 to be assistant um principal because, and especially because uh black or white, a woman they usually keep in the classroom at least seven to eight years. They usually don't let you roll out that fast unless they there's just a need. Now, the men they don't stay more than three to five, they don't they don't let them stay in the classroom, they don't have a fight. I'm I mean, I had I retired with a teacher in my building and it was a black man, and they were begging and begging him. And he was like, No, I don't want to do that. I'm not good at that level. He said, Let me stay with the kids, that's what I'm good at. So I'm like, don't try to force him to do something he knows he's not, and I said, Y'all know the way he rolls, he's not no, he's not politically correct, he's not gonna, he's not gonna no, it's not gonna be good. So why would you have him risk his career for something he's just not good at? So, what were the key things for you to get out? Well to management or administration that quickly.

SPEAKER_05 6:08

Well, how did I get into administration that quickly? Um, well, I was um I was good at writing and I wrote one of the first 21st century grants for um our school district.

SPEAKER_06 6:22

Gotcha.

SPEAKER_05 6:22

And so um that put me on the map with a lot of principals and skills that they needed, that they didn't have that kind of skill set. And so I was um actually brought on, I guess, with the uh with my principal at that time, who was still a great mentor towards to me. I talked to him uh quite often um to help him with writing and putting pieces together and organizing, and then the marketing background was the event planning and the sending out the information and all that detail. So that that helped in his area of weakness for me to be bring my skill set in to where his was. But um that's how I got into uh yeah.

SPEAKER_04 7:03

Well, you brought money into the thing. See, that's the difference when I mean, yeah, there's right now as we speak, there's still federal money coming down to education. But when you bring additional money that that is not, you know, that budget that they have to be having been on SVDM for too long because there was no other black teachers in my building, I had to, you know, I saw what the budget was, and it seemed adequate to me. But after you start getting everybody the money they supposed to have and the all of that, the budget didn't go very far. And if you were at a very needy school, I was 94, 95 percent free to reduce the Title I there's always gonna be some need that's gonna arise that you have to meet even beyond education. And most people are very proficient in education, but the business of education they're not really good at. I mean, they teach you the basics anyway when you do the the classes and whatever, but the business of education, how the mindset is sidebar. So I I was the technology teacher, right? And all the technology in the building. My principal had a meeting with the corporation in the city, and they said uh in nearby, because we were kind of on like a warehouse construction, all kinds of business. And he took all the other people with him. He took the people who didn't know nothing about technology, the status of the technology in the building with him because that was that's his inner circle, his team. And they got there, and the company asked him what they wanted, and they didn't know. Oh, whatever you and then they asked him, they asked him, Do you want to be one-on-one? I said, You didn't say, and when we got in the meeting again, I said, You didn't say you want you. You did you say yes? He said no. I said, Why didn't y'all take me? Yes, right. I didn't even know what one-on-one meant. I said, You don't know what that word what that means. He said, Yeah, no, I said, Love, that means that they were willing to give every child their own piece of technology, their own iPad. Yes, and the the little inner circle look. I just rolled my eyes at them and turned my head. I said, You should have took me. Why would you go talk about technology? You didn't take me. You gotta go anybody to stay in that lab, right? I said, Oh, okay, whatever. You just you just missed that. I'm sorry, Miss Prison. I wasn't thinking, I said that you sure we're not, sir.

SPEAKER_05 9:22

Yeah, I think that's the one that is actually that that was a terrible thing to miss out on because I just like oh my god, and then of course, trying to be what do they want to do, be politically correct and offer something to the table, they told.

SPEAKER_04 9:39

Oh and so then the district goes, meets the corporation and says, Thank you, and we don't get nothing from the deal. Oh, the school I was at who made the introduction, and the principal thought he was being so great, telling the district, see what I did, which you didn't do, nothing because we didn't get nothing from it. And then they put it to the school they wanted it to go to.

SPEAKER_05 10:03

Yeah, and that has happened, and and that and that has happened a few times. Like um I wrote for one of the first uh K3 programs because they didn't initially have K3 programs attached to the public schools, and so um I wrote for one of the K three programs that was just uh attached, the state was providing the funding, it was not attached to any early childhood funding or federal funding, etc. And so when they saw how um how well it worked, because I put I made education a forefront of K three and not just a lot of social stuff, and then um I got K three children doing spelling tests, you know, two letter Wells, go and two and do and why, and they're writing their names, and it was just so productive. And it was like, ah, okay, so we're gonna move this here. I had it for three years, and then they moved it to um another side of town, and so um one thing, and one reason why I'm not so heavy into administration anymore, and I'll tell you what I'm doing now in my current role is because of all the politics, yes, and that that piece right there the politics. Okay, so you make the connection here about the technology, and the district takes the material, they know you made the connection, they're not gonna say, Hey, we can share, they're just a snap, nope, thank you. Or sometimes it's not even a thank you, and so um, so when things like that happen, and I find out that politics and children don't often mix, so yeah, exactly, exactly, exactly.

SPEAKER_04 11:42

That's the reason why when he said, Oh, Miss Russell, have you? I was in his office one time uh repairing his computer, he was technology challenged, and I said, uh, he said, you know what? You look good in that administrator chair. Have you ever thought about it? I said, Oh, no, sir, no, sir. And I said, No offense, sir, but it seems like we just I'd rather stay boots on the ground. Like when you get administration, there's a level of uh amnesia that happens, and you forget about what it was like in the classroom, what the kids are like, you forget all that, and I understand you're trying to make it please bosses above you, but I don't like that. And I was probably in my early 50s, I probably only had about three or four more years to work, and I'm like, no, just as they say, stay right here on the ground, yeah. What you're supposed to do, fulfill your job. But this whole trying to climb and trying, no, I don't want to be promoted. I don't I don't I don't like that.

SPEAKER_05 12:39

I I love um the skill set that I acquired with being in the leadership role. Oh, yeah, yeah. I I have to tell you, the fastest one was um being an assistant superintendent for like half a semester. I was like, um, that was one of the first opportunities that I started realizing I needed to start taking control of my life and be able to say, you know what, this is not what I want to do. Because a lot of times we stay in positions because of the pay or because of the title. And I made a decision to say, this is not what I want to do. I don't want to be in the board meetings to 10 o'clock at night, away from my family, my children, their basketball games. At that time, my ex-husband and I were raising three sons, and so they had sports all over the place. So the long meetings, the paperwork, the emails. I didn't want to be inundated with it. And I was missing hugs from the children or a smile or something friendly and not all that.

SPEAKER_04 13:36

So we're missing you two because they want to look up in the stands and you're there. I don't care if it's running track or playing T-ball. They want, you know, they want your presence more than even gifts and all that kind of stuff. They want to know that you're there and the good times, the wins, and the losses. You didn't see it, you aren't there. Yeah, I I know because the kids have done it, not to me, they've done it to you know their parents. They didn't come, they didn't show, they didn't, yeah. It's a big deal. It's a big deal, and that's uh, but so for those of you listening, you're thinking, what does that have to do with me? I'm not a teacher, but one of the val most valuable things that we've even talked about is that you have got to determine what your family work balance is gonna look like, or and you have to determine that. And are you willing to sacrifice money for your involvement in your child? Because you're gonna look up and they're gonna be fifth grade, and then they're gonna be time to go to middle school, and then you look up and they're in high school, and they don't know you, and you don't know them, and you haven't been there in the formative years to really determine that. Now, everybody has to decide that for themselves, but the long-term impact that it has on you, your career, you know, from going from assistant soup to back into the classroom, to me, sometimes it may look like a demotion to other people, but sometimes it's stability. Staying in the computer lab with people, as they say, throwing up in the keyboards and and and you know, all kinds of trash and all kinds of fights and all that might have seemed like, oh no, I I wasn't, I was thinking it when I went home. Lord, I wasn't raised for this. But I had to understand at 4 o'clock, 4:15, when I waved my bus on, I could go home. I could close the door for 45 minutes in my car and say, hi, I'm Julia Royston and BK Royston Publishing. How can I help you? And then make deals for my future for 45 minutes as opposed to trying to uh convince and uh compromise or whatever over and over. No, I don't want to do that, and um and then remembering also that uh parents are the first teachers, so making sure that you're taking because there's sometimes our hands are tied, we can't give your child all we need to unless they have an IEP and it's legally mandated, but we can't do it because somebody else got an agenda somewhere else, somebody else is doing that, and so therefore, you gotta be an advocate for your own child and do what you need to do. So, so from there, how did we get to writing books? Because that's not hard because you write in grants, right?

SPEAKER_05 16:12

Well, right.

SPEAKER_04 16:13

I need to know about your um uh nonprofits as well.

SPEAKER_05 16:16

Okay, so I so in 2017, um, I decided that I was going to do something different, and I um wasn't I came, I was in Las Vegas at that time, and I was an assistant principal at that time. I wasn't I went as an assistant principal and I decided to start transitioning out of that role. Okay, because um our children now, mind you, I have been in several different states. Um, I I like to move around, and I'll tell you how I got to Charleston. Um, I was in Wisconsin, I was in Minnesota, I was in uh Las Vegas, Nevada, and our children, brown and black children, were at the bottom. I don't care what state I went, we were at the bottom. And then I said, you know what, me maintaining this status quo is not my purpose. I love children, I know I want to do something, but it's not my purpose. And so in uh 2017, I started transitioning out of the school district. So I said, um I had a little bit of money set aside at that point, and I said, I'm gonna open up Power Learning Institute, and I did, and um COVID hit the next year, like 2018. So now we have all these children that needed services in the community, and so I started providing um services through Power Learning Institute that was for profit. Um, and it used my last name, so my last name is Power. And um then I started just helping children online because parents were still reaching out to me and saying, I've got five children, there is no way I can teach kindergarten and high schoolers in my house. So I had a parent just literally call me flat out. Now, like I said, I was transitioning, so I was kind of working with the district and still building my own piece at the same time at that point, and so she called and she said, Um, I'm gonna work with these kindergartners and first graders, but I'm not doing anything with this algebra and all this English stuff. Forget the middle school and high schoolers, you guys are gonna have to figure that out. I was like, okay, but I understood, yeah, yeah. The struggle is real, a struggle became real. I mean, it got real very quickly for parents that had that had no background or formal education themselves, and then some uh parents were still working at the places that were open, like Walmart or Home Depot, or some of the places that did not close and give them the ability to be home, and they had to actually be part of the working class, and so that gave me an opportunity to really grow my business, and then I um moved from the computer in the virtual world to a brick and mortar and started doing um tutoring and also support with people that were doing homeschooling, and then I just kind of fell in love with that, yeah, because that started giving me purpose, and so while I was doing that, um and probably purpose your own way, you know what I'm saying? Purpose my own way purpose my own way. Literally, I still have people call me uh here. I moved to South Carolina, but they still call uh because they need to support, they need to get uh children up and graduated. So I have one young lady I moved here, and um, one of the young boys I had, and and I pray over kids, so my whole purpose so I'm taking a few oh bottles of all the work, right? And so uh me being in my own spot allowed me to say, you know, hey, listen, I'm getting ready for a prayer up on you, some holy oil. I need to and so I had one child, his mother called. This was when I was still in Vegas, and I and I started realizing the need for the community. So his mother called me one day and she says, I want my child to get a high school diploma, not a GED. And um, the child was struggling. He had um started developing seizures when his grandmother passed away. So he missed uh a year of school. Uh, he was supposed to be doing homeschooling for the district, but you know, the district loses children quite easily. And um, then when I tried to request all the work from the homeschool person, there was no data on the homeschool person. It said that he was at home, homebound, but he didn't get any services. Wow, so they they didn't have any grades, but it took me, oh god, Julia, we did a combination of credit recovery, um, school providing us some pieces, me getting other pieces, uh, mail-in classes just to get him up and graduate. I said, You're gonna graduate. Here's the schedule. We have five classes in about four months.

SPEAKER_06 21:20

Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_05 21:24

Oh, yeah. And I mapped it out, I mapped it out to mom and dad, and they said, I said, Are you guys gonna do this? And they said, Yeah. So um, and if Keon is listening, he knows this quite well. So he would try to disappear. One day, because he was 17 and his friend, other friend was supposed to be driving him up by me. And I um remember when I called his house's dad said, Well, he should be there because he's on his way up to you. I said he hasn't made it. And his friend had a business like uh car wash. But I had maybe lost the phone number. And he said this other young man was bringing them to me. And so I could, he wasn't coming, girl. I turned around and I prayed to his grandmother. I said, Look, you got to have me find your grandbaby. Because he's not up here studying. And you know, within two minutes, uh, or even not even that long, I found the other number and I called his friend number. I said, I know you headed up here to drop Keon off for his lesson. And he was like, Yes, Miss Lisa, Miss Leah, we on our way, we on our way right now. With our boom boom drive through to get a burger. And they came and then, and then um, when he got tired, and I know we get tired. I went to his house. I went to his house and sat with him. We met in the library. I pulled him through. And so, with that testimony, they were telling other children. So the one mother she said, I can't get my daughter to pass this math class. I said, Listen, I don't know this trigonometry like this. So I'm not even gonna charge you that much. My time. We're gonna be learning together. And the mother said, I don't care what you do, I don't want anybody else but you because I heard you the best. And so she do you still do it? Let me ask you this. Do you still do it? I do. I have um three young ladies right now that I'm working with, and actually, two of them are adults, and one is 19, and they um and when they reach out to me through Dominion Youth website, uh when I get the message, I'm almost in tears about it. Yeah, because um this is my life purpose now, and I'll explain that to you in a second. But um, this one young lady, the 19-year-old, she says, I want to graduate. And I said, Okay, let's make that happen. That's all I say, let's make that happen. But then you find out that she's now ready, you know, she's got two children, she's at 19. The school that she had closed, permanently closed, some of the children's schools. So we're struggling to get her material and information, and here she is out here lost, but now she wants to get uh graduate, she wants a high school diploma, and because she's not over 21, we can still make that happen for her. But then I have two adults that are seeking their um GEDs, but yeah, and then I did English as a second language, so I work with um Spanish-speaking adults that want to speak English. Now I don't speak Spanish, but I I teach that too. I taught that at the college level.

SPEAKER_04 24:31

Well, the technology helps you today, probably.

SPEAKER_05 24:34

Oh, absolutely, we do a lot of translating, and so I um for all that that I was doing, I I feel like God had called me out of Las Vegas. Um, because one, I kind of was secretly kind of praying about it because with COVID, food wasn't coming in, and I was scared to live in Las Vegas. I'm like, we're gonna die. Because all they're doing is partying and gambling at this. And every now and then it's so funny. I I remember sending uh my mother a picture out of my window was a dump truck, and the dump truck was uh letting rocks fall off the truck. And I said, Oh, we're getting Las Vegas grass today. Yeah, that's what it's gonna be out there in that building. The grass is being delivered, and so so um a gentleman, one of my old um colleagues, we worked together, he came out to South Carolina, his wife was a um in military, and so he was out here, he was one of the principals out here, and uh a gentleman had approached him and said that he was um in need of somebody to help him build out his program. And so he said, Well, if you have if anybody can do it, it's Leah. So we started these calls two or three months in, and um we vet I vetted his sponsors, I vetted everybody, and then I got out here and I was like, okay, um, I still kept my business going in in Vegas. I stayed here for like six months to try to transition, and then um I ended up closing my business up. I let some people run it a little bit, and then that following I came here in September and then they follow or October, and then that following May, I ended up closing my business and just staying here in Charleston because it ended up working out. Um, I did separate from him. He does have his um his organization, but the pieces that I wanted to start providing for children in the way in a in the vision that I wanted to go for children, um, I was able to get one of the investors to kind of believe in me to do that as well. And so he gave me a big investment in terms of getting started. And I wish he was still my investor, by the way.

SPEAKER_04 26:54

But it's the independence of it all because you got the you got everything else, and of course that as they say, that business marketing background show didn't hurt you none. No, it didn't, it comes in for handy because you don't have uh normal teacher skills, you don't have you got superpowers, you you don't have normal teachers because talking about investors and all that. Who does an education?

SPEAKER_05 27:19

They doing good with just more crayons, they can bear and get a box of paper, like what yeah, and you absolutely, and so um, so I was good, yeah.

SPEAKER_04 27:32

So God used all of that, he did, he really did.

SPEAKER_05 27:39

You can have that accounting every day, please. Lord have mercy.

SPEAKER_04 27:43

You no longer had two years of it in high school, yeah. So I had one and two in high school, so I was on like the business track. That's the reason why teaching, I wasn't never supposed to be looking at teaching. What I mean, I'm corporate America all day long, baby. I'm supposed to have a big corner office by now. Not guys that know, yeah, and you know what?

SPEAKER_05 28:05

Um, that was the problem because the kids that were doing well that were faring a little bit better were those who did have accounting one and two in high school, and I but you know what? I took what I was supposed to take, and that was typing.

SPEAKER_04 28:19

Oh, yeah. No, I took that too. I was the best types in my school. I still type 80 words a minute, girl. Oh Lord, I'm not that fast, but I thank God I took it because no, see, we needed that.

SPEAKER_05 28:30

Yeah, I wish I could do 80. Oh I would be cranking out so much stuff right now if I can do 80. I got so much in my mind right now.

SPEAKER_04 28:40

Listen, listen. What the Bible tells us ain't nothing gonna be wasted. Uh-uh, nothing shall be wasted. No, no, no. Every skill, every every ability, every talent. We never know when we're gonna use it, we never know when it's gonna come in handy. But let me tell you, that typing is the best thing I ever did. I had a class that we're just in here for the girls. I was like, Boy, y'all better know what that keyboard does. Yeah, absolutely. But you better know what that keyboard does because it's gonna come in handy a little bit later. Okay, so your your organization is still going, so we can still reach out to you at DominionYouth Inc.com.

SPEAKER_05 29:21

Yes, yes, that's my website. So the Power Learning Institute website is down. I transitioned everything onto Dominion Youth. I still have Power Learning Institute on YouTube, though. Okay, and I still upload stuff on there.

SPEAKER_04 29:35

I'm thinking about these people who are gonna be, you know, who's gonna need that help because the the the clients you have now are not the only ones, there's plenty of people.

SPEAKER_05 29:43

No, and they're not, and is and that's the reason why I do this. So I came here and I got I took a teaching position because once I got to doing power learning institute, I said, I I'm not gonna let go of me again in my service. My service to God is important to me, and so that's why I named it Dominion Youth. And and um the first thing God told us to do is be fruitful and multiply and have dominion over everything in the earth. And so, in order to have that dominion, we need to have discipline and we need to have dedication, and so those are areas that I find our children are lacking, and I needed to be able to feel that. And so um the lion is it's so deep, so bear with me. I'm gonna try to explain this to you. So, my name is Leah, and uh Leah in the biblical text was um married to Judah, you know, and Rachel, but he didn't want um Leah, he didn't want Leah, he wanted Rachel, and so uh they used to call Leah weary-eyed. And and you know, when I was I went to a Lutheran school, and my pastor uh he said, Oh, you Mr. Polly, oh, you just wearied eyed all, and he scarred me for a long time calling me that, like I wasn't cute, but then another pastor later on said, You can't get two people from the same family, they this one just looked real hideous, and they got the same mom and daddy. Don't believe anything he had said, so that kind of helped for two months. She was ugly, they said she was tender-eyed, so I'm like, Yeah, tender-eyed or weary-eyed, I don't know what was going on with this girl's eyes, but I promise you I understand, I promise you I understand now because they call it weary eyed. Well, I cry often, and I cry for my people often, and um, I'm connected emotionally to you, and um, when I have that emotional connection, and I know you want to make it because my tears can be prayers, and I can use them to ask God to help me to help his children.

SPEAKER_04 31:49

Come on, come on, lady, come on.

SPEAKER_05 31:51

So, um, Leah, you know, out of her womb, uh, you know, she had the lion of Judah out of her womb, right? She gave birth to Judah, yeah. I'm sorry, because she didn't marry Judah, she gave line the birth to Judah, who was the lion. They call it the lion, the line of Judah. When Christ comes from that line of Judah. Now, I ain't giving birth to no messiahs with my womb no more. No, there's only one. Come on, the only one, right? Exactly. But there's only one, but we do have your mind, it can also be a womb, it can be fertile, it can give birth to ideas, it can give birth to human beings in terms of building them up and lifting them up. So the symbolism of that, yeah, absolutely. Okay, so so I'm grabbing the symbolism of saying, Okay, your name is Leah, you're weary-eyed. Um, I went into myself, I went into God. What is my purpose? And when you're looking for your purpose, then you search yourself and you pray and you ask. And so, um, my goal is not to necessarily, you know, of course, there is one Jesus Christ Lord and Savior, but my goal is to use this mind, my womb, my my mind to grow something in your mind, yes, so that you can be fertile fertile and um and produce, yes, produce, and so so you'll see the lion. My logo is a lion, and he's got his right paw over the uh earth.

SPEAKER_04 33:23

Ah, I love it. I love it. I love it.

SPEAKER_05 33:28

Every piece, every now, I every piece of it. Um, I prayed over, yeah, yeah. So that's what I do. So so so my job, I teach sixth grade science, but my passion is dominion youth.

SPEAKER_04 33:48

Absolutely, absolutely, and being able to have that additional outlet, I know exactly what that feels like and exactly what that means because I'm like, this can't be it, Jesus.

SPEAKER_05 33:57

This here no, it can't be, and it won't be, and that's what I was saying too, with people like, and there could be some, and and you were talking before about people like coming back and saying they want to be with their parents, but there can be some people who are stuck between and they just are working on a job and don't have a means. And I say, Hey, use your mind, you're fertile, think of something that you love to do, that's your passion. Absolutely. Start doing that in small ways so that you can be growing, you can grow in that way, you can figure out what are you destined to do and to help and be part of the community here on earth, and that will help you to continue to go here every day and say, Okay, I need this for my insurance, my roof over my head, um, benefits, and I do have some grown children that call every now and then and want something.

SPEAKER_04 34:52

Right. So that's always the case, but you know, I I I'm quite sure there are kids everywhere who say, even though it didn't seem like uh I all the time, I look back and say, what was that for? What was that 22 years for? Why? Yeah, I see I see the kids I was with that I came in contact with, the kids I impacted, uh, the kids I even just said a kind word to, or some of the kids, I don't even know if I really interacted, but they remember me, they know me. And so I was like, well, you know, that old song, if I can help somebody, then my living is not in vain. So um I I'll leave it at that. I mean, I I guess I don't like the long-term uh return on my investment. I love putting books together and ta-da, it's beautiful, there it is, yay!

SPEAKER_05 35:48

So let me tell you about my first book, Jude. Okay, go ahead. Can you see it? This is my baby brother supposed to be, and this is me. So it's Leah and Elliot Learn Boundaries, and so I took uh my name has two E's and his has two L's, but I spelled it with one E and one L.

SPEAKER_06 36:14

Right.

SPEAKER_05 36:14

So this is our series for Leah and Elliot. But I wrote that book first because I found that children did not have ways to say no, and they didn't have the diplomacy of being of knowing how to advocate for themselves.

SPEAKER_01 36:33

Right.

SPEAKER_05 36:34

So this uh this word kind of this this book kind of helps children have a framework to being able to say what their preferences are, for example, and it and these are all written for like early childhood, kind of first and second grade, but you can also use it as upper grades as like a fun way of teaching um rules for your classroom and boundaries in your classroom. So kids that just take your pencils and pens and whichever, and they just pop each other or hit each other, and this and that, and other. And I say, nope, find the boundary corner. So I had a little corner in my classroom years ago, it was a different corner, but now I'm calling it the boundary corner. And then you have a framework that you use, and it says, you know what? It bothers me when you take my pencil without asking me, and I wish that you wouldn't do that because I needed to write. So it was just it bothers me and wish it bothers me, I wish, and so that framework when I started saying we're gonna use words to help you think about what you need to say and solve it, and so the person that's receiving that just says Johnny took his pencil, and and and I want to go tell him to stop doing that. Johnny has to acknowledge his behavior too. I I heard you say it bothered you when I took your pencil.

SPEAKER_06 37:57

Oh wow, yeah.

SPEAKER_05 37:58

So it's a framework that when you do it in your classroom, that person has to say what had harmed them. And sometimes children, after they after the twos, like two, you're gonna hear no all day long.

SPEAKER_04 38:12

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_05 38:13

You're gonna hear no all day long. But sometimes when they start developing in themselves, they don't know how to say no, and they don't know how to say, No, you you can't use my counsel, I need it for my work, and it's okay, right?

SPEAKER_04 38:30

Right.

SPEAKER_05 38:32

That's one of the reasons why I wrote that that that book there. So that was my first book.

SPEAKER_04 38:38

And so how many's in the series?

SPEAKER_05 38:40

Um, I think I'm gonna have four. I have I have Leah and Elliot Learn Boundaries. This is the second one. Leah and Elliot have a new brother. Okay, okay, and so this is like a counselor piece, yes. Um because no, no, what and that's what they that's what Leah and Elliot was asking at the table, too. We're gonna adopt a brother, you know, where is this brother coming from? Hold on, wait a minute. Listen, and she's so nosy in the book, she's like, 'cause the way she found out, she was listening to her parents, you know, talking a room, and they said we're gonna get a new brother, you know. They they behind the closed doors listening to conversation, they're not supposed to be doing it. No, well, it it had it say we found out. I found out when I was 17 that I had a brother. Gotcha, and so um, and my brother is and was nine. My my even though it says we're twins in this book, my youngest brother is uh eight years younger than I am, and so um we had to navigate that space, yeah. And um that's a lot of questions.

SPEAKER_04 39:55

I would I would leave, I would have been asking a whole lot of questions.

SPEAKER_05 39:58

She was like, Wow, this little girl, and believe me, at that time, Julia, I was just dead nosed. Where's this baby coming from?

SPEAKER_04 40:11

Oh wow, that yeah, that's a great counseling piece. It is uh that's a great one, yeah.

SPEAKER_05 40:18

This also gives spaces for blended families, it also gives spaces for people who are navigating this because sometimes in um and I and God forbid, because this also happened to um a friend of mine that her and her husband have been married, they had already had two children of their own, and then now their younger children are four and five, and all of a sudden they have somebody coming back at uh the child is now seven, and they said, Hey, um, we found out that this was not this person's child, that this is actually your child. And so, how do you navigate that? You you tell your family it looks like this for a while, and now you have to navigate that. And so, my thing would be to first lead with love and understanding, right? And I have to say, my mother was very instrumental in that part of our lives because she said, Listen, uh, Keith is going to be here in our lives. That's my oldest brother's name, and he's part of the group. Um, you've had your dad and I in the home together all your life, so whatever he does for him, that's not your business. Well, come on through, mommy. They had to know what that looked like too. But it was my mother, it was my mother's strength that helped to navigate that to help us all be a family, to depend on each other, to love each other, to keep nothing, he just heard it. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, and so now fast forward the the this 30 years later, um, we're blessed to have him because when you have you don't know what's gonna happen. Exactly.

SPEAKER_04 42:04

And so you don't know how life's gonna happen, yeah.

SPEAKER_05 42:07

So those a lot of the books are not just um they have a theme or something behind them, except for this one book.

SPEAKER_04 42:14

Which one is that one?

SPEAKER_05 42:16

This one I wrote for uh a parent of mine. Her daughter was attending uh the school. I'll show you her picture. It's her and her daughter. Oh, okay. Yeah, so she was turning eight, and her daughter's name is Amaya Ivy. Oh cute. So I left that book for them.

SPEAKER_04 42:39

So so all the books are they available at DemandingYouThink.com?

SPEAKER_05 42:44

They are available on. I have a link to them there, but they also on Amazon. So the one that I just finished, um, the one I told I talked to you about in a second. Julia, I just finished my book. That one is called Leah and Elliot Go to Kindergarten.

SPEAKER_04 43:00

Um, yeah, that's that's a navigating piece right there.

SPEAKER_05 43:06

Yeah, it absolutely is because Leah cries all day long.

SPEAKER_06 43:10

Oh boy.

SPEAKER_05 43:16

Oh god, I remember those days. You already know that's how it goes. Like you the first couple days of school with them little ones, they are crying, and the next day they cry and they cry the next day. It's like, oh god, there's crying.

SPEAKER_04 43:28

I said, I want mine too, but we gotta sit down and get this lesson today. Smile second, yes, oh my Lord, it's a lot, it's a lot, it's a lot good. So that's something you have a set of books, especially for the preschool head start and their cute characters, yeah, cute illustrations. So that is wonderful, wonderful, wonderful.

SPEAKER_05 43:52

So I think the last one I'm gonna do.

SPEAKER_04 43:55

Go ahead.

SPEAKER_05 43:56

I think the last one in that series I'm gonna do is just um. And it's Leon Elliott uh Ada Z Adventure, something like that about finding alphabet. And the reason being is that I want to I've had the same illustrator do this book, but I want to come, I want to try another illustrator for the same series.

SPEAKER_04 44:16

No, no, after the series. Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_05 44:19

Yeah, and that that's what happens sometimes. You get locked into when you have the characters like this, you do get locked into that same illustrator.

SPEAKER_04 44:38

But no, we we we're done with that series, and we're done with you doing the series.

SPEAKER_05 44:42

Uh well, and then you know what? And honestly, that kind of happened with this last book because uh it was it was like almost two months.

SPEAKER_04 44:53

It took an additional two months because it was like, Oh, I'm so sorry I fell asleep or I was sick, or that's like, hold up, you were smoking your pocket when AI gets really, really good and giving consistent characters over and over again, it's kind of half and sometimes, but then when it gets good, really good, oh illustrators is gonna have the ones, the lazy ones is gonna have a lot of problems. They're gonna have a lot of and you know what?

SPEAKER_05 45:20

Um Julia, all three of these books are actually on my um Power Learning Institute YouTube page. Oh, okay. You can go if they want to if they want to see the book without purchasing it, they can watch it on um oh no, I want you to purchase it. I want you to get the so I shouldn't have said that. Sorry, don't don't don't go to the YouTube channel on the YouTube channel preview. That's what I want. Then I want you to click on the link and go in there. Yes, click on the link. Well, the new book is not gonna be on there and that's a publisher and me. Hello. Hey, absolutely, because I have to get these paid for, but um, also I want to put a workbook out with each one of these, yes, so that a counselor can have something to work with in case they needed some pieces, or a brand new teacher who's setting up their classroom, right? They can set up a boundary corner where hey, I'm not gonna solve a pencil problem for you every day.

SPEAKER_04 46:15

You and Billy go over there and get that solved yourself, and then the other thing, too, is that um, you know, they need resources, they need bound resources, and they're gonna need this is my tip for you, they're gonna need digital resources and all of that good stuff. So come on, uh Dominion Youth Inc. It's just gonna keep growing. And so when you can get that pension check from that school district, then you can walk and have something else built because I always believe I don't call them side hustles, but I always think you need to utilize all the gifts God gave you. All if everything you put in your hands, I think you need to utilize all of them in some way, shape, or form. So that's the way you know that's the way I see it. And congratulations. I'm not gonna take up no more of your time, two teachers talking today. Thank you so much.

SPEAKER_05 47:00

You're welcome, love. But Julia, I do have to say this before we go. I want to say to you, uh, thank you, because the first three books I did in like 2018, 2019, and I just stopped. And then when I saw you in Atlanta, and I saw this whole table of all these beautiful books with your name on them, and I said, Oh my god, that was my vision long ago. And so I said, I'm gonna go home and write this book, and and you came up with the workshop, right? Write the book.

SPEAKER_04 47:38

Yes, you did, and I appreciate you attending that. I mean, it I mean, that's what my job is, my role to kickstart and jump start.

SPEAKER_05 47:48

Let's make it up, let's get it going, let's do it. Kickstart and jump start, and you did, and I want to tell you, thank you for that inspiration because um, you know, you you get inundated and then you bury these dreams and you bury these hopes, and you can't leave them there. So, thank you for uncovering, yeah, taking your mind, your mind, and giving me something fertile to think about and to do and to produce and help me grow. I appreciate you.

SPEAKER_04 48:18

My pleasure, my pleasure. That's what my purpose is. Because if I can help somebody, then my living won't be in vain. But it's a part of my purpose, too, as well. It's a part of my purpose to help other people. I've always been in public service, no matter what job I've ever had, it's always been serving. And I I know for a fact that if you serve humanity the correct way with some boundaries now, you still have to have boundaries because people will take advantage of people like me. But if you seek with a pure heart to really help and assist people in the best way that you can, God will reward you openly and sometimes in secret. But he will definitely, definitely reward you. Well, love, it's been a pleasure. Thank you so much for being my guest until next time. Leah Power, DominionYouth Inc. com. I'm Dr. Julia Royston. Live your best life today, tomorrow, and always. Be blessed until next time. Bye-bye.

SPEAKER_05 49:15

Bye-bye. Thank you.

SPEAKER_01 49:24

Each and every day, love and live your way to your very best. Learn and lead today. The best you can, it's your life. Take a stance on it.

SPEAKER_02 49:48

Come on and your best time with Dr. Joya Royston.