you need someone with an idea and the perseverance to make an idea work and dream. the united states has had its share of dreamers, and that has led to the economic growth that we have experienced in this country. >> host: i think from computers to rock-and-roll, a lot of the best things about our country have come from growers in california. >> guest: short. or in lubbock, texas. >> host: hammadi holly. so far, funny thing, my home town. maybe you in night together. >> guest: let's try. >> host: thank you so much. i've enjoyed the conversation. >> guest: thank you, kevin.

>> that was "after words", book tv signature program in which authors of the latest nonfiction books are interviewed by journalists, public policy makers, legislators, and others familiar with their material. .. to the group of poor girls in cincinnati, ohio. a 30 minute interview as part of tvs college series. >> booktv is on the campus of

duke university in durham, north carolina, where we are talking assessors and scholars about whether books. joining us here is deborah hicks. her book, trend seven -- "the road out: a teacher's odyssey in poor america." >> host: what you hear at duke first of all? >> guest: i have a couple things i do. i am part of a research unit caused social science research is due to and that is a unit that is composed of people with social sciences in different disciplines. i do a lot of research and hamas are a social entrepreneur, so i direct a nonprofit called age, partnership or appalachian girls education in there i work with appalachian girls in middle-school and help them get educational opportunity and access. so i have a cup of different that i wear it different universities and i social entrepreneur. post with social lunch winner?

is that a near-term? >> guest: it was turned by nicholas chris doss, that it was a widely used term. for people like me who basically direct nonprofit and different things in the nonprofit sector. >> host: how did you get involved with appalachian girls in middle-school in western north carolina? >> guest: that's a long story i wrote about it really begins with land his dream. a working-class girl and a tanning meltdown in the mountains of north carolina and i was the first in my family to go to college, which was a very big for me and canada are a scholarship from the group that ended up in a scholarship i'm not going to and doing super well in college and ended up finally after he left tumbles in a lot of holes, going on panic and a graduate degree from harvard and the education.

from that long journey that makes you might of came back to my native soul, which is north carolina and found that this nonprofit called page and began working with appalachian girls out here. >> host: when you say you work with appalachian girls come up with you do? >> guest: i teach, is a people who work with the on this nonprofit have created this kind of out of school set of opportunities for growth in the most rural and remote parts of the appalachian mountains. they come to an intensive summer program. they have weekly meetings with volunteers and a purse and working with that then we offer these appalachian gross to otherwise known of opportunities for number learning enrichment, we offer them an intensive, wonderful educational program in the summer. they come into our program from all over the mountains of north carolina in madison county and they do digital literate

e-learning. they rate, do literature and they get a really intensive learning pics. through the nonprofit direct. >> host: in trends ickes, who her teacher llama, layer, maria, elizabeth, shannon, jessica and alicia? >> guest: said the 37. amazing, very personal growth that i got to know when i was teaching in cincinnati. so i mention that i got my college degree, my graduate degree. in the many teaching job in zanotti, ohio. there it is ever this pretty amazed them neighborhood at and neighborhood of appalachian people in the unit ed. this sort of goes back to part of america says terry when you had people moving up north to look for jobs in cities like cincinnati and most kinds of

cities. so is teaching at universities in 90 and found that there is an appalachian community and went there in gdp but the public elementary limits community, would you i'll let you teacher in elementary school and teach kids, which my degree was in education to begin teaching and got to know these seven girls and not that time when i first met my event, the romance second-grade. i followed these girls into the earth. in fourth grade and i said to be young girls, do you all once had a class of your own? they said yeah, we will give this a try. so i began meeting with the growth, evan and in toto. we met every week during the summer for four years of their lives. this became a kind of amazing. for then and for me.

having hot barroom where we study of literature top to bus stories and most early i listen to their gross dreams about their lives and give us a place where they could drink until so recently books. close go deborah hicks, how are these girls the morning outlook of life? >> guest: they are poor, but they are among the very coy of american children. i like cincinnati 2009, came back to north carolina to found my nonprofit. as i was later to learn, cincinnati in 2010 became the third worst city in the united states for child poverty in urban areas. only thirsted detroit and cleveland for child poverty and

part of that child poverty was appalachian poverty in the inner city. many of them had moms who had been drug issues and poor white america, the trip problem tends to be centered around the use of the prescription painkillers like oxycontin would be an example of that. so i found out many of my young students, some of them like eight, nine, 10 years old had moms who were doing drugs and not was a common set are among the girls. >> host: how did that affect their outlook? their dreams as you say? >> guest: well, for many of these girls, they were what i was to discover is a teacher were essentially orphans. they have become orphans to oxycontin into american poverty.

and so, i was their teacher. we had her class, but our class he came like a family to them and they became kind of like sisters. i was a teacher. i have sometimes tvt chile and stern and stuff, but it came like family. it was very intimate. at one point, two of the girls and one of them was layer and the other one was adriano. they put their arms around one another and said we are sisters emily are sisters. we often begin our class with the snacking food to get in this kind of going to. i said to the girls from what makes you i'll sisters? what is going on? is that we just figured out out of our monster in the street doing drugs. for them it was like we had to come like this family and the

class was their sister had. it was a sisterhood of girls. >> host: did their childhood, yet what you are seen in your classroom, to reflect what you grew up with in western north carolina? >> guest: a little bit, to some extent. i was a working-class girl. i didn't have opportunity, did not access. no one in my family had been to college. i was very naïve, but the difference was i was working-class. >> host: ditty that that the family? >> guest: he did. i think it was pretty common in most days. in rural appalachia is supposed to inner city urban appalachian communities, you do tend to have a sort of families where you have a dad in on living in the house. my dad was living in the household, had a job and not

with different because the growth i tightened the nanny, largely baghdad throughout the picture. they have biological dad, but they were not part of their everyday lives and their moms were starting to lose it because that's the drug issue and so their families are just beginning to be ripped apart. what i saw in this appalachian community event an idea similar to what you see another urban families at the grandma it's kind of step in and start taking over at taking control of the family. in fact, one of mr. say read about, her grandma was her central caretaker and that was pretty common. >> host: how did you get out? how did she get to college? >> guest: the one keyword is education. i have to be very grateful. i was a very naïve working-class girl. i was a little bit of an anomaly because i loved vaux and i loved

reading. i was a bookish little girl. i think because of that, did really well in school, got a period i did nothing about college. didn't i do get in. you know how to apply, did know about the process. got a letter in the mail saying i had a scholarship because this wonderful group of women commit the american association of women had given me a scholarship. >> host: how did she get connected with? >> guest: i honestly can't remember. they probably heard about maker high school. i probably had someone say this girl, this kid can make it and i got a letter saying you have been given a scholarship to college, so i ended up being able to go off to college. once i got an come it did so well that it was really easy for me to exile and keep going and then i went on an outcry church

grease and stuff. >> host: what was the hardest part of leaving your town, you are naïve smith he say and coming into college? >> guest: the toughest thing as one view leave, what to take the road out, if you go for working class to go elsewhere, you do have to get up part of your childhood identity in part of who you are. there is a process of change that has to happen and to some extent it puts you at a little bit of a distant from your childhood and family and stuff and not part is difficult and involves change. for me that was great because i went on, take college but then i've come back and helped my own people, the people who were my people, working class people. so i feel like i've had to give

up some of who i was, but now i can come back and hope the people who are like me. >> host: were you treated with suspicion back home be the first to go to college? is that the wrong word? >> guest: no, it's a very forward. people like me who are kind of bookish or working-class because people think she's a little bit different. she's not exactly like everybody else around here and she's a little odd navy. she's more than books and at that point getting married or having babies or whatever. yeah, you're a little bit different and i was seen as different. luckily that didn't stop me. >> host: your work in cincinnati, which you write about that of teacher odyssey, poor america, was to sanction a cincinnati public schools? >> guest: yes, they were

phenomenal. they were total colleagues, friends. they open the doors to me and to some extent i think they're a little bit doubtful about what i was doing because i was having this class for girls in reading all this literature and i think they were like this is working out in the girls were thriving and i was trying to also at the same time bring back what i learned from the class to the other classroom and in cincinnati. so i tried to get back to school system, but they were welcoming and wonderful to me. >> host: besides having a class assignment, what else did you bring differently into that classroom? >> guest: my own experience later with the grocer coming from. and then we also did some day in these days because now i have a lot of pressure from

accountability and testing to teach to the test and urban poor setting, that is tough for kids to do. tough for them to pass the test. if you do not, i read literature in that is becoming more and more of an anomaly these days to read literature and talk about literature and the stories of your own life. so that was different. the other thing that is different for me as i am kind of an old-fashioned literature person. i like novels about kerry or his and stuff like that. and these girls try to bring down adult fiction to these girls, things about girls like that. >> host: such as? >> guest: such as a wonderful short novel called blue-eyed pc. stuff about working-class or

appalachian grows by authors that speak to their can turn. my students, blair and adriana and mariah wanted nothing to do with that. they turned their noses in bed we don't want your kind. we don't want your book. not me personally are books i was in an era it turned out their favorite book was horror fiction. >> host: lake vampire? >> guest: at the age of nine and also 10, her favorite author was stephan king and they watched stephen king and television. they read stephen king and there i was trying to be this idealistic teacher, trying to change the world and all they wanted to read the stephen king i finally gave in his bed we are going to read horror fiction and that was transformative for me and for vice event because they

began becoming readers and really enjoying reading roughing it in stuff and eventually stephen king read my mom are in wrote a blurb it. >> host: do you regret allowing the girls to read horror fiction? >> guest: not at all. we did not actually read stephen king in my class. i did a bunch of research after he learned about this literary passion of berries and i found all these really wonderful ghost stories and stuff for young kids and i managed to create this whole curriculum around the stories. so we kind of compromised. they still insisted on that was interesting.

we had the class for four years, beginning at her grading going to the age of sixth-grade. i made a decision at that point to come back to north carolina, which is where i grew up and began to found by nonprofit building and what i learned from these girls. i had to leave and that was tough because i left these girls i kept up with them. i visited cincinnati. we kept in touch via e-mail and facebook and everything else and i went back and forth, but i laughed when they were in sixth grade. >> host: do you regret that? or do you feel responsible? >> guest: i do sometimes feel as if i had been able to continue the class, a number of them struggled when they entered adolescence. one of them became a young teenage mom at the age of 16. she finished high school is

going on to, you know, study hairdressing and stuff, so she has done really well. but there is a time. where there's a number of students struggling and i did feel guilty. but i knew i had to come back to my native state and do my work here is a social entrepreneur. so bus and a choice that i had. i thought that i had a calling to do this. >> host: how old are those girls? 17, 18, 19? >> guest: no, they are in the early 20s. >> host: very quickly cover featured on a where she now? >> guest: at adriano finished high school and a very competitive private high school, which she was hotter for me she finished high school. she went on to kind of like hairdressing, training or a program. she is a young tom. she has a little girl, beautiful little girl peered by every stretch she is doing quite well.

but there is a very rough patch. >> host: layer. >> guest: blair is more difficult to talk about. blair was the student who reminded me most of myself. very. she was a stephen king fan out first. her grandma who waster, grandma lilly said that her vision was that blair would become a lawyer and she certainly had those talents. blair dropped out of school and she dropped out of ninth-grade. she just couldn't finish high school and she ended up -- kept trying and trying to go back and get her ged and wasn't able to do that. currently last i checked she was working the night cleaning job at an office building. so something like a big urban office building cleaning at night on the makeshift.

>> host: maria. >> guest: maria is married, divorced, had another relationship and had two lovely children. finished high school, is trying to go back to college and become a nurse's assistant. has not quite gotten there yet. left her partner. it's now a single monster to build a full children and she's doing well. >> host: elizabeth. and >> guest: elizabeth has struggled as well. she had a baby a little over a year ago and had the young day. she almost fetishized cool, did not pass one section of the time that, her sign high school test

and because of that was to finish a because that she is a dropout. >> host: any plans to go back at this point? >> guest: i would love to go back. as soon as possible i would love to go back at least one year and i am hoping to go back in the fall. i am very busy. i run a nonprofit. reese search. which i do keep a visited site can and stay in touch at the other girls. >> host: very quickly, sheehan and from a alicia. where are they today? undersold do not equate >> guest: alicia is the one who is letson and 90. she got married to a service men, to a soldier and they moved away from some inanity and she is the child and shannon and

jessica are both that god struck out undersized one were not quite able to finish. she named did not finish his cool. she became pregnant in high school and had ebp that died soon after birth. abb that was very premature. after that point vpn system in herself from school and get to kind of callback and drop out of high school. just get dropped out as well, but has gone back into ged in college studies and is engaged to be married. so those girls are doing well in the context of communities. i know they wouldn't be sorted seeing eye with data to context or whatever, would not be seen

as having gone far with their careers but extremely well given what they were up against, which is a neighborhood at a severe economy and a serious drug problem. none of these girls have touched drugs and i think that is a huge thing in their favor that they have not gone the way that they are moms are they said to themselves we want them being and we don't want to go there and they did. >> host: deborah hicks, where do you think you were successful and where do you think you would do things differently? >> guest: i think that we were very successful. we had an intimacy. we had a super successful class. seven girls who are attaching themselves to school, loving literature, loving books coming out, school ethics. for the teacher. i think the biggest challenge i

face was just about the time my class finished i had to leave to come back to my home state and found by nonprofit i was thinking about founding. the biggest difficulty was been able to not finish the class. i made sure that we are serving girls and trying to work with students, girls in the years when they are most vulnerable than they are to define who they are what they want to be in life. so that is something i learned from the class in cincinnati that i brought back with me to north carolina. >> host: people interested in your nonprofit, what is the website? >> guest: carolina page. >> host: just like the page of the book. partnership for appalachian gross education.

you can find stuff on the website. you can go to a stories page on the page website a much digital stories coming are their voices and learn about their lives, for people to go check out the website and meet these appalachian girls. >> host: when you go back there, when you involve the local girls, are you treated again with suspicion as a harvard do-gooder in a sense? >> guest: in the mountains in madison county webpages located, from here and not from here. you would obviously be not from here. i am kind of that stage i rented an old farmhouse in this community called spring creek of far right side of madison county. when i'm there in the farmhouse i go to the page program where

we offer this program for appalachian girls. i don't sound like an appalachian girl anymore and i am just coming in now, i've become more of the professor and researcher in that kind of thing. part of me has always been here and it doesn't leave you. you are always in a way this team grow that when you were a child. >> host: we have been talked about the author and educational, trent ray. about her book "the road out: a teacher's odyssey in poor america." >> henry petroski talks about the role of engineers in society. he discusses why some design eventually fail in his book to forget to sign he looked headline to keep failures like 1940 tacoma narrows bridge collapse.

the space shuttle challenger explosion in the deepwater rights and oils though. it's about 25 minutes. >> host: you are watching the tv on c-span2. from time to time, we go to universities throughout the country to talk with professors who are authors about their books. today we have on the duke university campus in durham, north carolina. joining us is professor henry petroski. professor petroski, what do you do for a living besides teach it to? what is your background? >> guest: my background is mostly academic. about 20 or 30 years ago i began writing about engineering, increasingly books. since then, that is a principal occupation, lecturing and

generally doing a lot of thinking about engineering. >> host: what is engineering? >> guest: that's a good question. that is really what motivated my first book. i packed this as an engineer and if a neighbor asked me what is engineering, i really didn't have any there. so i thought the best way to develop would be too made up of. i found readiness by best way of thinking. so my first book is what is engineering and i have to admit i didn't go in to 200 i say really was a mean when i pressure on their engineers, some people confuse it with science and say it's just a branch of science or applied science. it is a