There are so many ways to fix breakfast. But what makes a restaurant’s breakfast special, special?
Columbus has some serious chef talent, and a food and travel writer is spotlighting that talent.
Hardships can be a part of any life, but doing something with them and turning it into something positive can be difficult, but this is what one woman did.
Math is difficult for many students. It can be very challenging to learn new math skills and kids often become overwhelmed and discouraged by its challenges, but one teacher decided to fix this problem.
Guests:
- Nick Dekker, food and travel writer, Breakfast with Nick
- Dureti "Mimi" Tadesse, CEO and founder, Cawwaaqee Guuttatta Women’s Empowerment
- Caroline Farkas, certified teacher and educational content creator/founder, Doodles and Digits
Transcript
This transcript is generated with AI. To ensure its accuracy, review the audio file.
Amy Juravich: Welcome to All Sides with Amy Juravich. This is Fascinating Ohio, a show from All Sides in WOSU where we introduce you to people from the Buckeye state with an interesting story to tell. There are so many ways to fix breakfast, but what makes a restaurant's breakfast special, special? Columbus has some serious chef talent and a local food and travel writer is spotlighting that talent. He's also expanded beyond breakfast to write about food, drink, travel, the arts and family fun. You might already be following him on Instagram, where he is known as Breakfast with Nick. And joining us now to talk about Columbus breakfast and more, we have food and travel writer, Nick Dekker. Welcome to the show, Nick.
Nick Dekker: Thank you for having me.
Juravich: Alright, so what made you start writing about breakfast in the first place?
Dekker: So first and foremost, everyone has that insufferable morning person in their life, and that's me. That's you for my family. Always have been, even as a kid, I was excited to get up early on Saturday mornings and stuff. And so many years ago, this is going on almost 20 years ago now, we were still relatively new to Columbus. This was pre-social media, so that's how old I am. And we were so like kind of discovering the city. And one of the things that I really enjoyed finding was when we discover, look at this little diner that we had never heard about, find this old donut shop. And for me as a writer, as someone who's trained as a historian, I was like, well, we got to document these things. I got to write it down. And so I, at the time, this was pre-social media. So we all had blogs, everyone, we had like family blogs. Like that's how my wife and I kept up with our siblings, our parents, our friends across the countries, you'd, you know, write a little family blog about the garden and pictures of the dog and house renovations and stuff like that. And I said, You know, what if I started a second blog just to like document these breakfast places, because it's kind of fun to find these. And my wife said, yeah, go for it. Like, why don't you do it? So I was like, okay, so I'm gonna start a site and it's breakfast and it me, my name's Nick. So I just called it Breakfast with Nick.
Juravich: And the rest is history. Can you believe where it's gone from there, though? I mean, your 2007 self didn't picture this. Oh, no, no.
Dekker: So 2007, Nick had just finished his PhD at Ohio State in theater history and dramatic lit. He was starting to lecture at the university and my goal was to be college professor, was to the guy in the tweed jacket walking around with a pipe on campus.
Juravich: Listeners just for your records. He's wearing a doughnut shirt today. No, you know what?
Dekker: Yeah, you know what? I should have worn my sport coat. I have a pipe at home. I could have brought that. You know, I wanted to be like the C.S. Lewis or the J.R.R token of breakfast, basically. So, so yeah, I had no clue it was gonna go that way. And the first, I think I've benefited from the fact that the first maybe two, three years of it was just totally for fun. There was no agenda behind it. I wasn't paid for anything. It was just, you, know, we'd find cool places and I would take pictures sometimes. I mean, this is pre, you know, smart phones. So I would carry this DSLR around with me. Oh, and then you had to like plug a cord in and oh no. Bring the whole thing out. And that's when it was like, you know, the only people who were really taking pictures of food at the time were, you know, photojournalists for the newspaper. So I was embarrassed to take my camera out most of these places. So some of my early reviews, I have a very like surreptitiously taken. Photo of like the exterior of the restaurant. You know, nothing of the food, nothing of the inside, and that was it.
Juravich: All right, so what is your favorite breakfast food? Are you a savory or sweet guy?
Dekker: I'm very much a savory guy. I love sweet, but I always gravitate towards savory.
Juravich: Okay, so are you eating eggs or what are you eating?
Dekker: Yeah, I mean, I love what's often deemed like the classic breakfast, eggs, bacon, toast, hash browns. I do love a good eggs Benedict. That's often what I'll test out on a menu the first time going somewhere is I always gravitate towards a Benedict. I love a corned beef hash too.
Juravich: Okay. There are dozens of amazing breakfast places in Columbus. Is it unfair for me to ask your favorite? I toyed, I was like, how do I ask him his favorite, right?
Dekker: I know I know right yeah, I often like sort of like defer the question a little bit. I it is I do have
Juravich: Go ahead, pivot away. No, no.
Dekker: Yeah, I usually say I have like a top five or so that's like always kind of not turning over but it's like, you know, it's kind of depending on what we're in the mood for. Some of my favorites, so we live in Worthington, Joyous Cafe is our probably that's one of my favorite breakfasts in Columbus that usually sits around the number one spot. I just I just love everything they do. It's executed very, very well. There's always a sense of fun to their food. Chef Avishar and his team just always seemed to delight in making food. We love the Locke's Bagel Shop. Their pastrami is just to die for. I'm a big fan. There's a little place, a German village brewery district called Kalachi Republic, which is just a little kitchen out of a bar. They're making these Czech-style Kalachis, and they make these great little breakfast sandwiches with chorizo and eggs and cheese in them. Let's see, I love South of Lane over in Upper Arlington. Really cute place. Really good waffles, good breakfast burrito there. The Pancake House is a little family-run spot, they have two on the north end.
Juravich: Do you get pancakes there or do you get the eggs?
Dekker: So I always get both, that's one of the places. I always like a chorizo scramble and then they have a like cinnamon roll pancake that is just to die for.
Juravich: All right, well thank you for actually naming names. I wasn't sure if you were going to name names or not. And you know what, and I'll name one because I love avocado eggs Benedict, right? And it's such a unique thing. And so Grand Day Cafe in Upper Arlington, that's my favorite place. Have you been there? Yeah, I don't, it was near where my kids used to go to daycare a long time ago. And I would just, that would be a special treat occasionally, avocado eggs, Benedict.
Dekker: That's, that's delightful there.
Juravich: All right, so you are coming up on 20 years. Can you believe you've been doing this for 20 years?
Dekker: For 20 years? No, no I cannot.
Juravich: Okay, do you have anything special planned for next year when it's the 20th year of Breakfast with Nick?
Dekker: That's a good question. So for the 10-year anniversary, we threw a party at the kitchen in German Village, and that was super fun. A bunch of different restaurants brought food. We did a whole bunch of giveaways. A friend of mine surprised me. He wrote a song about breakfast with Nick and debuted it at the party and stuff. Cute, okay. So I... We were talking about it and we said we should do something similar. I feel like we should a party, I think a good, finding some way to highlight local businesses would be the way, or even raise some money. I'm on the board of Service Relief, which is a nonprofit that supports restaurant industry workers with training and resources. So the thought of like doing a fundraiser for service would be, I think, pretty amazing. So We, yeah, it's like taking shape, but we know it wants to, we want there to be a party aspect and like a fundraising fun aspect to it.
Juravich: All right. You have a little time to plan. You're not quite there yet. You're not quite there yet.
Dekker: OK. Fortunately, I've got till June 4 is the actual birthday. That was the first post I made was June 4, 2007.
Juravich: Okay. So at first, did you try to keep it purely breakfast? When did you decide to expand to other food and other things?
Dekker: Yeah, initially it was, yeah, that's how I sort of set myself apart was being the breakfast guy, especially amongst the like early group of bloggers in Columbus. Everyone was sort of finding their niche and some people were very much like cooking or farmers markets or testing old recipes or visiting certain types of restaurants. And so I delineated myself by being the the breakfast guy. So. Um, yeah, I really did stick with that. The first like four or five years, um, a couple of years in, I started writing for six one four magazine and started writing breakfast pieces and it was, I would say it was probably about five years in or so, and for some reason I always think of tacos. I remember there was some, I don't know if we like went to Los Gauchos or something and I was like, these are really good tacos. It's a nice small business. I like what's stopping me from writing about it.
Juravich: And your name.
Dekker: But then I was like, you know, I've been doing this long enough people kind of know what I'm about and also like It's nick. It's my name on the thing and nick can do whatever he wants. So I was
Juravich: I'm, you know what? I'm the boss.
Dekker: And when I started writing some of those blog posts, but I would title them Beyond Breakfast. So I was like, okay, so I've got to designate that like, hey folks, we're not breakfast here. We're talking about tacos or we're talking about burgers.
Juravich: This is Fascinating Ohio from all sides on 89.7 NPR News, and we are talking about Columbus Breakfast and more with Nick Decker, food and travel writer and creator of Breakfast with Nick. So where is most of your engagement now? Is it on Instagram?
Dekker: Yeah, Instagram is the big thing. So I still write for my site and that's still chugging along, but Instagram and then Facebook too. I've had some good engagement there, but Instagram is really the big driver. I did, you know, a few years back finally adopt TikTok.
Juravich: That's what I was going to ask you.
Dekker: Uh... And it's
Juravich: Our age demographic tends to not want to turn the corner to TikTok, yeah. Turn the corner to TikTok, yeah.
Dekker: My wife got into it over the pandemic, and she's very much into books and stuff on TikTok. And then she was like, you should start posting on here. So, reluctantly I did.
Juravich: And you were like, no, okay, another thing to manage. So on your website, you have a breakfast guide, obviously, right? And then you, you, have a diner guide, a donut guide, a coffee guide, but you also have a Columbus guide. Do you feel like, are you an unofficial ambassador for the city?
Dekker: Yeah, I have thought of myself as that way because I do get a lot of people who will reach out who have said, you know, we're traveling to Columbus and we found your site or we found your Instagram and you know can you recommend these places we're going to be in this part of town. So yeah, I do think of myself that way of how do I represent the city and wanting people to discover a lot the businesses and the chefs and owners that we've come to know and love. So yeah I'm proud to be doing that.
Juravich: So what are your favorite, I'm going to ask you again a hard question, what are your favorite things about Columbus? Like when someone visits from out of town and they contact you, like what are the first, what's the top three, three or five things you tell them?
Dekker: Um, I, I tell them that we're like a very neighborhood driven city. So to like pick different neighborhoods to explore and spend some, some time in, um, whether that's like center of the city, like short north or Franklin, whether it's some of the suburbs, like I have to plug, come to Worthington, um I tell people that it's fun to like find those little neighborhood identities. Um, I think people are surprised a lot of times by our dining scene. I think we have, we've earned a lot of national attention and we can stand on that. But it's always, I try to direct people to, here are some of our best local restaurants. I tell people, we have a lot of great parks or metro park system is just wonderful. And I think a lot of people are surprised by that too, that sort of all over the region, you can find some really amazing places to explore.
Juravich: We recently did a show about attracting people to downtown Columbus. And one thing that came up again and again is that the city lacks an identity.
Dekker: Yeah, yeah.
Juravich: Do you agree with that?
Dekker: Yeah, I think we're always kind of finding our way. And I've heard some people say, like, we need to just stop doing that. Like, we don't have maybe some iconic landmarks like other cities, or we don't have this long, long history like a place like a New York or Chicago might have. Yeah, it's, I think in some ways it's tough to answer that, you know, I think it's I think we have a lot to like be proud of, I think we, but it's sometimes hard to like pick like, what's that one thing that we're known for, aside from like a football team. Right.
Juravich: Right, or being the state capitol. Or being the State capitol, yeah. That little thing.
Dekker: Yep.
Juravich: I but I also feel like this city loves its neighborhoods like German village loves German village short north love short north. Yep, you find that too
Dekker: Yeah, and again, that's I think one of the strong points for us and I think that's one way I'll sort of direct people is to like, yeah, spend a day in German village that you can walk around. There's a lot of great businesses. You could eat your way through an entire neighborhood from coffee to lunch to dinner and drinks. So it's a great way to get to know the city.
Juravich: So your day job is with the Greater Columbus Arts Council. And then you also call yourself on the side Dr. Breakfast because you mentioned you have a PhD, so you are a doctor. Your PhD, though, is in theater history, literature, and criticism, right? Do I got that right, from Ohio State? I was just curious how your PhD work connects to the work you do now with the GCAC and Breakfast with Nick.
Dekker: That's a very good question. So doing the PhD and writing my dissertation was up there with one of the most difficult things that I did. I had an advisor, the late Tom Postowait, who was an amazing researcher and just an amazing professor and was incredibly tough too. So I think learning how to write and how to research under him, I think really benefited me like knowing how to write concisely and clearly has honestly, I mean, there are times where I'm writing blog posts and then I'm thinking like, what would Tom think of this? Like, would Tom, like, he'd tell me to trim this part out or he'd me to be more direct in this. So, but I think, you know, in general, when I was at OSU, I taught intro to theater. I led the giant class. So that's where I got students to call me Dr. Breakfast. So it started as a joke and then a student addressed me as that over email. I was like, oh, it's sticking now. So. So I think having that general knowledge and appreciation of history and literature certainly helps working in the arts today.
Juravich: So what, tell me what your job is for GCAC.
Dekker: So I'm the marketing and communications manager, so I handle a lot of our press and media relations, press releases. I do the social media for the Columbus Arts Festival, June 11 through 13, 2000 or 2027 so
Juravich: The dates are known. All right. Got it. Oh, yes.
Dekker: I manage some of our event databases and stuff like that.
Juravich: It's exciting. All right. We have just like two or two or so minutes left, so we're going to do a breakfast, we're going to go back to breakfast for a lightning round. Oh, boy. Breakfast for dinner. Yay or nay? Yes. Yes. And when does brunch begin? When does breakfast end and brunch begin.
Dekker: Somewhere in the nine to ten.
Juravich: Nine to 10? And best diner for breakfast, you can name more than one. You already said, I think you already said one in your list before.
Dekker: One I didn't shout out before, Tommy's Diner, is the old classic, the family run. Their Belgian Waffle's my favorite. Also Stav's Dine, which is over on the east side near Bexley, great little hole in the wall.
Juravich: Any all-day breakfast places you'd recommend? Is there an open and more hours for breakfast?
Dekker: Yeah, let's see. I mean, if you're gonna go for breakfast and donuts, Buckeye Donuts just up the street from you is always good. Joy does breakfast all day. I think they're open into the afternoon. Again, The Pancake House. Super fantastic.
Juravich: What happens if you when you've reviewed every breakfast in Columbus? Well, have you have you hit? Have you are you done? No, I will.
Dekker: No, I will never hit that saturation point because as things keep closing and then things keep opening too. So my spreadsheet of places to go will never be complete.
Juravich: Yeah, so let's end on that. How do you keep up with knowing what's open and what's closed, and do you take things off your website if they close?
Dekker: I will leave things on the website, but I'll update them to show that they're closed. I use literal spreadsheets and notes on my phone. My wife and I have like shared like collaborative lists of like, here's places that we wanna go. Here's what's open. I have my list of like what's been announced, what's coming. I have this huge word document of what's happening. And not just breakfast.
Juravich: And not just breakfast places, though. Not just breakfast place. I mean, you're trying to keep track of all the restaurants.
Dekker: Yeah, because I write for my site and I'll write stuff for Columbus Monthly and the Dispatch too. So I'm like, this is my research.
Juravich: And do you still consider this your side gig?
Dekker: Yeah, this is maybe, I know, I now. This is maybe about a quarter, third of my time. Wow. That I do and the rest is GCAC.
Juravich: Good luck. Thank you. Good luck keeping it up. I hope you get some sleep, but you like the morning. I do, I do. I'm up early. We've been talking about breakfast in Columbus and more with Nick Decker, food and travel writer and the creator of Breakfast with Nick. You can find him on Facebook, Instagram, the internet with his blog, on TikTok apparently and more. Thanks for joining us today, Nick.
Dekker: It's been my pleasure.
Juravich: Coming up, we're going to talk about a book and an organization that teaches resilience, even in a time of hardship. That is when Fascinating Ohio from All Sides continues on 89.7 NPR News.
You're listening to All Sides. I'm your host, Amy Juravich. This is Fascinating Ohio, a show from all sides in WOSU, where we introduce you to people from the Buckeye State with an interesting story to tell. Hardships can be a part of any life, but turning a hardship into a positive can be difficult. But that is exactly what our next guest did. Founded in 2012, CG Women's Empowerment works to support women in Ethiopia. Plus, her recent memoir, "Resilience, turning persecution into purpose," discusses her personal hardships and overcoming them through empowerment and faith. Here with us is Dureti "Mimi" Tadesse, author of the memoir, "Resilience Turning Persecution Into Purpose," and founder and CEO of CG Women's Empowerment. Welcome to the show, Mimi. Thank you for having me. So you were born and raised in Ethiopia. Yes, I was born and raised in Oromia, part of Ethiopia. OK, so and as a young adult, you experienced discrimination based on your ethnic background and your Christian beliefs. Can you tell me what happened that made you why you needed to leave Ethiopia?
Dureti "Mimi" Tadesse: Yeah. Just to give you a background, um, Ethiopia was under communist regime, um, working with USSR used to be called USSR and churches were, uh, not legal. It was illegal having church in the country. So my mother gave her house to be used as underground church. And I was raised in underground church And after I grew up and got married, I met my husband who suffered in prison for being a voice for the voiceless. So he was arrested right before his graduation from Addis Ababa University and kept in prison for more than 10 years. That opened more my eyes how discrimination and oppression system like the Ethiopian Empire discriminates the majority of the people. And we were in prison when we tried to flee the country to be safe.
Juravich: Yeah, you you were imprisoned as well. So you the two of you were trying to leave the country and then you ended up Yeah, tell us a little bit about that
Tadesse: Yes, so we, my husband and I tried to flee the country to be safe because we, it was unsafe for, especially for my husband to stay in Ethiopia. And we were arrested while trying to cross the country through Djibouti. Me being in prison, being tortured, stayed in dark room, being told not to pray, not to use my native language. And I could not believe that we were released, so to be safe, we had to leave the country and come to United States.
Juravich: You came to the United States under political asylum in the 1990s. Eventually you and your husband became US citizens. What did that opportunity mean to you, to be able to become a citizen of this country? It means a lot.
Tadesse: The freedom of speech, experiencing the freedom women and children have in this country, being involved with making decisions in families and other places, feel comfortable going to school and educate myself and women. It is mind blowing and it's a great opportunity for me to experience that.
Juravich: I wanted to jump ahead to 2012 because you started your organization, CG Women's Empowerment. Your mission is to create economic self-sufficiency for women, children, and entire villages in the region of Ethiopia where you grew up. First off, can you start by telling us what CG stands for? See you this time.
Tadesse: For my grandmother, her name is Jawake Gutata, an amazing, strong woman, loving, generous, who was kidnapped and forced to stay with her husband without her will. So I named the organization after her because she is an inspiration.
Juravich: And, but what made you start the organization to begin with? Okay, so it's wonderful that you named it after your grandmother, but it's also called Women's Empowerment. So, I mean, what made decide I need to, I need create an organization to help the region where I came from?
Tadesse: Before I came to the conclusion of having a non-profit organization, I worked as a volunteer for many years, resettling Oromian refugees here, finding a job, and helped them to learn how to drive and navigate in different new cultures that they're in, as I have experienced it. Um, but the more I see the opportunity that woman has in this country, and children, it did not let me ignore the people that I left behind. So that inspired me to start a non-profit organization here in Empower Women and Rural Art, or ROMEAS.
Juravich: Tell me about the region in Ethiopia where you come from and the region that you're helping. I mean, what does it need? What are you helping to do there?
Tadesse: The country that I came from is Oromia, it's part of Ethiopia. The need is very high. Woman is being treated as a property, not as human being. And children are forgotten and they're working in taking care of cows and other animals in the jungle. So woman spending her time looking for a firewood and being raped and her voice is not heard and then she collected firewood. Firewood and carry it on her back and walk miles and miles to earn 25 cents a day, average, to feed her children. So that is a high need. And we don't want the woman to have all this happen over and over. So we empower children to creating reading rooms to break the cycle of poverty.
Juravich: Okay, so you're working with the children to break the cycle, maybe teach them, you know, what else life can be. Is that what you mean? Yeah.
Tadesse: Yeah, reading and writing. When children are educated, they can learn their right. And also they can get a better job than being on the field and working in the farm and taking care of animals. Or the girls just being in the jungle all the time and be raped, their voice is not heard. So we're trying to create safe environment for the mothers while we are creating reading rooms to empower children.
Juravich: How do you create the reading rooms? Do you just send money? Are you sending actual people to like build the rooms, bring the books, do the teaching?
Tadesse: We do, we raise fund from here and send the money to our partners, uh, Nakamte Rotary Club, which is, I'm a founder of Rotary club in that area as well, they host the project and, um, create the reading rooms by buying books and any material that can, uh make the room better like shelves and paint the room. The main project is empowering women. By giving a cow cow is everything for women So by giving them a cow the woman can be around home rather than being in the jungle that expose her to high risk of being raped and That can build their self-esteem They are human being they matter they're not property and they can feed their children the cow product They can sell the extra to earn an income. We train them how to save money and start small businesses as well and we train them how to handle the cows. And also we create animal clinic to keep the cows healthy.
Juravich: Yes, that makes sense. You need to keep the cows healthy. Okay, so you are you're empowering the women to Be self-sufficient basically. Yes, but you're by buying like buying them basically a cow, right?
Tadesse: Yes, we use a traditional or more traditional way of empowering women, which is called Dabare. Dabarae means when that rich man would like to help the poor woman in the village, they give one of their own cow. Then when that cow give birth, the person who received the cow will give her first born calf to another woman on the waiting list so the gift multiply itself and transform communities. So.
Juravich: Wow. Okay. This is Fascinating Ohio From All Sides on 89.7 NPR News, and we're talking about resilience with Mimi Tadesse, author of the memoir, "Resilience, Turning Persecution Into Purpose," also the founder and CEO of CIG Women's Empowerment. So you published your memoir in May of this year. What does turning persecution into purpose mean to you? Tell Tell me what that means.
Tadesse: It meant to me, it let me see the light through the tunnel. It inspired me, even though it was so painful going through that. It let me grow. It empowered me, in fact, to empower others. So what it means is we can rise. We can rebuild. We can find our purpose beyond the pain. So I want to remind others who are going through darkest moment, then they can rise, they can rebuild and find their purpose beyond the pain. So that's what it means to me. We can rise. We can rebuild.
Juravich: In the book you talk about your personal experiences, your time with hardship, your imprisonment, you were tortured, you were in a lot of pain. Did you always plan to write a book or was it hard to talk about this stuff? So you was it hard to write a book about it?
Tadesse: Was very hard. First of all, in my culture, vulnerability is not known. Um, and also visiting the painful moment is not fun, but I had to write, I was encouraged by my friends, I have witnessed how my story is lifting up others. So I want to lift up more people around the world, but it was not easy, but rewarding.
Juravich: From what I can gather, you've done lots of talks about your story. There's videos of you telling people your story, so was it kind of a thing where you had told the story multiple times and someone said to you, you need to write this down so more people can find it?
Tadesse: Yes, and also I want people to know what's behind C.G. Women's Empowerment, C.J. We, what are we doing, why are we going, what is the impact it's going to create. And in addition, others, let them hear it. Even though it is not easy for me to write, I had to do it courage.
Juravich: For CG Women's Empowerment, I mean, I know you're from here, you live here in central Ohio. Is the organization mostly doing its fundraising in central Ohio or are you able to have more of a reach throughout the country?
Tadesse: Basically in Ohio, we also have supporters in different countries, but mainly in Ohio we are reaching out to others outside of Ohio as well.
Juravich: What has the response been? I mean, tell me about what you think of the central Ohio community. Whenever you tell them about your organization, you're asking for help and support, what do you feel about people in central Ohio reacting to you?
Tadesse: Well, I'm so pleased because anyone who comes and talks to me, they're in it. It takes time to have people one-to-one or a friend or friend shares what we're doing. Once we connected with people, people really get into it because the transformation is real. It won't take long time. One year, two years. The family's life change, people are saved, children have something to eat, the children are going to school, the transformation is very strong, and they're empowering others, not only one person, the gift multiply itself. So yeah, people react to it once they know what we do. One of the challenges, it's hard to reach out to money, because a lot of organizations are focused locally, not internationally.
Juravich: Yeah. Yeah. You're teaching people to care about that we're all one world, right? Yes. Your faith is a key part of your life, your organization, your book as well. Just to end on, can you tell me in what ways faith has played such a big role in your life? Wow. I
Tadesse: I cannot imagine that I can survive without my faith, without Jesus. Of course, I grew up in a Christian family. My mother is a prayer warrior as my grandmother, but for me, especially in prison, I never knew how much Jesus was close to me, protecting me in the darkest moment. So my face is my anger.
Juravich: And are you hoping to teach people about your faith, through your organization and through this book too?
Tadesse: We share the love of Christ, we don't impose on others, but we share the life of Christ. I would love to have everyone in heaven having fun together, just letting people know how it is safe to have Jesus. So I love people to come to Jesus through my books, through my work, but no pressure. No pressure.
Juravich: We have been talking with Dureti "Mimi" Tadesse, author of the memoir, "Resilience, Turning Persecution into Purpose." She's also the founder and CEO of C.G. Women's Empowerment. Thank you so much for joining us today, Mimi. Thank you for having me. And coming up, we are going to talk to a teacher who is trying to make math fun and accessible. That is when Fascinating Ohio from all sides continues on 89 7 NPR News.
You're listening to All Sides. I'm your host, Amy Juravich. This is Fascinating Ohio, a show from All Sides and WOSU where we introduce you to people from the Buckeye State with an interesting story to tell. For many students, math can be difficult. It can be very challenging to learn new math skills and kids are often overwhelmed and discouraged. But one teacher decided to work to fix this problem. Doodles and Digits was founded in 2021 with the mission of making learning math visually fun. With a focus on upper elementary school students, Doodles and Digits uses videos to help students build essential math skills. And here to tell us more about it is Caroline Farkas, founder of Doodles & Digits, and a certified teacher and educational content creator with over a decade of experience in education. Welcome to all sides, Caroline. Thanks so much for having me. So before we talk about this new approach to math, when many of us were learning math, back years ago, whenever you and I were kids, math always seemed a little stiff. I was taught with a textbook where there's explanations of math problems. They were maybe a little bit bland, and there was a lot of memorizing, I feel like. So was that your experience? What was your experience like learning math as a child? Or did you just always love math?
Caroline Farkas: Oh, no, I actually was the opposite. I would be the first person to tell you that I was not a math person growing up. I more enjoyed art and reading and those types of things because I was same thing with you. It was a little stiff for me. It was lot of memorization, a lot of do this drill as quickly as possible. There was a lot anxiety involved and that thankfully has changed a lot. I was in the classroom for about a decade. And I was able to see how we're teaching math now and how I was to teach math. It didn't have to be that way. It didn't have to timed. It didn have to stressful. It could be something joyful and fun.
Juravich: Those timed worksheets, I remember those, where you had to do the multiplication problems as fast as possible. Why did we do that?
Farkas: It's for fluency. I know some people enjoy those even. I was not one of those people, but I actually always told my students faster was not better. I would always use the example of a brain surgeon. Do you want a good brain surgeon or do you want to fast brain surgeon? And my students would be like, oh, yeah. It's OK that if we take our time and actually think through these problems.
Juravich: So what inspired you to start Doodles and Digits?
Farkas: Yeah, so I was in the classroom during the pandemic. And so we obviously were teaching in different modalities. We were in the class room, we were hybrid, and we were also online a lot. So I was trying to keep all of my students, I had about 90 fourth graders at the time, engaged on, you know, Zoom. And to really get them excited about math, I was competing against all the things in there surrounding them wanting to get off and play video games. And I realized that every other subject had some sort of fun visual video that they could watch. If you think about science videos, there's a lot of great content creators for those, even for history or language arts. When I was Googling and looking up for math, there was literally nothing. There was probably what you would picture as a math video. And I kind of was like, wait a minute, like we need to fix this, like math can be fun. And there was nothing online at the time for that.
Juravich: What did you find was missing from the traditional math teaching tools? Was it that visual component or was it the fun? Like I, you know, what, what was missing that you wanted to fill that hole?
Farkas: Yeah, so it was a couple things. If you look at a lot of the great research that even other PBS shows like Sesame Workshop and stuff have done, there's different visual components that hook students learning. So whether that be an actual person, so a lot my videos have my face, a cartoon character, a fun sidekick, we have a math chicken, and then the visual component of just all the things, like different visuals of what does this fraction look like. Can we break this fraction apart? Can we slow it down so students can actually see what's happening instead of just throwing numbers up on a screen?
Juravich: Why did you focus on late elementary school students? Is that because you just said you were a fourth grade teacher? Is that why? Yeah.
Farkas: Yeah. So I was a fourth grade teacher. So that was one of the main reasons. But I also noticed that there was a major gap. There's a lot of great resources for preschool through third grade. And I would even say there's some resources for high school students. But that middle age level where kids are still kids, they still want something fun, but they might not be mature enough for those high school learning resources. And they not necessarily might not want some of younger resources where it's a lot more geared towards preschool. There was such a gap that I'm like, we need to fill this so students can have high quality educational content.
Juravich: This is Fascinating Ohio From All Sides on 89.7 NPR News. We're talking about doodles and digits, which provides fun ways to learn math for elementary students. And we're talking with founder of doodles and digits Caroline Farkas, who's a certified teacher and educational content creator. Okay, so you have short videos that can be used in the classroom or at home. Those are on your website, they're on YouTube. But you also have full length shows. So in season one, you basically were showing how math is used in the real world. I saw you visited an architect, a chocolate factory, a bakery. I mean, tell me your goal with this longer series, which I should say is called, it's a part of Doodles and Digits, but the series is called How It's Math, right? So what was your goal with the longer series?
Farkas: Our goal is really to answer that question, when am I ever going to use this? This is like one of those questions I think every teacher hears almost daily, especially when it comes to word problems. I don't know if you remember those like growing up, but there's always like a joke.
Juravich: Joke. Why do I need to know when the train will get to the station?
Farkas: Yeah, so why is there 500 apples? Like, why are we talking about 500 apples. So the goal of the show is to go behind different industries and actually share the specific standards that students are learning, how they're going to use it, and awesome careers. So the apple question, we went to a zoo and we asked the people who feed the animals, how do you use math when trying to feed all these animals? And they do have to order hundreds and hundreds of apples and peppers. And I'm like, this is great. You know, every math teacher, everywhere is like... This is why we have to solve this word problem. So that really is the reason why is to answer that question. When am I ever going to use this?
Juravich: So I saw that you visited Anthony Thomas Chocolates, and you showed how math is used at a local bakery. You went to Bake Me Happy. You visited a local dentist in Westerville. Tell me about that idea of incorporating basically your hometown into these videos too.
Farkas: Yeah so especially for season two coming out we have 30 different industries so it's much larger than season one and there's so many amazing things happening in Ohio and Columbus. The majority of the people I go behind the scenes with are in the area because this is where I'm located and they have great stories to share. We've also for this season flown all the way California to do some work with the Space Force as well. It's just important to share the stories that when a kid goes to the dentist locally, they can think, oh, they're using math. You know what I mean? It's not some abstract thing. It can be local. It can familiar that the people that you see every single day are using the math skills that you're actually learning in upper elementary.
Juravich: Tell me how a dentist uses masks.
Farkas: He does a lot, so specifically with decimals and measurement and precision. But I always like to talk to you about time. That's something people don't think of as math. But elapsed time is a standard we have to teach in fourth grade. And that's, hey, this appointment is going to take a half an hour. What time does it start? What time doesn't need to end? Does there need to be a 10-minute buffer? Those are all really important skills. I'm sure we've all sat in an office. We're like, oh, why are they running late? Elapsed time is a math skill that a lot of industries use.
Juravich: I watched the episode where you visited Anthony Thomas Chocolates and you basically have the marketing person for Anthony Thomas chocolates do the math lesson. So talk to me about that, about having like, you know, is it hard to convince these people to do the Math lesson or do you, you coach them through it? Yeah. Bye!
Farkas: I usually coach them through it because I do have that perspective, okay, let's either simplify it because some things might be a little bit more complicated, so asking them those certain questions. But I found a lot of people are really excited to share how they're using math because even if they were not, quote unquote, a math person, they realize that a math is a tool that can be used for whatever your dreams are. And I've had many people say, hey, I didn't like math growing up and then I got this and I realized how amazing it can be. And they're excited to talk through what they're doing and that they're actually using math. And that's why it's really important that we cover a lot of industries, not just like the rocket scientists, which we did cover, but we covered an animator and a stylist doing hair. So no matter where you're going to be, they're gonna see the real math application there.
Juravich: And so you're launching season two very soon, season two of Doodles and Digits, How It's Math. You've given us a little tidbit, but give us more of a preview of what's happening in season two and how it's different than season one.
Farkas: Yeah, so season two, it is much larger. So we went behind 30 different industries and it's eight full length, 30 minute episodes. That'll be on PBS, PBS.org, the app, and then broadcast various stations across the country. And it really goes behind a very wide range of places to show how it's math. So we've gone to zoos, aquariums, we've worked with the space force to talk about rocket launches and meteorology and satellites. We've also talked to, like I said, stylists, and we've done how commercials are made, and just we've tried to cover everything. So no matter what a student might love to do, they can say, oh, that's an amazing career. I could do that. And the math I'm learning right now can get me there. It doesn't have to seem like some scary thing. It can seem attainable, and it could really spark their interest in their dreams.
Juravich: This seems like a labor of love for you. I mean, is this your baby project born and raised?
Farkas: Yeah, it definitely is. Once I started it and I saw the impact it could have, it's just only kind of inspired me more to keep doing what I'm doing.
Juravich: And who is the main audience? You're looking for upper elementary students, maybe their parents and their teachers?
Farkas: Yeah, so it's teachers, families, and mainly upper elementary, but I have had people reach out to me that are older audiences and younger audiences. They might not necessarily want to, you know, do the word problem at the end where they're adding fractions, but they can still be inspired by the different careers and how math plays a role in them.
Juravich: I wanted to talk to you about a few specifics of the program. So on your website, you mentioned three concepts. And the first is to make math visual. So talk to me, I mean, you think about math being on a worksheet, but talk to be more about making math visual.
Farkas: Yeah so most of the time I mean when you're out in the real world or even on my videos you're not doing a worksheet so depending on what career we're talking about or even when I'm teaching showing students the real visual so for example baking you're actually using measuring cups you're using measurement when we were with the pharmacist they were using scales to make sure that they were getting the precise decimal Um, that's that visual piece. We're not just writing equations on a piece of paper. Some people still do that in their career, but most of the time I found people aren't ever writing things down. They're using tools. They're visually showing a measurement. They're doing a chart or they're looking at data to make sure that what they're doing is correct. Um, That's also what we believe in our short form videos is I'm not gonna just talk to you about numbers. I'm going to show you a picture. I'm gonna show you different ways it's used in the real world. Because I think that connection is so important for students. And I would even argue parents too, to really be able to support their student is that it's not just numbers on a page that seems so abstract. It's really in the world everywhere around us.
Juravich: The second concept or principle that you have on your website is make math accessible. So what does making it accessible mean to you through doodles and digits?
Farkas: I think it's really important that all students can see themselves as a math person. I'm really proud of the fact that our YouTube videos have been shared by millions of people. Over a hundred different countries have actually watched our videos, which is incredible to me as an educator because math is a universal language. So it's just really important to me that all student, no matter what their background is, where they're from, what they're doing. They have access to math education, they have that access to, that's why I love public media so much, they have the access to see all of these different careers that they could imagine and dream to be. Because if you don't see these things and you don't have exposure for them, how would you know if you wanted to be a rocket scientist or if you want to be a stylist? That exposure is just so important and there's a lot of research that shows too the earlier we can expose kids to some of the stuff, they only benefit from it.
Juravich: And then the third principle you have is to be a leader in math education. So tell me how what you're doing is different than other math programs out there.
Farkas: I think the biggest thing is I will always stay a certified teacher. I keep my certification up. I just took six more grad credits this spring to make sure I'm on top of the latest research, going to different conferences, talking to teachers, making sure that what we're doing is good for students. I'm very passionate in believing that more teachers should be creating content and curriculum because we've been in the classroom. We've had those relationships with students. And it's one of those things that I just really want to make sure that I'm leading the way, that I am doing everything by the research. I'm looking into those papers. I'm trying to figure out what works and what doesn't work, really just to kind of set the bar for other curriculums.
Juravich: All right, before we run out of time, your website also has this coming soon feature on the side and it said, coming soon, Math Chicken Academy. And so I have to ask you about the chicken. You mentioned the chicken earlier. What's Math Chicken Academy?
Farkas: So our sidekick in everything we do is we have a math chicken that just kind of pops up unexpectedly both in my short form videos where I'm teaching about fractions and also when I'm like out, you know, with a rocket, there's just a chicken that pops up. So Math Chicken Academy is going to be something that's going to opening in January where it's going be a resource for a lot of teachers and maybe even parents that'll have downloadable PDFs that if they want their student to have extra practice that goes along with these visuals. Just something that won't necessarily have ads or anything like that, that will be a safe place that teachers and parents can access resources to really help their students love math.
Juravich: Why a chicken?
Farkas: Funny story. So my oldest, I've got a five year old, his first word was da da. His second word was chicken. So.
Juravich: Just like that, not chick or something. It was chicken, yes.
Farkas: I was creating doodles and digits then, and I was like, okay, well, we're going with the chicken, and that's kind of how it started.
Juravich: Fair enough. Yes. Fair enough, okay. I guess just to end on, we have two minutes left. What do you say to someone, whether it's a parent or a student, when they say to you, I'm just not good at math? What do say?
Farkas: Honestly, I empathize with them. And I usually start with, hey, like I disliked it too. I saw myself more of an art person back in the day. And once you dive into it and really see where math is around you, and it's not just calculus, it's some of the abstract things, you'll realize that you are much better at math than you realize. I think a lot of parents themselves, and teachers even, need a pep talk. Like, look at the math that you're doing. I'm sure even you, producing the show, do a lot more math than you realized. And there's some time.
Juravich: Involved in radio when I tell when I lied to you about two minutes but you know.
Farkas: Well, that's it. You estimated that there is math. And I think just even giving parents and teachers and professionals a pep talk, a lot of times they leave and they're like, oh, wait, you're right. I do math all the time. I didn't even realize I was doing it because I'm not doing the scary calculus problem.
Juravich: Well, and I also always don't don't think about time being math, but you said it's a standard time. Time is math, too. Well, we have been talking with Caroline Farkas, who is the founder of Doodles and Digits and also the series How It's Math. And she's a certified teacher and educational content creator. You could find Doodles and Digit at its website, on YouTube, on the on PBS as well. Thank you, Caroline. Thank you for your time today. Thanks so much for having me. And you've been listening to Fascinating Ohio from all sides on 89.7 NPR News. If you missed any part of today's show, listen back at our website, subscribe to our podcast, and every episode is available in our mobile app. This is All Sides on 89.7 NPR News.