Sam Demma

Sam Demma is a best-selling author and one of the most in-demand keynote speakers in the Education and Association sectors.  He co-founded the volunteer organization PickWaste, delivered two TEDx talks, and—as a result of his exceptional contributions to Canada—was awarded the prestigious Queens Platinum Jubilee Award. His work is often featured on national news shows like Marilyn Dennis, Breakfast Television, and most notably, his mom’s Facebook profile.  Sam delivers hundreds of programs across North America annually, and his entertaining presentations address the topics of Mental Health, Leadership and Kindness.  For more information: https://www.samdemma.com

Andy Rodford — Principal of Venture Gained Consulting

Andy Rodford — Principal of Venture Gained Consulting

Andy Rodford is a seasoned educator and consultant with over 30 years of experience in both traditional and outdoor education. As Principal of Venture Gained Consulting, he currently works with K-12 schools, universities, camps, businesses, and leaders across North America, helping them bring strategic plans to life, build stronger teams, and create the time and space to focus on what really matters.

Andy’s background is a blend of academics and experienced leadership. He holds degrees in Biology, Geography, and Education, along with a Master’s in Educational Leadership and Management. He’s been a Head of School and Deputy Head at independent day and boarding schools, led Admissions and Advancement teams, and directed a large outdoor education center and summer camp, bringing his passion for experiential learning to life.

Beyond his institutional roles, Andy is a sought-after speaker and workshop leader at educational and camping conferences, sharing insights on leadership, change and risk management, strategic planning, and program development. When he’s not working with schools and organizations, you’ll likely find him wood carving, boating, or exploring the outdoors.

Connect with Andy Rodford: Email | Linkedin

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Resources Mentioned

Venture Gained Consulting

The Transcript

**Please note that all of our transcriptions come from rev.com and are 80% accurate. We’re grateful for the robots that make this possible and realize that it’s not a perfect process.

Sam Demma
Welcome back to another episode on the High Performing Educator Podcast. This is your host, Sam Demma. And today we are joined by Andy Rodford. Andy brings over 30 years of diverse educational expertise to his role as principal of Venture Gained Consulting, where he partners with schools, universities, camps, and businesses across North America to implement strategic plans and building effective teams. His multifaceted background combines academic credentials in biology, geography, education, and a master’s in educational leadership with hands-on experience as a head of school, deputy head, admissions and advancement leader, and outdoor education center director. As a respected speaker and workshop facilitator at educational conferences, Andy shares his insights on leadership and program development while maintaining his personal connection to the outdoors through wood carving, boating and exploration. Andy, thank you so much for taking the time to come on the show here today.

Andy Rodford
Well, it’s great to be here, Sam. Thanks for having me on the show.

Sam Demma
How long have you been carving wood, my friend?

Andy Rodford
Well, you know what? I’ve been carving for now almost 25 years. And I had a friend that taught with the First Nations group in Hidaway, and he was our teacher at the local school. And he taught me the basics like he was taught from First Nations. And so I’ve been carving for 25 years. It is like zen. It’s my happy place. I’m not very good with idle time. So the reality of doing some wood carving, I mean, I can get lost in wood carving for hours and hours and hours and hours and just forget what day it is.

Sam Demma
It’s great. I noticed when we started the Zoom call for people tuning in, I saw something in Andy’s background. It looked like a wooden head of a bear behind you. Is that something that you carved?

Andy Rodford
No, it’s actually just a stuffed bear that somebody gave me years ago that I just thought, like every gentleman’s office ought to have like some sort of bear head, right? That’s awesome. No, not really. But actually, you know what, in the same background, you can actually see there’s wood carving that’s hanging on the wall. And it’s called a chain saw. So it’s the handle of a saw carved, like everybody knows what a handle of a saw looks like. And then it’s a series of wood loops that are all interconnected, but that are all carved from one piece of wood.

Sam Demma
Wow.

Andy Rodford
Yeah, so it’s pretty cool. And it turns into a chain where all the links are all separated. Yeah, it’s kind of fun.

Sam Demma
The audience wasn’t expecting this conversation, but last question on woodworking. What was the longest amount of time you spent working on one piece? And what was it?

Andy Rodford
You know what, I carved an orca as my first 3D, you know, sort of wood carving project with the help of the same guy that taught me. And I think I spent, I carved it out of Arbutus, which is a local wood on the West Coast that is very First Nations connected and it’s a beautiful wood, but it’s hard and it’s a tricky kind of thing to carve. And the orca is probably about two feet long and it’s in an arch like it’s coming out of the water. And I spent hundreds of hours on it. But you know, Sam, the carving was one thing, but then it’s the sanding. And I can see why First Nations carvers have apprentices that do a lot of sanding, because it’s a huge amount of work, but super proud of it because it was my first go at it. And so it’s one of the pieces that sort of sits around my house here that people comment when they come. But just the last point about that, the sanding of Arbutus, the last grit that you use is like 1500, which is like jewelry paper. Wow. And when it’s finished, it feels like marble. Like that’s how smooth and dense the grain is.

Andy Rodford
And so it’s a really fun thing to carve with, but it is kind of tricky because it’s really hard. Hard wood.

Sam Demma
That’s exceptional. Thank you for sharing that. It sounds like you have been working on wood carvings almost as long as you’ve worked in education. You know, tell me a little bit about your 30 years of experience in education and how you got into it.

Andy Rodford
Yeah, well, thanks for asking. I always wanted to be a teacher. I went to, to, I grew up in Quebec and in Ontario and I went to summer camp, which lots of kids do in the East. I went to camp for 25 years in a row. I started at six and then just sort of stuck with it the whole way. So, you know, I became hardwired to be an experiential teacher, you know, in the world of, you know, being a counsellor and a program director and a canoe tripper and all those right up to being a director of a large outdoor ed center in Ontario, which had, you know, like 900 kids and 140 staff and 17 countries worth of kids. It was like, it was like the, my first kick at the can of being a head of school. And so I really wanted, I really wanted to be a teacher. That’s one of the reasons why I have degrees in biology and geography, because when I went to university, I wanted to be able to have degrees in two different departments so that I could actually be very hireable and teach in the social sciences, geography, or in the science side of things. But when I started in teaching, I started in a very traditional classroom with a department head that probably should have retired like 10 years before I started teaching, and who was like the opposite of experiential educator. And then I really should have started my teaching career in the last 10 years because what I was doing like almost 30 years ago was very kind of camp focused. My classrooms were fun. We did a lot of fun things. We did a lot of experiential work, but back then it was objective-based learning. So it was like, you were supposed to go from 1.3 to 1.5 to 1.7 and assign things to be memorized for homework and all that kind of stuff. So I ditched classroom teaching early, went back to running outdoor education full-time for years as the director of a big camp. And then I had to make a decision, Sam, as to whether I was gonna be that guy that was gonna be like an 80 year old camp director, still doing like summer camp, or whether I was gonna actually come back into the school world.

Andy Rodford
So I put the word out, the independent schools and the private summer camps kind of run parallel to each other. And so when I put the word out that I was gonna come back into education, I actually came back into education as a senior director of a school. So I came right back in as a director of admissions and advancement and so I really in my career kind of bypassed that whole slog of working my way up through the teaching ranks. But it meant that at a really young age I became a really, you know, I became a senior staff member. I became a head of school, for example, when I was 38, which generally is about a decade earlier than most people who get their first headship. So I jump-started that. And then ultimately, when I was getting towards the end of my career, I realized that I didn’t really want to be head of school, mostly because of dealing with governance and all the politics. I love the interactions with the kids. I love the learning, the staff work, the building capacity, like a lot of the things that I’m doing now in my consulting practice, I was able to do by not being a head of school. So that’s why I was a deputy head of school for you know 12 years and when they when they actually went my last school they changed the head you know they did a search and uh and I didn’t apply uh even though I’d been at the school for five or six years at that point too much to people’s like you know like oh you got to be kidding me like you’re and I didn’t apply for all the same reasons that I just told you. And then the head couldn’t come for a year because of his contract. So the board came to me and said, we know you know how to do this job. So then I became head of school for like 14 months until the new head came. And then I went back to my deputy head role up to the point where I stopped like a year and a half ago.

Sam Demma
Okay, this is fascinating to me because I think a lot of people think there’s such linear paths toward certain positions in education, but also in any career or any industry in life. You’ve taken a very different approach.

Sam Demma
When you reflect on your experience as the Ed Director for camps, what are the skills you feel that you learned that were very applicable to that immediate position in a senior role with a school?

Andy Rodford
Well, I can tell you, and I know it’s kind of a theme of the podcast. I mean, it is all about the people. I said it when I ran the camp, I said it over and over many times at all the schools that I worked at. The schools, for example, or the camp will be here for hundreds of years after we’re all dead. And so while we’re here, we have to look after each other and we have to get the most out of our relationships. And because that’s where the capacity and that’s where the horsepower comes from, is harnessing all of that. And, and so I learned right away, you know, about the management of trust, for example, right. And that, you know, the the management of trust is, is, you know, it’s the thread that holds the whole organization together, but, but it’s work, and it has to be created and, and, and it has to be earned, and, and it has to be intentional, right? So I learned, you know, early, I actually had for another time, maybe a story where I had my entire leadership style changed in one conversation in in 1995.

Andy Rodford
With a with a mentor interaction that I had that that that just changed my whole leadership style to to be, you know, to recognize the fact that, you know, saying no to somebody is not a career ender. Being friends with everybody and kind of like going the extra mile in order to make sure that nobody dislikes you or any of those sorts of things are things that people like learn over time. Well, I had the advantage of having that information delivered to me in 1995 in one conversation by a mentor who knows who he is, and he changed my entire leadership style that I carry with me today.

Sam Demma
What did that individual say to you or make you feel that shifted that perspective so deeply for you?

Andy Rodford
Yeah, you know what? He was giving me the results of a 360 sort of feedback evaluation that I had asked for. And at that stage in my career, I was in the yeah, but stage. So, right. And I think we all kind of recognize that, you know, like you get a bit of feedback and then you go, yeah, but you know, and then you kind of just explain it away. And anyway, this, this guy was patient to a point and, and, and then he just kind of lost it on me. Like he, he just, he got mad at me in a way that almost like my own parents have never got mad at me. Like we kind of went up one side and down the other. And, and, you know, it was all about the management of a management of trust. It was all about, you know, the consistency and, and, and maybe if I can give you an example of that kind of demonstrates it, right. So if a camp, for example, if I had a counselor, so I’m the director of the camp, I’m carrying the clipboard, you know, I got all the really important camp director things that I gotta do, camp directors. And a counselor comes to me and says, Andy, the light bulb in my cabin is out and I need a new light bulb. And I dutifully write it down on my clipboard that Sam needs a new light bulb and then we part ways and all that sort of stuff. And then because I’m super busy in my role, I’m now on page four of my to-do list, right? So your light bulb is still mixed in there. But meanwhile, Sam is sitting in the dark. It’s now day three. You hate me because you asked for it. I’ve seen you like a hundred times and you’ve never said anything more about the light bulb to me. Now, as a director, every time you and I are walking by each other, I’m like, why is Sam giving me like the hairy eyeball light about, you know, like, cause I don’t even know what I’ve not done. And, and so if you back that up and go to a place where you say, Sam comes to me and says, I need a light bulb for my cabin. I should say at that point, Sam, listen, you know what? I don’t do light bulbs.

Andy Rodford
You need to go directly to the maintenance guys and get a light bulb. And as much as you don’t feel like you’re being service minded to Sam, that redirect might be off-putting for Sam, but A, he gets his light bulb within the next 10 minutes, and most importantly, Sam, you will never ask me for a light bulb ever again in our entire relationship, because you know the answer on where you get light bulbs from, and you don’t go to the director for that, right? So the notion of managing that trust and managing those elements, right? Because the first way I gave you, you know, the trust piece is going like right, you know, down the toilet almost, right? Like it’s in a death spiral if that just kind of carried on with no light bulb in day four, day five, whatever it was, right? And where I was curt with you and, and pushed you to another source, but it’s over. You got your light bulb and everybody’s learned and it didn’t even get onto my list. Right. So it’s, um, you know, a few things like that learning along, along the way, um, you know, was a, was a big, big advantage for me when I was younger in my career.

Sam Demma
You mentioned that you asked for feedback and that conversation was the result of this individual giving you this 360 feedback. How do you think about giving someone on your team feedback when they haven’t asked for it and you kind of wish in the back of your head that they did. Is that ever a situation the leader finds himself in? And how do you manage giving someone some suggestions when maybe they haven’t asked for them?

Andy Rodford
Right, well, that’s a responsibility that you have in the leadership mode, right? And I think that most organizations should have some sort of structure where they have feedback relative to your priorities. And there’s different kinds of feedback models that you can use that are really super friendly, even when it’s tricky information. And so, as a leader, you triage stuff, right? So is this something that I need to tell you right away because it’s a safety concern? Is this something that’s attached to your professionalism? Is this something that is like a nudge? Wouldn’t it be great if you maybe did this and considered it, like that kind of thing. There’s a whole gradation of the reasons why you would give feedback. But I think that most organizations should have some structure where there’s annual feedback or regular feedback. You know, a lot of schools and organizations have drifted into coaching cultures so that it just becomes part of every conversation. And I can talk more about a little bit of that later on in the conversation, because I have really strong opinions around the notion that every interaction that you have with anybody should be viewed as an opportunity, no matter how small.

Sam Demma
You believe that having a people first approach is really important. One of my mentors always says, you build the people and the people build the business, or you build the people and the people build the institution. It sounds like you have a similar philosophy. Tell me a little bit about that idea of the people first approach, and then maybe we can lead that into this idea of the coaching culture.

Andy Rodford
Sure. Well, I think that people first approach, I mean, you know, the, the, um, your friend is right. Like, you know, the reality is, is that you can build the most amazing, um, structure and organization, but if you don’t have the people, um, to, to run it, it’s doomed, right? Just like from a school context, if you have really great people, excellent teachers, excellent staff, you can teach kids in a trailer. In my case, you can teach them in the out of doors, at an outdoor aid, et cetera. You don’t need to fancy anything, right? So, I think it’s about prioritizing the, you know, sort of well-being growth and the engagement of people who make up the school community. So the staff and the students and the families and alumni and, you know, other community members and it’s, and it’s really sort of like the mindset that sees culture as the foundation for successful operations and not as a by-product of the operations.

Sam Demma
Right? So you’re intentional about the culture.

Andy Rodford
Very much so, right? Because if you put the people first approach in action, you know that educators thrive when they feel like trusted and supported and students learn the best when they feel like trusted and supported and students learn the best when they feel safe and understood, right? You know, when they belong. I mean, I mentioned before that I said that every interaction is an opportunity. Well, I made a sticker about a decade ago that actually says, enduring success emerges when learners are understood, engaged, achieving. And then it says, how are you ensuring that every interaction is an opportunity? And I gave that sticker to our 170 teachers in the school. And then of course they all looked at it and said, oh, that totally makes sense. If I understand Sam, then I know how he ticks, then that’s the avenue for him to be engaged. And when you’re engaged, you achieve. And then I said to them, I said, okay, well, that’s fine. But what’s your proof that Sam feels understood by you? And the whole room froze.

Andy Rodford
Like they just went dead silent, right? Because, you know, it’s super different to think about the data that you need to collect when you’re interacting with somebody to know that they feel understood by you. But you and I both, like I mentioned, one of my mentors, right, that changed my leadership style. I mean, everybody listening to your podcast will have somebody, a trusted adult in their world, that they really truly feel understood by them.

Andy Rodford
And then all of a sudden, you’ll walk like 15 kilometers in the snow to stand in their garbage, right? Like uphill both ways. You know, you’re totally engaged and then when that happens, then the achievement comes. You know, I’ll make a couple more points if that’s okay. If you adopt the mindset that every interaction is that opportunity, then, because you don’t know what’s going on in anybody else’s life, right? And there’s an old teacher adage that you may never, you may never get the chance to sit in the shade of the tree that you plant, right? And that’s because we teach kids and then they go off. And then only when you get old like me that they come out of the woodwork and they’re like, Oh, remember, you know, now they’re like 40 something and they’ve got kids of their own. And I say, Oh, my gosh, I say the same things to my kids as I as you said to me, you know, it’s, it’s pretty funny. But I had I had the number 212 on my bulletin board in my office for years. And people would come in and they’re like, what is that? You know, what is that? And I said, well, it was all about this concept, right? So 212 is the temperature that water boils. Right? And when water’s 211 degrees, it’s just really super hot, but you add one small, single inconsequential degree. To that water and it changes state, you know, it releases like masses of energy, you know, the, and, and so you just don’t know what one tiny thing along the way, good or bad, is going to like send somebody into that altered state. So if you think about that every time you’re having interactions with people from a people-first approach standpoint, then everything that you’re doing is kind of authentic, authentic, even though it has like a strategic kind of feel to it.

Sam Demma
I love that idea. I also, I have, I had an image in my head of the person who I feel understood by outside of my family, pop into my head immediately as you were talking about this whole idea of people that make us feel understood. And I started thinking about what that person did that made me feel understood and asking thoughtful questions, doing more listening than speaking, um, shifting my belief by asking, uh, intelligent questions, leading with humility, almost like a quiet champion. I’m curious, what are the commonalities you’ve found over the years of these people that tend to make other people feel understood? How do they do it?

Sam Demma
There might be a teacher listening that’s curious and they want to make their students or staff feel understood.

Andy Rodford
Yeah, well, I think, you really just have to, um, adopt the notion of, of the fact that you, from a leadership standpoint or from a teacher or whatever, whatever role where there’s a indifference in the power structure or, you know, there’s this implied notion that students are learning from us and blah, blah, blah, all that sort of stuff, even though I’m a firm believer that we learn way more from the kids. They say it takes a village to raise a child, but I think it takes a bunch of children to raise the village. That’s the real notion of it. And if you’re a leader and you’re, well, everybody’s a leader, but I mean, if you’re in a position where you have some control over the culture, if you believe that strong relationships drive better communication, collaboration, and outcomes, then you should be as motivated to find ways to do that in the best possible way.

Andy Rodford
Just like you want to find best ways to manage your budget and prioritize your well-being and all those sorts of things. So it just means that you have to become like super intentional and you need to like model empathy and active listening. You know, we talked about the management of trust, you know, valuing input from everyone, like so creating the structures that give everybody a genuine voice. So not just like, you know, surveys, but kind of real dialogue that gets data from people. And what else?

Andy Rodford
You know, investing in professional growth. I know that you’re so keen on the professional growth aspect as am I, right? So not just compliance training, but you know, all of the skills that we’re talking about are ones that are their skills. Like, so they, they got, they’d have to be learned and they also have to be like practiced over and over and over. Right. And if you lead with transparency, you know, like if you’re open about how decisions come and you actually recognize when you make mistakes, you know, that kind of vulnerability, um, you know, you become a bit of a magnet for, you know, that relationship that you’re talking about, right? You know, here’s another sort of like spin of that kind of thing. We use the word mentor a lot. And, you know, my concept of mentor, which a dear friend of mine shared with me and I couldn’t agree with more, is that mentor is very much a noun, right? So it’s always capitalized, right? And being a mentor is a gift. It’s not, right? It’s not something that you are to somebody else. It is that concept that somebody else has established you as a mentor. So when they call you a mentor, it’s a gift as opposed to a structure.

Sam Demma
I love it. I look forward to reading Chiz’s book.

Andy Rodford
Oh, you know who I’m talking about.

Sam Demma
I had the pleasure of having a conversation with him as well. And he shared so many unique ideas. You share so many philosophies that he shares and I am so grateful that I had the opportunity to chat with him and even now chat with you. I can draw a ton of similarities which are really inspiring. On the notion of professional development, because I know it’s something you value deeply and it sounds like a successful team values it as well. One of my favorite inspirations was a gentleman named Jim Rohn, who’s passed away now, but he wrote lots and has lectures online that I love listening to. And he would always say, your professional success will never exceed your personal development. He was a big advocate for the personal growth aspect of any job or career you get into. When you think of personal development, are there any resources that have been really instrumental in your own life or that you always lean on when it comes to teams? And maybe it’s not specific resources, but activities, exercises, or anything of that nature.

Andy Rodford
Yeah, well, I mean, there’s loads and loads of them, Sam. Like, you know, and you mentioned Ian Chisholm with the Roy group, like just to put that plug right in there, right? I mean, Ian and I have been good friends for a long time and, you know, we golf occasionally and we meet for coffee on a pretty regular basis, all that kind of stuff, right? So we definitely share a lot of mindset, but, you know, like the, interestingly enough, I would give Ian much credit in his, the structure that he puts in places with the Roy group that allows you to build on your leadership capacity, right? And they do a lot of stuff on looking in the opportunities in conflict. So instead of recognizing a conflict might be a hurdle, there’s always an opportunity that that’s connected to that. Right. So there’s a whole element of work and body that they do that would dovetail very much with what you’re asking about. best approaches. I think that finding, it’s really important to stay current in the changing landscape. So, Protea helps you stay informed and allows you to sort of lead from a place of knowledge as opposed to reaction, right? You know, there’s, you can go to conferences that help you sharpen your strategic thinking so that you can think in bigger picture stuff, you know, and how to align people and purpose and priorities, all that kind of stuff. You know, the, the, the, the reality of, of, of just sort of having that mindset of constant improvement in your leadership practice is key because then once you have that lens, so many different things like big programs for sure that are offered, but also little tiny things, right? Like I use a program, a protocol that’s by, from the National Reform Faculty Protocols, which, so which, which I’m a coach of. And, and they, you know, like there’s a, you know, a thing called Chalk Talk, for example, and Harvard University uses it a lot, you know, where, where you put some, you know, four or five really tricky questions around the room on chart paper, and, and you get all your people in there, you split them into groups. So there’s a group at each chart. And, and everybody gets a marker, and there’s no talking. So every every five minutes, like for five minutes, you write all of your answers feverishly, you comment on other people’s comments as they’re as you’re writing with your marker, and you move to the next question, which has already got everybody else’s thinking started. And by the time that you get around to the end, you have the whole room summarized their thoughts, and where you started, that group can actually look at where all the agreements are. I tell you that only because the coolest part is that there’s equity of voice in that, right? So if you’re thinking about the team, there’s lots of people on the team that just won’t put their hand up. They just, you know, they’re like submarines, right? Like they just kind of cruise around under the water. And then every now and then the periscope comes up and they say stuff that can swing an entire room. But, but there’s usually three or four people in the room who, you know, like to hear their own voice and, and, uh, and, you know, kind of monopolize things from time to time. So, you know, there’s leadership strategies along the way that help mitigate all of, all of those sorts of things. So this is what I’m talking like, management of trust is work.

Sam Demma
I know we’re a little over time here. Is it okay if I ask a few more questions? Yeah, 100% yeah, fire away. Tell me about your concept of the coaching culture.

Andy Rodford
Well, you know what, I think the coaching culture is key because you know, you’re constantly, it’s not filled with judgment. It’s built on the notion of growth. You’re open to the idea of feedback. There’s ways of using coaching models in order to build culture, in the sense of everybody having a shared language and a shared mindset. They all think differently, but they know how to communicate. Like I can tell you, if it wasn’t for a coaching culture that we had, our school would have not made it through COVID like we did. Right? The work that we put into in developing our coaching culture and how we communicate with each other, it made it easier for making decisions. And I think, you know, just as well as anybody else, that there were like decisions per hour that needed to be made. And then you get to the end of that day and every protocol changed for the next morning. So, you know what I mean? Like the, you know, people were potentially at their wits end, but because we had done all the work in the coaching culture and because we had invested in professional development and because we had managed trust, through that whole process, people had assumed best intentions. So, the gang who were at the school, who very easily could be like, Oh my gosh, are you kidding me? We have to put like more red tape on the ground. We have to close off all the fountains. We have to do all this sort of stuff and, you know, move our kids around. Anyways, as we came out with each change, they assumed best intentions. They knew, you know, Andy’s not doing this just for fun. Ah. He’s not doing this to mess with us. He’s not doing it, you know, I don’t understand why we’re doing it. I don’t agree with what we’re doing, but I’m going to pause and I’m going to ask clarifying questions. Right?

Andy Rodford
And, and those clarifying questions come without judgment, you know, and they’re answered without judgment. And so it just becomes, you know, a great way for, you know, check-ins can happen and shaping decisions. And it gives you, because you’re dealing with individuals, you know, sort you’re dealing with individuals, sort of feedback back and forth, it gives you way more opportunities to celebrate accomplishments along the way, which is something that helps build that, because it would be the questions that you’re asking as a coach-mentee kind of relationship, goes right at the heart of where their successes are. And to use a Roy group thing, you know, from a feedback standpoint, things are either, you know, either went well, they were tricky, and then what would you do differently if we’re going to do this again in the future, right? Like those become like the only three questions that really are important to ask. I love the idea of assuming best intentions.

Sam Demma
I even think about it in everyday life. Someone shows up late to a meeting, assume something went wrong and hope that they’re okay. Someone cuts you off in traffic, assume they’re rushing their kid to the hospital. It’s just a more joyful way to live your life than to assume the negative, right?

Andy Rodford
Right, but that’s work. Like you have to trap yourself in that moment to not have that instinctual sort of rage or whatever else, just from your traffic standpoint. Anyway, that is the key thing. But again, it comes with the foundation that you’ve built long before anything adverse happens.

Sam Demma
This has been such an insightful conversation. I really appreciate the time you’ve invested to have this conversation. If anyone’s listening and wants to reach out to you or do some work with you with venture gain consulting, what would be the best way for them to get in contact?

Andy Rodford
Well, I have my website is venture gained.ca. And so it’s pretty easy to get there. And and and there’s a contact page and all that kind of stuff. But Sam, the one thing I’ll say is that for those that are listening, I have a blog and a podcast page on the website that’s just filled with help-filled blogs. So things like the management trust pieces on there, the one degree of education, that’s the 212 thing, harnessing the power of productive failure, critical importance of cultivating leadership skills and teachers, embracing the power of differences. You know, there’s all kinds of things in there. And then I just posted one that is about the wet dog syndrome, because there’s the Canadian schools are getting together this week. And so I’ve posted that and the West, the wet dog syndrome of professional development, because people go to professional development and then they come back to their organizations. And and if you’ve ever been, you know, by the water side when a dog comes out of the water, what’s what do they do? They shake, right. And and you and water sprays all over the place. That’s the feeling that people have when others come back from professional development. They kind of just quietly sort of back away from you, you know, because they know they’re just gonna hit, you’re gonna hit them with all their new learning and we gotta change this and we gotta do that. And we, you know, and so it’s like the wet dog syndrome. So anytime I teach a workshop, I talk to the crowd about the wet dog syndrome and being, you know, there’s a whole toolbox in there about how to bring that learning back to your organization and get people to sort of buy in and adjust things. So it’s not just like 5% of what you learned. It can be like 95% of what you learned.

Sam Demma
That’s awesome. I love that metaphor. Would the blog have a special link or is it your website forward slash podcast or blog?

Andy Rodford
It’s actually, um, I think it’s just forward slash blog, but if you go onto the website, um, it’s like the first tab, you’ll, you’ll, you’ll, you’ll see it. And just says, it just says blogs. And then, uh, and then click away. There’s about 25 different helpful bits and pieces in there.

Sam Demma
Awesome. Thank you so much, Andy. I’m taking some notes here. This has been phenomenal. Keep up the amazing work that you’re doing. And I hope to see some of your wood carvings in the future.

Andy Rodford
Yeah, well, there’s actually a blog post that’s gonna be coming out on the 8th that has a whole bunch of my carving on it. And because the whole notion of the blog post is about humanizing us as teachers and leaders, right? What does Sam do in his life that’s really interesting that I don’t know about that would make you way more connective to me in a professional relationship. And so I’ve got a whole blog that’s coming out. And so on the front page of the blog has a whole bunch of examples of my carving.

Sam Demma
That’s awesome. Thank you so much for sharing that. I find that maintaining personal practices while you pursue professional endeavors is so important. And anytime I’ve let go of those things, I start to enjoy my work less. I could, and sometimes I convince myself that I’m too busy to do certain things, but.

Andy Rodford
Yeah, yeah, well, so if you ever interview people that have worked with me, you’ll realize that one of the things that I did when I was at the school was I outlawed the word busy. You weren’t allowed to use the word busy and you weren’t allowed to use the word change. So, busy, when somebody says, oh, I’m so busy, then the instinct is that we need to rescue you. And then if you ask them for, you know, what help do you need? They’re usually like, oh, no, no, I’m good. It’s just that I, you know, and then all of a sudden, it’s like, well, actually, what your week is is full. And your day is hectic. But you’re not like a turtle that’s flipped on its back. It’s busy. And so, and then the change aspect is just, change is paralyzing, right? But if you shift, shift is easy.

Sam Demma
I love it. Thank you for sharing that shift.

Andy Rodford
Well, and there’s piles of shift all over the place. Like you can have some fun words that you can have fun with the word shift. Yeah, don’t throw your shift in my backyard. There’s a whole bunch on there. That’s awesome.

Sam Demma
Thanks so much, Andy. This is lovely. This is lovely.

Andy Rodford
Well, it’s a pleasure and thank you very much for having me on your show.

Join the Educator Network & Connect with Andy Rodford

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Aaron Schmitt — Principal of Reitz Memorial High School

Aaron Schmitt — Principal of Reitz Memorial High School
About Aaron Schmitt

Aaron Schmitt is the principal of Reitz Memorial High School in Evansville, Indiana. He and his wife are proud alumni of the school, and have two children who will also attend the school.

Aaron was hired as a social studies teacher in 2009, and spent thirteen years in the classroom and coaching baseball before moving into the principal role at the school. This is his third year, and he’s hoping to be around for at least another twenty-five to see the impact and the changes the school is making.

What Aaron loves most about being in education is seeing where the students are down the road. The impact that teachers make is long lasting and formational, and essential for character formation in young men and women. Without the educators in his own life who cared about him and taught him, he would not be where he is today.

Connect with Aaron Schmitt: Email

Listen Now

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Resources Mentioned

Reitz Memorial High School

The Transcript

**Please note that all of our transcriptions come from rev.com and are 80% accurate. We’re grateful for the robots that make this possible and realize that it’s not a perfect process.

Sam Demma
When you were talking about returning back to the school and the opportunity and the challenge that comes along with it in terms of how we perceive ourselves versus how our peers do, it made me think about when a student leaves for university and spends four years away from their parents

Sam Demma
and then comes back and it’s like, well, this is interesting.

Aaron Schmitt
Yeah.

Aaron Schmitt
Yeah.

Sam Demma
Tell me a little bit about those first few years. You mentioned before we started talking that the time in the classroom has a really special place in your heart. I’d love to know more about that.

Aaron Schmitt
Yeah. Oh gosh. You know, I mean, like I said, I was 23. I had proposed to my wife early on. I mean, if you asked any of my former homeroom kids, there’s like probably, you know, it’s interesting.

Aaron Schmitt
I have one of my favorite books is a book where the main character talks about, you know, the thing about a reputation is everybody knows your reputation except for you. Right. So that’s really insightful. Right.

Aaron Schmitt
So like there’s this always this kind of like everybody knows the reputation of Mr. Schmitt except for Mr. Schmitt. Like I don’t know necessarily what is I think I may know some things, but I don’t know everything. And one of the pieces of advice that I give to our new principal is, you know, as a young teacher, I was always terrified of being like, you know, there’s that friend or friendly. Right. And you want to be friendly with the kids, but not necessarily be a friend.

Aaron Schmitt
You want to be a mentor to them. You don’t want to you don’t want to cross that line where they don’t see you as anything other than their teacher, their instructor, their coach. There’s a professional relationship. And also one of the great things about teaching is kids are going to open up to you. They are going to come to you with stuff when they feel comfortable, when they’re struggling

Aaron Schmitt
with things at home or on the court or on the field or relationship stuff with their friends or with a boyfriend or girlfriend. They’re going to open up to you with those things or mental health struggles. I always felt like I had a lot of kids that would talk to me about things like that. And it’s always kind of that balance, right?

Aaron Schmitt
Like how do you give them an ear where they do that, but also make sure that they understand very professional, right? Like there’s a boundary and we will make sure that we can maintain that boundary. So, I don’t know, whenever I have our new staff, like I said, there were like three things that I was known for when I first started teaching. One was I would always just tell them that’s personal.

Aaron Schmitt
Anytime they would ask me a personal question, I would just say that’s personal and I would not answer it. And it drove them crazy, right? But I knew that the more I talked about myself, the less interested they would be in me. So I knew that if you hold certain things back and you only let them know certain things, right? Like you’re kind of also building out your reputation. Like you’re kind of building out like, okay, here’s the reputation that I want kids to be able to talk about me. Like Mr.

Aaron Schmitt
Schmitt’s class is really great. He really prides himself in academics. He puts a lot of time into his stuff, but also he’s a little standoffish. And so you gotta pay attention in class because every once in a while, he’ll tell something about himself. And they kind of latch onto that.

Aaron Schmitt
They’ll be like, wait, what did you just say? And you’ll go, and I would say, well, that’s personal. And I would just move on. It would drive them crazy, But it was a way to keep engagement up. It was kind of a little game you play in class, right? Like everybody plays a role, everybody plays a character in class. And so I used to always say that was personal.

Aaron Schmitt
And they would hate it. But then as the years would go on, like my homeroom kids, freshman year, nothing. Hey, Mr. Schmitt, are you married? That’s personal. Why are you asking about that?

Aaron Schmitt
That’s none of your business, you know, and it would just be like, I’m just asking. And, you know, you got to, you kind of play this kind of curmudgeon in class. And then over the years, you kind of lessen up a little bit, you let them know a little bit more, right, a little bit more and a little bit more. And you tell them some stories that were really meaningful and impactful to you, things that I had experienced, things know, that really helps set the tone for what was important, what I wanted them to walk away with from this class, right? Like when I wanted to walk away from this class, I wanted to know that I was

Aaron Schmitt
somebody who valued this place, cared deeply about it, appreciated the faith aspect that was more than just education, but was full formation as a human being, that I appreciated students that treated each other with respect. And, you know, I’d lay out these examples in my life where I’d seen stuff. And again, I’d tell them those contextual examples.

Aaron Schmitt
But really, that was, you know, those are years I really love that. It was easier to do it in the classroom because I had more opportunities to kind of build that up over time. As principal, I can’t do that now. You know, I can’t just walk around telling people that’s personal and then just walk away. They’re just like, this guy’s, I don’t know me well enough to do that. They’re just like, this guy’s a jerk.

Sam Demma
What would you say- the way you approach building those relationships in the administration role versus in the classroom. It sounds like in the classroom, playing the character, withholding some information, sharing stories every once in a while was one way. How has it shifted?

Aaron Schmitt
You know, I’m still learning.

Aaron Schmitt
I’m still learning that. I think that’s the tough part about bringing up principal. So I never wanted to be an administrator. You know, I’m still learning. I’m still learning that. I think that’s the tough part about bringing up principals. So I never wanted to be an administrator. I tell people that all the time. It wasn’t my goal in life.

Aaron Schmitt
Like my goal in life was to come in and stay in the classroom and be the classroom teacher and be the coach for, you know, God willing 40 years if I could spend that long in the classroom. And if I was doing a good job at it,

Aaron Schmitt
I wouldn’t want to overstay my welcome. But I think in from an administrator perspective, the relationships you’re building with kids, it takes a lot more effort to build relationships with kids. It’s not as easy as it used to be in the classroom. I don’t have them every other day for an hour and a half

Aaron Schmitt
like we do, like I did when I was in the classroom. And so kind of getting that targeted group, and I don’t see as many kids as I used to either, right? Like I used to see, I don’t know, six classes over every other day, 25 kids in each one, so 150 kids. And then they help build your reputation, right? Like I talked about building that reputation out. They would tell their friends, oh, to take this class or hey, don’t take that class. It’s way too hard. You know, they kind of would help build that out as well. So now from an administrative perspective, it’s a lot more of the faculty.

Aaron Schmitt
The focus is a lot more on the faculty and the focus is a lot more on community relations. And so, you know, adults are difficult. They’re not as easy as kids. They’ve got a lot more life experiences and the things that are maybe a little bit more novel to kids that are interesting, adults are just like, I’m not interested in that.

Aaron Schmitt
And they’re not as interested in the gimmicks and the stuff that maybe you would be able to get away with in the classroom and the kind of things that you would pull and the levers that you’d try to manipulate to get kids interested and stuff. So, but I feel that it’s important.

Aaron Schmitt
You know, ultimately that’s the reason I stepped into the role is just because I felt like I needed to be not where I wanted to be, but I felt like I needed to be where the school needed me to be. And so that was ultimately the reason for the shift. We’d seen a lot of turnover, a lot of change

Aaron Schmitt
in the past few years. And so I just felt like providing some consistency was

Sam Demma
important for the school. You mentioned the other time you had done a podcast format or something similar of this nature was on the side of a football field. You mentioned the desire to teach and coach for 40 years, God willing. Tell me more about the athletic side of building relationships with kids and how that shaped your whole experience.

Aaron Schmitt
No, I was a terrible coach. I will say that. So I was a pitcher only. I was a PO in baseball. I didn’t play the field through high school and then through college.

Aaron Schmitt
I was a pitcher only. And so I shouldn’t say I was a terrible coach. I knew one aspect of the game. Took me a while to realize there’s a lot that I didn’t know and I needed to turn that over to somebody else. One of my assistant coaches

Aaron Schmitt
who had actually batted through high school would be more helpful than me trying to, you know, do those things and work with those kids. I think, you know, there’s something great about coaching, right? Like when you sweat with the guys on the field because you’re running sprints with them, right? When they get to see a side of you that doesn’t come

Aaron Schmitt
through in the classroom, right? Something with maybe just, whether it’s a little bit more aggression, a little bit more passion, a little bit more, you know, maybe a little bit more honest conversations than what you can have in the classroom when you’re one-on-one with a kid on the field. You know, those things really, they help you. We always, in our school, we’re blessed. We’ve got about 90% of our student bodies

Aaron Schmitt
involved in athletics. And so we’ve got a good chunk of our kids appreciate the coaches. And the other thing is it helps kids see you outside of the classroom too. Like they understand why. If they know how you are in the classroom

Aaron Schmitt
and they see that you don’t change when it comes to the field, that they’re just like, that’s who that person is. That’s how he is, that’s how she is. They expect, they demand, you know, they build and they hold the standard.

Aaron Schmitt
And that really makes a difference for our students, makes a difference for our teachers as well. So we always encourage our faculty to get involved, to try to coach if they can. We just made two hires over the past couple of weeks, and hopefully they’ll both end up coaching here as well. They mentioned that they wanted to. So that’s always good news for us to have more coaches in the building, and whether they’re

Aaron Schmitt
academic coaches or athletic coaches or theater or play coaches or band coaches, we want everybody to have those kids have the ability to see them outside of that aspect, outside the classroom aspect. For me, I always told them it was, I always said it was kind of like Batman and Bruce Wayne, right? Like Mr. Schmitt is different than Coach Schmitt. I always told them in the classroom I wanted to be called Mr. Schmitt and I’d have players that—

Aaron Schmitt
I always told them in the classroom, I want to be called Mr. Schmitt. And I’d have players that come in, they’d be like, hey coach. And I’d, you know, and they could tell, like it was one of those things to me, it would be like, hmm. And they’d go, oh, sorry, Mr. Schmitt.

Aaron Schmitt
I’d be like, I appreciate that. But, you know, I wanted them to understand that there is a difference between the classroom and the field, you know, especially with what we’re talking about. I didn’t want to talk about baseball all day long in the classroom, and I didn’t want to talk about academics on the field. I wanted each thing to have its place and to be able to put the attention and the focus on those things when the time was for those things. So the coaches made the biggest difference in my life. I mean, when I think of, you know, the guys I had growing up, whether I was playing, you know, little league stuff

Aaron Schmitt
or whether I was in high school, they always made the impact on me. They always helped me find confidence. They always helped me, you know, see myself and they always held you accountable in the classroom. I think that’s one of the things that we pride ourselves in a lot here. We do grade checks every two weeks for our athletes. Our coaches get a list of who’s not doing well in classes and they do study tables.

Aaron Schmitt
I mean, we really put an emphasis on the academics because it takes everybody—parents, coaches, teachers, counselors—everybody has to be surrounding that kid if we want them to be successful and try to get them to where we want. We want them to know that no matter where they go, they’re loved and they’re cared for. And it doesn’t matter if it’s a coach, if it’s a teacher, if we all have the same message and we’re all in the same spot,

Aaron Schmitt
you know, they’re gonna be in a much better place at the end of their four

Sam Demma
years here at Memorial. I was reading a book this weekend called Turning Pro by Steven Pressfield. And he shared a story about Picasso. Someone bought a bunch of his paintings and hung them up in a gallery and invited him to come and see it once it was all set up. And Picasso arrives, takes a glance at all the paintings on the wall, grabs a razor or like a knife,

Sam Demma
and proceeds to cut them all up. And the guy in the gallery is like, Picasso, stop, please, what are you doing? And he said, it’s not my best work. And the chapter was about professionals being critical or ruthless about their quality of work.

Sam Demma
And the first thing you said when I said, hey, tell me about coaching was, I was a terrible coach. And maybe it’s because what you’ve learned about coaching has shifted over the years. And I think that’s a beautiful perspective to have—that when your first version of coaching

Sam Demma
is very different than your 50th. And you’ve made progress. That’s a good thing. And I’m curious, in your perspective now, what makes great coaching? Or what makes a great coach? And are there any aspects of that that teachers can even think about or utilize?

Aaron Schmitt
Yeah, you know, I think, you know, coaching is a lot like parenting, right? I think of coaching as more like parenting. When I think about parenting, my own mom and dad, consistency is the most important thing—that you’re consistent, that kids know. Kids thrive in an environment with structure, when they know the rules and they know the boundaries,

Aaron Schmitt
they know how to act, and they will tailor their actions based on the consistency and the expectations that are laid out, right? And if you are consistent, 95% or higher, kids will tailor themselves and they’ll tailor their behaviors to that. And it’s a lot like in the classroom—like if you tell them, you show up late in the classroom, you show up late on the field, here’s the consequence, here’s the

Aaron Schmitt
consequence—and you have to be willing to follow through on it. My dad, you know, he was not one to mince words. He’s a man of little patience. And it was always one of those things that when he said he was gonna do something, it didn’t matter how extreme it sounded. He was gonna follow through on it.

Aaron Schmitt
And he always told me, the worst thing you can do is make a statement—“If you do this, I’m going to do this”—and then not follow up on it, because people learn very quickly that you don’t mean what you say.

Aaron Schmitt
And kids, better than anybody—because kids are always testing the boundaries, right? Like, they’re always gonna push you to try to see what they can get away with. And that’s expected—they’re kids. So, you know, but you know,

Aaron Schmitt
there are things on the field. You’d see a kid suffering with low confidence on the field. They’re just like, “I don’t think I can get it done.” How do you build them up? How do you build them up? How do you build them up? Well, same thing in the classroom too.

Aaron Schmitt
Some of those kids, they think “I could never—” they walk in the room, “I’m not any good at history.” Are they not any good at history, or have they just not put the time into it? Right? Like, it’s just like any other subject. I mean, again, I taught social studies and I taught everything from our intro world history up through AP comparative government, which was an international politics class.

Aaron Schmitt
And so I really loved how I could build kids up and get them interested in it. You know, it’s a little bit different on the field than in baseball. They want to be there, right? Like they’ve already made that decision that they’re going to be there and they made the commitment. But in the classroom, I always took it as a point of pride—how many kids can I get that walk in here and say, “I don’t want to be part of this, I don’t like this,” to then go… and I’m hearing former students want to go back into social studies as a career

Aaron Schmitt
and make an impact in the world through that. So, or even better—be a teacher. That was always the win, was when they’d come back and say, “I’m going to be a teacher now.”

Sam Demma
I think that’s a beautiful measuring stick of giving yourself that personal challenge of responsibility. “How many students can I turn on to this subject or this topic?” What would that inform you to do differently as a result? Like, is there certain things that you would think about doing more of in the classroom to increase the probability of that happening?

Sam Demma
Because I think every teacher listening to this is like, “Oh, if I could only get my kids passionate about math, this would be brilliant.” And I know you can’t take full responsibility. But yeah, yeah. I’m curious if there’s any things you used to

Aaron Schmitt
do.

Aaron Schmitt
No, you know, I mean, I think the biggest thing—for if you love your subject area, that’s the first and foremost. Kids have got to see that you love what you do. If they walk in the room and you’re just, you know, if you’re just run-of-the-mill, just doing the same thing—I mean, gosh, that’s terrible. Like, you know, you can’t do that to kids. You can’t do that to them.

Aaron Schmitt
They’re still young and they still have joy, right? Like, you can’t walk in the room and be like, “Oh, we’re just gonna do the same thing we’ve been doing.” Right? But I don’t know. I used to have a goal in every class where I would try to—I had one thing every week in every class that I looked forward to: an activity, a debate, a discussion, some type of project that they were going to work on.

Aaron Schmitt
I always said if I wasn’t happy in the classroom, that’s my own fault. I have control of it. I mean, yeah, I might not have control over the, you know, the standards that have to be taught, but I definitely have control over how I want to teach those standards. Like, I have a lot of autonomy—especially in a Catholic school, I have a lot of autonomy to be able to handle that. You know, if you’re not happy with how things are going in your classroom, then change it.

Aaron Schmitt
You have that ability. You know, there’s so many great ideas and so many wonderful things out there. I mean, I’ve been working with our faculty on just using AI to help just jumpstart the same, you know, lesson you’ve been teaching for 25 years. Well, let’s give it a fresh take. Let’s give it a fresh take.

Aaron Schmitt
How do you do that, right? Like just, “Hey, I’m looking for a 20-minute activity, you know, for the start of class that puts them in groups of six,” or whatever it is, right? Like, you can be so specific and you can generate so many ideas. And it’s not about letting it do all the work for you, but it is about just helping take the creativity burden off, right? Like, at least you get a starting point, you go, “Oh, that’s good, but what if we did this instead?” Right? I always think, you know, again, I try to build in one activity that I look forward to—but that takes time. It takes a lot of time.

Aaron Schmitt
Like, you start out like, “Okay, hey, one a chapter,” right? And then the next year, you’re like, “Okay, the one activity that kids really love,” and you ask them for their feedback. That’s, you know, if there’s one piece of advice I could give new teachers—I’ve been talking about this a lot with our staff right now—is don’t be afraid to ask the kids what they think. Like, that is your client. That is who you’re working with every day.

Aaron Schmitt
And they know you better. I, as an administrator, I get into the classroom twice a year for two hours. Like, as much as I’d love to say I have the best idea of everything that goes on every day, there’s no way I could do that, right? The kids know though. They know every day whether you put your best foot forward,

Aaron Schmitt
whether you are happy or joyful, whether you’re giving a good effort. And they know too like, “Hey, this activity isn’t landing as good as it used to five years ago,” right? Like it’s old news, you know, that kind of thing. And so they’ll keep you straight if you have a good relationship with them. I know that with some teachers, it’s always terrifying, right? When you ask for self-awareness

Aaron Schmitt
and you ask for feedback from people, it’s always terrifying because they’re going to be honest, especially if you allow them to do it anonymously. They’re gonna be brutal. And they’re gonna tell you things that bother you and drive you crazy. But if you can focus on the things that you consistently see patterns in and not the outliers—it’s easy to get hung up on the one kid who’s like,

Aaron Schmitt
“This one day you said this one thing to me and it really bothered me. And so you’re a terrible person.” Well, if that’s one out of 150 kids, you apologize. It’s good to have awareness of that. It might help form your opinion later on with what you’re doing the next year. But I think it’s kind of said earlier, like focus on the negative and being critical, right? Like it’s easy to get that way and get in your own head. But if you see 95% of your students are, “I really

Aaron Schmitt
value you because you make me feel like I can speak freely without being criticized. You make the room into a team atmosphere that makes people feel welcome.” If you say, if they say, “I feel respected,” or “I feel like you know your content really well,”

Aaron Schmitt
“I feel that you love your subject,” it’s easy to focus on the negative. But if you can also focus on the positive and the things you do really well and put a lot of energy to the things you do really well so you do them even better, then that helps compensate for maybe where you’re

Aaron Schmitt
falling a little bit short. But you don’t ignore those areas, but you don’t hyper-focus on what you do poorly. It’s way too easy to just get caught up in that and be in a bad spot and just being self-critical and then driving yourself into the ground because you’re not perfect at it.

Aaron Schmitt
I think as teachers, we’re always—like a lot of us were great students. And so if we’re not perfect at it, if we get any negative feedback, like we’re immediately like, “Oh, I must not be any good at this” because I didn’t get a perfect score. Like, we have to drop that mentality.

Sam Demma
The mistakes are necessary. And they’re just there. They’re learning moments if we look at it from that perspective. One of the other things I really appreciated about the community is how value-driven and value-based it is. There are a lot of schools that have values—not many that live them out and practice them every single day, try their best to and make that attempt. Is there anything from an administrative perspective or that you share with the staff to try

Sam Demma
to keep those values front and center? Because it feels like you do a really good job.

Aaron Schmitt
Oh, well, I appreciate that. Again, that’s part of the learning as well. I knew how to build culture in the classroom. Like I knew how to do that. After 13 years, I knew how to, you know, the kid that might get picked on in class

Aaron Schmitt
or might get ostracized because maybe they’re a little bit odd or they’re a little bit different or they maybe say something that, you know, people walk in the room and they always are like, “I don’t want to have class with this kid again,” right? Like I knew how to make that kid like a champion in the room. I knew how to make that kid celebrated that they were in the room. I’m still learning how to do that at the building level.

Aaron Schmitt
That’s tough. I have a lot of ideas. I always have a lot of ideas. It’s whether or not they’ll come to fruition and whether they’ll be—you know, they’ll sit well with everybody. Again, when you’re working with adults and a bigger community, it’s tougher to get everybody on board. When I’m in a class with 30 kids, I can do that.

Aaron Schmitt
I can set the tone and control everything, and I can get them where I want them to be within, you know, three, four weeks—I can get them where I want them to be. Yeah, you know, it’s just—you have to trust other people. You have to trust other people. You have to let them in on the process, and you have to let them know why you think it’s important for the things that you’re doing, why they matter.

Aaron Schmitt
We’re very lucky. I have inherited a culture that’s 100 years long at the school from the Brothers of Holy Cross out of South Bend, Indiana, St. Joseph, and Notre Dame. And I was a recipient of the education that they left for me. And the core values—we really spent a lot of time kind of looking back, because all the

Aaron Schmitt
brothers have passed away. I know we talked about that whenever you were down here. And the last brother, Brother Eugene, passed away in 2009. He was the reason I wanted to be a teacher—or one of the reasons I wanted to be a teacher. I mean, just—the man was an amazing human being who gave selflessly of himself and just loved this school and made you really appreciate this school.

Aaron Schmitt
And so we look back at like, if you had somebody who graduated in 1925, 1950, 1975, 2000, and 2025, what would be the values that would stand the test of time? And, you know, looking at Basil Moreau and his work in it,

Aaron Schmitt
which is titled Christian Education, it’s really amazing. It was written after the French Revolution, which, if you know, France was in chaos trying to rebuild after all the massacres and everything that had happened. And Basil Moreau is like, “Education is important and education really matters. Academics matter.”

Aaron Schmitt
“But formation of individuals really, really matters a lot.” And having good people really matters. Academics matter, but formation of individuals really matters. And having good people really matters. Really good, really intelligent people matters. I always think that’s kind of the hallmark of Catholic education—is values and academics both together.

Aaron Schmitt
And so, you know, when we looked at our list of values, you know, we came up with a list and then we kind of narrowed it down to eight, which is a lot. I voted for like three or four because I was like, “You have to have—” I know like, memory,

Aaron Schmitt
teaching psychology, right? You know, it’s like seven plus or minus two or five plus or minus two—I can’t remember because I haven’t taught it for three years now—but I know there’s a short-term memory that will work. But I know acronyms and mnemonics help, and some of our kids have tried to come up with mnemonics and stuff to help remember them. But we found a lot of value in our eight core values—

Aaron Schmitt
coincides really nicely with the calendar year. You know, the first month is introducing them in an all-school assembly, talk about what it means. And then every month we focus on one and our kids, our students nominate other students for those core values. And we have a committee that meets and reads through: Why does this kid get a nomination?

Aaron Schmitt
What is it that they’ve done that embodies or says that they embody the core value? February’s integrity. So after Mass on Wednesday this week, we’re getting ready to announce our winners and celebrate. We’ll bring them up and we’ll talk to them about,

Aaron Schmitt
you know, read a little bit of what other people submitted and why they feel this person displays integrity. And those are slow steps. And they take time. I’m kind of impatient, right? Like I’m used to the classroom where I can control and have control of the room for, you know, 30—

Aaron Schmitt
for an hour and a half and get them there within. And here it’s, you know, talk about generations in the sense of each graduating class is a generation, right? So it takes four years to get through that cycle. Well, we’re really in year one with the focus on core values. And so it’s going to take another two or three years before we see kind of the full fruits of our labor for what it means to have those core values and how we’re implementing them every day and kind of holding kids to standards. But we’re still working at it and we’ve got great partners with other Holy Cross schools from around the country that we’re working with.

Aaron Schmitt
And they always provide a lot of insight because they’ve been there before, before we have in the sense of truly being affiliated with Holy Cross.

Sam Demma
Well, it was a lovely experience visiting the school and I felt the culture when I entered. And if I lived in Indiana, I would have my kids attend the school.

Aaron Schmitt
I appreciate that. We’re so far south. It’s, you know, we’re often forgotten about because we’re so far south of Indianapolis. There’s not too much a little bit beyond the southern part of Indy. So I appreciate that. And I’m sorry we didn’t get you a soccer game. We were excited for it.

Aaron Schmitt
But then I think we had that hurricane or whatever it was that flow ended up in southern Indiana that day and I know it was terrible. So—

Sam Demma
No, it was a lovely experience. And thank you so much for taking the time to share some of your beliefs and philosophies around building culture in the classroom and the entire school, and building relationships with young people, and some of the things you think about when it comes to getting students more engaged in the curriculum or the stuff you’re teaching in the class,

Sam Demma
and for your vulnerability to share that it’s a big learning experience and we don’t have to have all the answers right from the jump. If there’s someone listening to this and wants to ask you a question, Mr. Schmitt, what would be the best way for them to get in touch?

Aaron Schmitt
Uh, probably email because that’s the one I’ll answer. And if they end up saying it in passing, or if I get a phone call, I might not call them back with just everything through the day-to-day. But my email is my name, aaronschmitt@evdio.org. That’s the Evansville Diocese, evdio.org. And that’s my name, Aaron Schmitt, which is A-A-R-O-N S-C-H-M-I-T-T.

Sam Demma
Aaron, thank you so much for the time. Really appreciate it and keep up the amazing work.

Aaron Schmitt
Thanks, Sam. I appreciate you asking me to be involved. And thanks again for coming down and seeing our kids.

Join the Educator Network & Connect with Aaron Schmitt

The High Performing Educator Podcast was brought to life during the outbreak of COVID-19 to provide you with inspirational stories and practical advice from your colleagues in education.  By tuning in, you will hear the stories and ideas of the world’s brightest and most ambitious educators.  You can expect interviews with Principals, Teachers, Guidance Counsellors, National Student Association, Directors and anybody that works with youth. You can find and listen to all the episodes for free here.

Taylor Uroda – Student Life and Leadership Assistant and Mathu Vijayakumar – Orientation and Transition Assistant at Trent University Durham

Taylor Uroda - Student Life and Leadership Assistant and Mathu Vijayakumar - Orientation and Transition Assistant at Trent University Durham
About Taylor Uroda and Mathu Vijayakumar

Taylor Uroda (she/her) is completing a Bachelor’s in Social Work at Trent University Durham GTA. In her role as the Student Life and Leadership Assistant with the Student Life Team, Taylor plays a key part in developing student engagement initiatives and leadership programming, helping to foster a welcoming and dynamic campus environment.

A passionate advocate for the helping profession, Taylor has gained valuable hands-on experience working within the social service worker field, where she connects with individuals and communities to support their success. Her dedication to making a positive impact is fuelled by her belief in empowering others and promoting personal growth.

Taylor is particularly interested in pursuing a career in gerontology, where she hopes to enhance the lives of older adults through compassionate care and individualized support. She is driven by a desire to make meaningful contributions to her community and is always seeking opportunities to grow both personally and professionally.

Outside of her academic and professional pursuits, Taylor is a coffee enthusiast and puzzle lover who finds joy in life’s little challenges. She’s often found laughing, as she loves to incorporate humour into everything she does, lightening the mood wherever she goes. Her best friend, Mathu, frequently convinces Taylor to read her favourite books, though Taylor admits she’s still working on that long reading list!

Mathu Vijayakumar (she/her) is a 4th-year Bachelor of Social Work (BSW) student at Trent University Durham GTA, where she brings her unique perspective as a transfer, first-generation, and mature student to her academic journey. For the past three years, Mathu has been a key part of Student Life, focusing on creating meaningful programming for Summer Kickstart, Orientation, and Certificate programs. She’s led and trained Orientation Leaders and Captains, coordinated weekly on-campus events, and worked closely with the Trent Durham Student Association to bring events to life.

Currently, Mathu is completing her social work placement in Malvern, the community where she grew up. There, she facilitates psychoeducation workshops alongside a counsellor, covering topics like mental health, consent, and youth advocacy for middle and high school students. These workshops aim to foster resilience, self-awareness, and empowerment. Mathu is passionate about working with equity-deserving groups and amplifying marginalized voices, striving to create spaces for advocacy and change.

In her downtime, Mathu enjoys reading thrillers and romance novels, is currently tackling swimming lessons, and can often be found FaceTiming her dynamic duo, Taylor Uroda. She firmly believes in the power of community, humour, and the occasional good book to keep life balanced and fulfilling.

Connect with Taylor Uroda: Email | Linkedin
Connect with Mathu Vijayakumar: Email | Linkedin

Listen Now

Listen to the episode now on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or on your favourite podcast platform.

Resources Mentioned

Trent University Durham GTA

The Transcript

**Please note that all of our transcriptions come from rev.com and are 80% accurate. We’re grateful for the robots that make this possible and realize that it’s not a perfect process.

(Transcription from Rev)

Join the Educator Network & Connect with Taylor Uroda and Mathu Vijayakumar

The High Performing Educator Podcast was brought to life during the outbreak of COVID-19 to provide you with inspirational stories and practical advice from your colleagues in education.  By tuning in, you will hear the stories and ideas of the world’s brightest and most ambitious educators.  You can expect interviews with Principals, Teachers, Guidance Counsellors, National Student Association, Directors and anybody that works with youth. You can find and listen to all the episodes for free here.

Mark Chapin — Principal of Meyer Middle School

Mark Chapin — Principal of Meyer Middle School
About Mark Chapin

Mark Chapin is the principal of Meyer Middle School in River Falls, Wisconsin, serving approximately 750 students in grades 6 – 8. Meyer Middle School was recognized as a National School of Character in 2016 and again in 2024.  Mark has served as a building administrator in the School District of River Falls for 16 years.  

Prior to coming to River Falls, Mark taught for 12 years in the Ellsworth Community School District as a high school special education teacher and an 8th grade US History teacher. While in Ellsworth he also coached cross-country, track, tennis and basketball.  In 2008 Mark was recognized as the Teacher of the Year in the Ellsworth Community School District. 

In 2019 Mark earned his doctorate degree from Bethel University.  His dissertation focused on character education, leadership and the change process. Mark currently serves as a character education coach through Alverno College and on the Wisconsin Character Education Partnership Advisory Committee.  

Mark works closely with the American Legion Post 121 in River Falls serving on their Veterans Memorial Committee. In 2014 he received the Post 121 Community Service Award.
Finally, in 2023 Mark was the recipient of the Herb Kohl Educational Foundation Leadership award.

In his spare time Mark enjoys fly fishing, splitting wood and mountain biking. 

Connect with Mark Chapin: Email

Listen Now

Listen to the episode now on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or on your favourite podcast platform.

Resources Mentioned

Meyer Middle School

School District of River Falls

Ellsworth Community School District

Bethel University

Alverno College

Wisconsin Character Education Partnership Advisory Committee

American Legion Post 121

The Transcript

**Please note that all of our transcriptions come from rev.com and are 80% accurate. We’re grateful for the robots that make this possible and realize that it’s not a perfect process.

Sam Demma
Welcome back to another episode of the High Performing Educator Podcast. This is your host Sam Demma and today we are joined by Mark Chapin. Mark and I connected months ago now. He has shared some impactful quotes with me over email. He let me know that he has 16 rules or principles that he shares with his middle school students every single year and it’s a big hit in his school. He is a advocate and has a huge passion for character development and how it can shape the life of our young people. He works closely with the state of Wisconsin when it comes to character development and I’ve really enjoyed our conversations about books to read and personal development and serving and supporting youth. Mark, thank you so much for taking some of your time to come on the show here today.

Mark Chapin
Thanks a lot, Sam. It’s truly an honor and it’s a privilege to be on your podcast today. And we’re super excited to have you come to Meijer Middle School at the end of April. I know our students and our staff are looking forward to you and your message.

Sam Demma
Let’s hope by then the snow storms have passed. Yeah, I agree. The weather’s back to normal. Do me a favor, Mark, and just take a moment to share a little bit about who you are and what got you interested in building and supporting the character of young people.

Mark Chapin
Yeah, my background, I grew up actually, it’s kind of a crazy story, but I’m the principal. I’m actually sitting in my principal’s office. I graduated from Rural Falls High School in 1990, which is in western Wisconsin. Went to UW-Eau Claire, which is in western Wisconsin, and got a degree, a 1.8 degree, with a special education minor. Student taught at the tribal school up in Hayward, Wisconsin, which is about two and a half hours north of our home here. And then ended up teaching for 13 years. I was a special education teacher for six and then I was a US History teacher for six years. And then I was an assistant principal at Ellsworth High School, which is right down the road, before coming back to my home in River Falls, and I’ve been here for 16 years. In terms of what got me really into education, my mom was a special education paraprofessional, and she provided me some opportunities to work with students, and I also had an opportunity to coach basketball when I was a senior in high school. A group of us, four guys, coached our seventh grade team. And I really realized at a pretty young age that I really had a knack and really enjoyed working with kids. And so my dad wasn’t too keen on me being a teacher. He was worried about me making enough money and supporting myself. So I actually went to school to be an econ major.

Mark Chapin
I did that for a year and I realized I have no idea what a person with an econ degree does for a living. But I always knew in the back of my mind I wanted to teach. And then I worked at a summer camp for five summers up at Eagle River, Wisconsin, northern Wisconsin. And I just I think I followed my calling at that point. And in terms of the yes question about character education, I’ve always been passionate about positive psychology, you know, developing ourselves, but then how can we take that and apply that here at school? And I was fortunate enough to be on a committee called the Healthy Lives Committee through our strategic plan and pitched this idea of character education. And it’s kind of evolved here in our district and it’s being implemented in all of our schools, our four elementary schools, our middle school and our high school. And I just feel like historically education has been something where, you know, going back to Horace Mann and Thomas Jefferson, it was educating the head and educating the heart. And I feel like we’ve gotten away from the heart. And so it’s something that I’ve just been really passionate about.

Sam Demma
When you talk about character education, tell me more about what that means to you or what that lens looks like that you look through when you talk about it.

Mark Chapin
Yeah, that’s a great question. What I know is that the best teacher of character are adults in our kids’ worlds, and that starts with parents. But we also know students don’t grow up, our kids don’t get to pick their parents.

Mark Chapin
But definitely, character has to start in the home. And so as adults, we need to make sure that we’re modeling good character. And so within our district, we wanted to find a model that was out there. And we looked at different frameworks.

Mark Chapin
The one that we came across was from character.org. It’s based on 11 principles. It’s not a canned curriculum. It really helps shape your culture of your school. You start off with principle one by identifying what you value as a community. In our district, we sat down with 40 community members.

Mark Chapin
We went round and round and round. We had two really lengthy meetings and we landed on nine character traits that we value as a community. And that’s true for the framework. So the community can decide what they value. And these are universal values.

Mark Chapin
And I think people get hung up on this idea of values and ethics, but it really transcends all religions. It goes back to Aristotle. And when you read off the list of these character traits or values, it’s hard to argue with them. So things like gratitude, curiosity, respect, responsibility, compassion, perseverance, you know, it’s hard to argue with those things. So, you know, we start with the framework. I mentioned modeling, that’s principle eight, but that framework has really guided our work. And it’s the work that I have an opportunity to work with other districts on how to implement that framework.

Sam Demma
How do you ensure the principles or values are consistently reinforced within the school community? It sounds like they become foundational. Is it month by month? Is it through the teachers? Obviously, modeling the behavior must be a big part of it. But I’d love to hear more.

Mark Chapin
Yeah. Yeah, it’s a great question. So we we focus on one character trade a month and we kind of joke that, you know, once we finish the perseverance, that kids don’t have to persevere anymore.

Mark Chapin
That’s not the case. We want to make sure we’re doing these all the time, but we do do a character kickoff once a month. I get a chance to get in front of kids. We define what it is. We talk about what it looks like. I usually typically show a video. If you guys or anybody out there listening wants to find some really good resource, go to Steve Hartman, Kindness 101. They’re short clips. He’s from CBS and he’s fantastic. So we show a video and then we do a quick reflection, and I send them on their way. We have a group called Girls Who Give Back that signs up around the building, so it’s communicated, so there’s that kind of visual marketing of it as well. And then each grade level has a different theme. That sixth grade focuses on what’s called the Everest Project every year, and that’s focusing on goal setting, so identifying your goals, identifying your character strengths, so they go through a strength finder with the kids, take them through the goal-setting process. That’s really inspiring for our kids.

Mark Chapin
Seventh grade is our service-learning project, so giving back. So, it’s the, when we talk about character, we talk about the head, getting kids thinking about it, the heart, getting them feeling it, and then the hands. So the head, heart, and hands, the hands part is going out in the community. And I’m sure you’ll talk about this with your backpack and your taco and all that,

Mark Chapin
which I’m looking forward to our kids hearing that story. So that giving back, the hands-on, the service learning. And then eighth grade, we have what’s called academic career planning. So we’ve charactered into that as well. And so we have a career fair, and through our careers class that we have in eighth grade, we identify kids’ strengths, we do career interest inventories and those types of things. So, and then like I said, we model it, we have to model it, continue to model it. And then the framework itself, the 11 principles, there’s a rubric that goes with it. So every three years we come back, we identify what we’re doing well, we identify one goal area to get a little bit better every year.

Sam Demma
It sounds very methodical and thought out. And I hope that if there’s another educator listening to this and they’re curious, they reach out to you to ask some questions about it so they can bring something similar to their district or their school. It sounds like you’ll be doing this work even after you finish at the school. So I’ll definitely make sure we include your email information in the show notes in case anyone does want to reach out.

Sam Demma
I had an educator who pulled me to the side of his desk and he said, Sam, living with principles and working hard is never a waste because it builds your character and you carry your character forward with you for the rest of your life. Living with principles and working hard is never a waste because it builds your character and you carry your character forward with you for the rest of your life. How do we remind young people that every choice they make impacts their character, both the positive and the negative? And when a student does make a mistake, how do we address it in a way that builds them up instead of tears them down?

Mark Chapin
Yeah, it’s a great, great question. And I mentioned my 16 life lessons, and one is be forgiving. And so my middle school has been recognized twice as a national school character through character.org, once in 2016 and again in 2023.

Mark Chapin
And I often talk about just because we’ve been recognized as a national school character doesn’t mean we’re perfect. We work with imperfect human beings and I wish I could control everything that comes out of 750 kids’ mouths and all their actions, but I can’t. And so we tell kids that and we have to be forgiving of ourselves. And anytime there’s a kid that’s in any type of trouble or hasn’t demonstrated good character, I let them know, like, listen, good kids make poor choices.

Mark Chapin
They make bad choices sometimes. It doesn’t make them a bad person or a bad kid. And so kids need to hear that. And the important thing is to reflect on it, learn from it, and try not to repeat it. I think that that’s the important thing when it comes to, you know, that we aren’t perfect and we are gonna make mistakes, but we’re gonna keep striving for it, right?

Mark Chapin
You wanna strive for excellence, strive for good character. And you mentioned the other thing is, one of my other life lessons is yes and no are the two most important words we’ll ever use in our life. Right, so sometimes it’s a split split split second. Like, and so we talked about the importance of pausing before you say something to somebody. Pause before you do something that you might regret.

Mark Chapin
So just take a second to pause. And so that’s one more reminder when we talk about character.

Sam Demma
Where did the inspiration come for you to sit down and craft some of the principles, the 16 life lessons you shared with students? I have recently been inspired by many authors, some of which are very much focused on building your life’s philosophy. One is a gentleman named Jim Rohn, who’s passed away now. And he spends his whole lecture talking about the importance of philosophy and how circumstances determine where you start, but your philosophy determines where you finish. What inspired you to start crafting this life lesson philosophy for your students?

Mark Chapin
Yeah, it’s, it’s a great question. Again, our podcast, isn’t going to see this, but this is by my desk. We had a keynote speaker that came by, I don’t know how many years ago, and this is when I was teaching, grade. And it was fundamental rejuvenation. And it had 12 things on it. And I started looking at the list.

Mark Chapin
I was like, those resonate with me. And I said, are there more to that? Or am I on the same page with this, our speaker? And I think kind of in some ways, these are the character things that we pass on to our kids. Before I knew it was character when I was teaching, you know, this was 15, 16 years ago, probably longer than that, almost 20 years ago now, I wanted to pass this along to my students. And so a lot of this is really character-based stuff that probably at the time I didn’t realize was character, but these are the things that kids can take with them that’s gonna make an impact. And I think about like employers, what are employers looking for? I mean, do they want a positive attitude? They want people that can collaborate with other people. There are all these intangible things we talk about character, but where is it being intentionally taught or implemented in schools today? It is just so important.

Mark Chapin
And you can you can look at all the research on it. What employers are looking for: teach the skill and hire for character.

Sam Demma
I had a mentor tell me at the bottom of my job application to put a filter that said, if you believe you’re the right fit for the role, please record a one minute video explaining why. And I was hiring for an executive assistant and we spent $250 on LinkedIn promoting the post. And we received 2000 applications.

Mark Chapin
Wow.

Sam Demma
Guess how many people filmed and sent through a video? 14. And when you do the percentage, it’s like 0.01, less than 0.01%.

Mark Chapin
Wow.

Sam Demma
And I thought, wow, like attention to detail. This role requires attention to detail, yet 99.9% of people didn’t even read the actual job posting. And the reality is that these are individuals who are unemployed and looking for employment. And I was like, ah, like I just wanted to shake them and just grab them and say, come on, you deserve better than this. You can do better than this. And I think that a piece of that comes back to character and how you treat every interaction and every touchpoint in life. And you piqued my curiosity with the 16 lessons, and now you’ve shared two.

Sam Demma
Do you mind sharing a few more of them that are top of mind right now?

Mark Chapin
Yeah, so you just mentioned, kind of just taking pride in your work, right? Attention to detail. We talk about be a craftsman. So back in the day, how people got business is through word of mouth.

Mark Chapin
And so craftsmen would sign their name somewhere on a piece of furniture. So we talk about when you do turn your homework in, sign it with pride. Like you’re the craftsman, make sure there’s attention to detail. Did you read the directions? Are you doing your best work? I talk about, and this is a good example of taking pride in your work. I asked the kids, how many of you mow the lawn? There’s quite a few kids that still mow lawn. I said, how many start daydreaming? A lot of hands go up. How many of you start daydreaming and all of a sudden you look back and there’s a 20-foot strip that you completely missed? I said, okay, me too. I said, how many of you go back and mow it? Half the hands go down. I said, how many of you go back and mow it? You know, they keep their, that’s pride in your work, right? Are you going back and mowing that strip of grass? So that’s another one we talk about. I’m big in having a positive attitude. I think people, it’s hard to be around people that are negative. I think it sucks the life out of you.

Mark Chapin
I talk a lot about Viktor Frankl, the last of our human freedoms is the ability to choose our own attitude. We talk about that. The importance of goal setting. I share a story about Billy Mills and his goal setting process. He won the 10,000 meters in the 1960 Olympics. Talk about leaving your comfort zone. What else? I mentioned the yes and no.

Mark Chapin
Your true character is how you act and how you behave when nobody’s looking. So that’s important. Finding a career you love. Taking care of your body. Here’s an example of you never know how your words are gonna have an impact.

Mark Chapin
We talk about how your tongue is like the rudder of a ship and it can steer you one way or the other. And your words can build people up or tear people down. Like use it to be encouraging. The word encouragement means putting courage into others. And so I shared this story when I was in college. I was getting out of shape. I used to be in really good shape.

Mark Chapin
I was putting on weight. I looked at myself in the mirror when I was a senior in college, I was like, isn’t this the best shape I’m gonna be in the rest of my life? And so, sorry, I should have taken my phone off the hook.

Mark Chapin
Sorry. I started training for a marathon. I signed for a marathon the next day, started training. I had really no business to start, but I did. And I finished my first marathon. And so I shared this story. I mentioned my life lessons. I shared with my eighth graders. And didn’t think of anything other than the last day of school, I shared my list. I shared on the first day as well. And three years later, the student came up to me. He was at prom, and he said, you don’t recognize me, Mr. Chapin, do you? And I said, no, I don’t.

Mark Chapin
He said, your face looks familiar, I can’t picture you. He goes, you don’t recognize me because I lost 100 pounds. I said, how in the world did you lose 100 pounds? He said, I remember what you told me on the last day of school in eighth grade. I started to watch what I ate and I lost. You just, you never know how your words are going to impact people.

Sam Demma
I think it’s such a crazy and beautiful experience when you share inspiration and you’re not sure who it’s going to touch, how it’s going to touch them, when it’s going to click, but when you do see the result of that, it’s really gratifying. You know, I had a mentor for three years named Chris Cummins who is now like an uncle to me in many regards. And he would say, Sam, try this, do this. And, okay, coach, I’m doing it. And every time I would show up and I would try and I would take the shot he told me to take. And after three years, we’ve now transitioned from a coaching relationship just to very close friends and colleagues. And he hasn’t coached anyone else or taken many people on. And he’s like, you know, I tell a lot of people to do the same things I told you to do and most people don’t.

Sam Demma
And I, and I just think, what phenomenon is that? Like, how do we explain that? You know, and this is a person I wanted to be like, and I looked up to, and it sounds like that message you shared really connected with that young person. I’m sure it made you feel like good about it, right?

Mark Chapin
Yeah, it’s the whole starfish. You probably read the starfish, right? Yeah.

Sam Demma
Yeah.

Mark Chapin
It’s like the thousands, you just don’t know if you’re going to make an impact. And there’s certain days where you just you get tired and you get frustrated. Like, am I making am I making an impact at all? And then you’ll get that one note. We’ll get that one email or that one phone call. It’s like, yep, it made a difference.

Sam Demma
Now, what habits do you practice consistently outside of your time

Sam Demma
in the classroom that helps you show up as best you possibly can.

Mark Chapin
Yeah, that’s another great question. First of all, I think self-care is important. So I know when I’m getting anxious and edgy, like if I’m not exercising regularly, I’m not my best self. I do my best thinking after exercise. I’m always in a positive mood,

Mark Chapin
even though I don’t feel like at the time getting up in the morning, like I’m swimming laps or riding my bike in my basement in the winter time. Like that’s important. I think reading devotions, I start my day every day with two devotions.

Mark Chapin
I send out the daily quote, which I’ve sent to you the last couple of days now. You’re on a very select list of people I send it to. But I do send it to my staff every day and then my staff pass it on to their kids in the morning. Not all of them yet. I’m trying to get them to do that because there are such great quotes. That’s from values.com if you’re looking for some kind of motivational boost.

Mark Chapin
You mentioned Jim Rohn. Just watching YouTube, a lot of positive psychology, how can I better myself? Those are kind of the main things.

Sam Demma
I read a book recently that was really influential to me called Turning Pro by a guy named Steven Pressfield. And he talks about the difference between amateurs and professionals. And to be frank, I felt quite embarrassed about myself after I finished reading the book in a really good way. And I think sometimes the inspiration comes from an emotion like embarrassment. And for me, it came from this idea that I’ve spent a lot of time speaking, and especially in the earlier parts of my career, practicing my speeches and consistently writing.

Sam Demma
And then I got so busy, I would just write and speak when I was on the road doing it for people. But outside of that, there wasn’t much of a daily habit and or practice of doing it. And that book really clearly outlines that professionals have a daily practice, and they have a space where they practice, and they have a time when they practice, and they have an attention around their practice. And they show up every single day, and they’re ruthless with their work. They are craftsmen. He shared a story of Pablo Picasso, and someone bought his paintings and stuck them in a gallery.

Sam Demma
And two years later, the gallery opened, and Picasso walked in as a guest to check out his paintings. And he grabbed a razor and cut all of his paintings up on the wall into shreds. And the gallery owner said, what are you doing? And he said, this work is pathetic.

Sam Demma
It’s not a reflection of my work. I will get you some new ones. And I just thought, what a standard to hold yourself to, but to be a true craftsman. And I really appreciate you sharing that reminder to just continue being a student and listening to the things that will change your mindset and continuing to read.

Mark Chapin
Yeah, you mentioned, Sam, that consistency. I just share this with our students in our auditorium with one of our character kickoffs, just how important that consistency with either training or practicing. And I shared with them that it took me five years to finish my dissertation to get my doctorate degree. And I wasn’t making progress. I just, I wasn’t getting it done. And the lit review, the reading, this takes forever. I kept driving by this house in my neighborhood that the workers would show up every day at 6:45 and there they were. And before you know it, the foundation was built and then the framing was up. And I realized like, if I’m gonna get this dissertation up, I have to do work every single day. Otherwise the house isn’t going to get built. My dissertation is not going to get done. And that’s when I started making progress on my paper. Yeah.

Mark Chapin
You know, it’s funny too.

Sam Demma
Jim Rohn often says, my life changed when I was 25. I feel like I was subconsciously waiting until 25 to get in the saddle more consistently for certain things, you know? But I sincerely appreciate your time and the intention around all the work you’re doing. I’m beyond excited to visit the school soon and meet in person and collaborate with your school and your students. If there’s an educator listening, I’ll put your email in the show notes so they can reach out. Absolutely. But I wanted to just say sincerely, Mark, thank you so much for the time, the energy, and everything you’re doing in education.

Mark Chapin
Thanks, Sam. I appreciate it. And hopefully we get out fly fishing when you come to River Falls.

Sam Demma
Can’t wait.

Mark Chapin
All right, Sam, good to talk to you.

Sam Demma
Talk soon.

Join the Educator Network & Connect with Mark Chapin

The High Performing Educator Podcast was brought to life during the outbreak of COVID-19 to provide you with inspirational stories and practical advice from your colleagues in education.  By tuning in, you will hear the stories and ideas of the world’s brightest and most ambitious educators.  You can expect interviews with Principals, Teachers, Guidance Counsellors, National Student Association, Directors and anybody that works with youth. You can find and listen to all the episodes for free here.

Shandi Andres — State Adviser for Kansas FCCLA

Shandi Andres — State Adviser for Kansas FCCLA
About Shandi Andres

Shandi Andres is the State Adviser for Kansas FCCLA.  She also serves a Family and Consumer Sciences (FCS) Education Instructor at Kansas State University.  She is a recipient of the American Association of Family and Consumer Sciences (AAFCS) 2023 Leaders Award. She started her career as a FCS Teacher and FCCLA Adviser.  She moved to a position as an Extension Agent. She served as a FCS & 4-H Agent while also serving as a District Director. These experiences led her to the current position.  

This position allows her to work with youth and FCS professionals from across the state and nation.  Shandi believes that Family and Consumer Science courses, skills, and experiences provide a foundation for individuals to succeed. FCCLA is the student organization as part of FCS in which students are able to grow as leaders and develop skills for life.  

Connect with Shandi Andres: Email | Instagram | Facebook

Listen Now

Listen to the episode now on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or on your favourite podcast platform.

Resources Mentioned

Kansas FCCLA

Kansas State University

The Transcript

**Please note that all of our transcriptions come from rev.com and are 80% accurate. We’re grateful for the robots that make this possible and realize that it’s not a perfect process.

Sam Demma
Welcome back to another episode of the High Performing Educator podcast. This is your host, Sam. And today we are joined by Shandi Andres. Shandi Andres is the State Advisor for Kansas FCCLA, and she also serves as a Family and Consumer Science Educational Instructor at Kansas State University.

Sam Demma
She’s the recipient of the American Association of Family and Consumer Sciences Leadership Award in 2023. And she started her career as an FCS teacher and FCCLA advisor, which I’m sure she’ll be talking a little bit about here today. She’s also done some work with 4-H and with the district as a director.

Sam Demma
And these experiences have led her to her position today. She’s also currently in calving season. with the district as a director. And these experiences have led her to her position today. She’s also currently in calving season. And I know it’s very busy for her. Shandi, thank you so much for setting aside some time to be on the podcast here today.

Shandi Andres
Yeah, thanks Sam for having me.

Sam Demma
Tell me a little bit about what got you interested and involved in education and family consumer sciences.

Shandi Andres
So, I remember even as a little kid thinking that I wanted to be a teacher. Many fellow educators, you know, when they were little, they probably had their siblings set up and playing school, etc. And that was no different at my house. However, the biggest difference was I didn’t want to teach math, I didn’t want to teach reading. So I knew I wanted to be a teacher, but I didn’t really know what I wanted to teach. And it wasn’t until I got to high school, my freshman year, one of my best friends drug me into the organization fair and her aunt was the FCCLA teacher and FACTS or FCCLA advisor and FACTS teacher and she drug me in and she said, hey, we should do this. And I said, okay. So I signed up and I was actually enrolled in a facts class that semester. And what I found was that I found my home. I grew up with an ag background, absolutely love ag, grew up in 4-H. But I found my home in FCS.

Shandi Andres
That’s the acronym we use for family and consumer sciences. So you’ll hear people say FACTS, you’ll hear people say FCS, but it all comes down to the same. And so my high school career, I took as many family and consumer science classes as I could. I was a chapter officer, star event participant, district officer, and really launched my desire to be a FACS teacher. So by the time I was a junior, I was committed to being a FACS teacher and that’s kind of continued with my path of family and consumer sciences.

Sam Demma
What was it specifically about family and consumer sciences versus the other subject areas that really drew you in or pulled you in?

Shandi Andres
No, it was skills that everybody could use every day. When we think about, yes, we need math. We really do. You know, kids don’t necessarily see that they need math, but I can tell you exactly how we use it. You know, when don’t necessarily see that they need math, but, but I can tell you exactly how we use it. You know, when I am going to make a recipe and it’s written as a single recipe, but I want to quadruple it because I’m serving a larger group, then I can calculate that out in my head because I know how fractions work and how our, our math works. So it’s real life skills. It’s also skills like communication and public speaking that we grow and develop through our time in those family and consumer science classes. And so if you think about our careers, we have a lot of careers in the new career cluster model and previously that are connected to family and consumer sciences, but our skills that we learn in family and consumer sciences launch us into any career, help us to be better people and to be better consumers. If we think about family and consumer sciences, we can break that down. So anything that involves us as being a member of a family, and that means as a member of the family, we’re a member of the community.

Shandi Andres
But also then we think about consumerism and how do we make better decisions as consumers. And so that might mean when I buy a car, how do I choose that process and that purchase to make the best choice for me? But it could also mean that how do I choose a banking product or how do I choose my insurance? And so all of those impact us as individuals. and FCCLA is that I’m going to call it professional development component for students in the area of the family and consumer sciences but when I’m talking to potential students or teachers, parents about our program then a lot of times I get well what can I do if I don’t want to be in family and consumer sciences.

Shandi Andres
We have a lot of components that are just about making making yourself better. One of our national programs is the power of one and so it really is about you personally. How do we how do we make ourselves better? When we think about power of one, then it has modules within it. So one of them is a better you. And so you set personal goals for yourself to be able to improve something about you. One of them is a family tie. So maybe that means that you want to improve our relationship with your mom or dad. Working on working, so I’m going to prepare for a career, how do I do that? Take the lead and then speak out for FCCLA. Those are just, that’s just a very basic program within FCCLA and so it’s applicable to anyone. Our competitive events are the same way. When we think about maybe you want to be in a family and consumer science-related career, but maybe you don’t.

Shandi Andres
And if you don’t, there’s still competitive events and story events like leadership or career investigation that are very much just about you and not necessarily about a family and consumer science science related career.

Sam Demma
Tell me about your first experience with FCCLA.

Shandi Andres
I don’t know if I can tell you my very first experience. But I do know that I was part of our chapter. So that’s the basic unit building blocks within the organization. So our chapter was in our high school. And so we had a chapter there where I went to high school. And so we had monthly meetings.

Shandi Andres
Those monthly meetings allowed me to see how parliamentary procedure was used in a business meeting beyond just knowing Robert’s Rules of Order, how do we use it. But then we also planned activities, community service projects. We took some of our national programs and created projects within the school and communities. I did star events. So my freshman, sophomore and junior year, I competed in the job interview of star event.

Shandi Andres
And my goal was to make it to nationals. And so I did my junior year I made it to nationals. Part of the job interview event means that you’re going to have a job that you want to apply for. You’re going to create a portfolio as if you are preparing for that job. And then you meet with the judges just like a formal interview process and they’re going to have your material.

Shandi Andres
And that was a great learning experience for me as an individual, not only to think about the preparation of that portfolio, but also then how do I efficiently communicate with the person sitting on the other side of the table, and to be able to take constructive criticism and feedback from those judges. So my junior year, I qualified for nationals, and I was able to go to nationals that year and that was that was fantastic to be able to do that. My senior year then I had to choose a different project. I couldn’t take the same events so I had to I did something different but but that created that process created a lot of opportunities for connections but in personal growth. The one year I was working on my job interview event and we actually had a parliamentary procedure team from our chapter. And so that team actually worked, they met a lot.

Shandi Andres
They usually met two or three times a week to go through their practice. And one of our chapter members that was on the Parlipro team that year actually was diagnosed with diabetes during the preparation. And so to see the connections that happen beyond just school and classroom for those for my friends and those fellow students was just amazing and we don’t create those connections when we’re just just

Sam Demma
attending class. It sounds like every touch point you’ve had with FCCLA has been an impactful one. Whether you were the student or the advisor, or just involved at an event. Why do you think it’s important that more students get involved in experiences like FCCLA or FCS?

Shandi Andres
Well, one of them I think that’s really important is connection. You know, our students when in middle school and high school really need that connection. Yes, they need that connection with their peers, but they also need that connection with an adult in their building. And so when we participate in extracurricular or intercurricular activities, then we actually help build those connections and students do better in school. FCCLA, depending on who you ask, would say, or most of the time we would say that it is intercurricular. So the hope is that all of those advisors are using the FCCLA materials within their classroom. And then sometimes it becomes extracurricular because you have students who really want to take it above and beyond. But it is designed to be intercurricular. And yes, it does take a little time outside of class if you are doing well within your chapter.

Sam Demma
What part in your journey did you also start serving at Kansas State University?

Shandi Andres
So when I was fresh out of high school, or out of college, I actually attended Kansas State University. And then when I was fresh out of college, I took a teaching position. So I taught in a family and consumer science program in a multi-teacher department. So there were two of us and served as the FECLA advisor. I had my two children and my husband and I made the decision that I was going to leave the classroom so I could stay home and so I stayed home with my kids for a couple of years. My husband was managing an Angus operation. And so then our family process, I actually went to work full time on the ranch for five years. And when we moved home, we were living about two hours from where we grew up.

Shandi Andres
So when we moved home, I took a position with K-State Research and Extension. And if you’re not familiar with extension, extension is associated with the land grant universities, oftentimes called cooperative extension. And in Kansas, that’s housed through K-State. And so I became a Kansas State University employee when I joined K-State Research and Extension as an agent. And so I was the Family and Consumer Science and 4-H agent for the district. And I was with them for six and a half years. I took over as interim director during my time and then I went to director.

Shandi Andres
And I absolutely loved Extension and I loved 4-H. And we all have paths in our journey and part of my journey included a change. And so I, technically I changed job, but I’m still employed through Kansas State University. So I moved from my position with extension, which was out in the county. To campus and so I’m housed at Kansas State University. And my position is a 2 part position. So, I, I am employed on campus and so 20% of my contract is for teaching. That’s the family and consumer science education instructor. And so I teach our methods course for our students who are going to be family and consumer science teachers.

Sam Demma
Oh, wow.

Shandi Andres
Yeah. So I get to work with our pre-service teachers. And so in the fall, I methods and supervise practicum. And then in the spring I supervise student teaching for those students. And so making their placements out in the field and matching them up and doing their supervisions. And I work with our student organization for FACS Ed. And then the rest of my time is spent as the Kansas FCLA state advisor. And that is a contract through our state Department of Education. So they contract out our state advisors. And so that happens to be the other part of my position. I I love the combination of my position. I love that I still get to work with professionals in the field. I get to help prepare our students as they’re entering the classroom. And then I get to work with our state officers and planning our state events. So that’s the state advisor role. So I serve as an administrative function for the organization. And then I help work with our state officers and help plan leadership trainings at state events and get to see all of it come together every time. And so that’s really an amazing process and a rewarding part of my job.

Sam Demma
When you speak about it, it’s so clear that you’re passionate about all of the roles because it sounds like you could talk about them forever and you light up and you’re smiling the whole time. When you think of the advisors you had, is there any that still are front and center in your mind?

Shandi Andres
Well, I just had one FCCLA advisor. My chapter advisor was there the whole time. And she’s actually now a cousin by marriage. My husband and I started dating before I started high school. And his mom and my teacher’s husband were first cousins. And so I got to know her through class, but also outside.

Shandi Andres
And so what I appreciated about her as an advisor was her willingness to let students take the lead, jump in for pretty much anything. We were able to toss at her. But also her passion for family, for sciences, and for teaching. She was very animated, very structured in her classroom, and so I really appreciated those dynamics.

Shandi Andres
She has since left the classroom, but obviously we still still chat. And it did make a huge difference and an impact on on what I was going to do. And it was a simple ask of, hey, because you know you could do this as a career. And sometimes we have interactions with great people, but they don’t necessarily see their potential. And so as teachers, as adults working with youth, sometimes it means a simple observation of, hey, have you considered this for your career? Or have you considered looking at this? Because I think you’d be great at it.

Shandi Andres
And I think that’s really important as we think about choose preparing, choosing, advocating for teachers is how do we grow that profession? How do we encourage those youths to capture and take hold of their natural interest?

Sam Demma
It sounds like one of the ways you support young people is by acknowledging their own greatness through suggestions of pathways that they could pursue based on your observations. When it comes to building relationships with young people, supportive relationships, both with FCCLA or in the classroom, what else do you think makes all the difference when it comes to connecting with the young person?

Shandi Andres
Sometimes it’s simply them knowing that you are available, that you care, that you understand, but also sometimes that means picking up on the little things. I have our state president right now and she’s actually been on our state officer team for two years. And so she traveled with me to one of our events. And in one, she’s very, very, very good about writing thank you notes. Thank you notes following the event. And that’s one of the things that she excels at. But in one of her

Shandi Andres
thank you notes, she commented about like, thanks for always having a listening ear and for having gum to chew on when I need it. So sometimes it’s the little things that you capture. One of our training events this last fall, we usually go, I usually take our state officers, part of their training, but also advocacy

Shandi Andres
opportunities is to go to Capital Leadership, which is held in DC. And it didn’t happen this last year because of the election year. And so we went to a different training, one at the Fall Leadership Institute, and that was actually a partnership with Disney this year. So they went and did the leadership training with Disney, and then as a bonus, then they got to go to the Disney theme park to check it out.

Sam Demma
Oh, wow.

Shandi Andres
One of my state officers was very adamant that he doesn’t like roller coasters. He skipped out on the Incredicoaster. But he had his sights set on Space Mountain. He was going to go on Space Mountain while we were there. If you’re not familiar, Space Mountain is a roller coaster inside.

Sam Demma
Dark.

Shandi Andres
Dark.

Sam Demma
Yeah.

Shandi Andres
It’s absolutely dark. So we convinced him that he could go on their runaway rail car with us. And he ended up, our group got split. So we had a group at the front and a group at the back. And when we got done, he survived and he had a smile on his face. But he told me that he was going to ride with me on Space Mountain. And I said, okay. And he goes, because you laugh on the roller coasters and that makes me feel better. And I was at the front, yes, I laugh on roller coasters. And I said, you could hear me? And he goes, yeah, I could hear your laugh on the roller coaster.

Shandi Andres
And so it was something that I do naturally and I didn’t think about it. But his statement made me think about how sometimes we do little things that others pay attention to and capture onto that we don’t. It does have an impact on others, positive or negative. I think that’s important to remember. But in this case, it made me smile and it made my heart happy to hear him, hear him, um, take that in a positive light instead of negative.

Sam Demma
Oh, my, my laugh sounds like a flock of dying geese. So we’re the same people can recognize it from some ways away. And you’re so right. Sometimes the things that we take for granted are the things, not even maybe take for granted, but the things we don’t even recognize are the things that other people appreciate the most.

Sam Demma
And I think that’s what’s so unique about education or working with young people is you never really know what’s going to connect and make a difference, but you show up with the intention every single day to be of service and support and help and trust that something will connect and will make an impact. It’s been such a pleasure chatting with you. I can’t believe the time has already flown by. If some educator is, you know, an educator is listening to this, they might be struggling right now or a little bit burnt out. What advice would you give a colleague or someone else in education who’s just going through a lot right now?

Shandi Andres
I would say I have two parts to this. One of them is to remember your why, because your why, if you can remember that, will usually help you get through some of those tough times, but also remind us like, what’s your purpose? Why did you get into this? Or, why do you hope to help others with? What’s your why? That’s the first one. The second thing is, I think today, even more than ever, it’s really important to remember that we practice some self-care. Maybe that means that we take our calendar and we write it, make sure we have white space. If you’re not familiar with white space,

Shandi Andres
I use a paper calendar intentionally because I can see if I have any white space on my day and that’s me. But making sure that we have some white space for ourselves, for our own time or know where those boundaries are. But also maybe it’s the little thing.

Shandi Andres
Maybe that means there’s a song that’s your pick me up. Maybe that means there’s a scent that is your go-to. Maybe that’s a candle you can keep close. Maybe that’s a perfume or a spray. But something that reminds you, even when days are tough, to take a deep breath. And what’s the good? And let the bad go. Breathe it out. And so I think those two parts are really important as we take care of ourselves as educators and to be able to give back to our profession.

Sam Demma
I got a lot of green space and yellow space and red space and blue space. I got to find some white space, Shandi. I appreciate you so much for taking the time to share some of your journey and beliefs around education and impacting young people.

Sam Demma
I look forward to meeting you shortly. I’m so excited to be of service and support to Kansas FCCLA. If there is an educator listening to this that wants to reach out and ask you a question, what would be the best way for them to get in touch? You can reach me at my email.

Shandi Andres
So that’s sdandres@ksu.edu.

Sam Demma
Awesome. Thank you so much for your time and keep up the amazing work you’re doing.

Shandi Andres
Thanks, Sam. Hope to see you in April.

Join the Educator Network & Connect with Shandi Andres

The High Performing Educator Podcast was brought to life during the outbreak of COVID-19 to provide you with inspirational stories and practical advice from your colleagues in education.  By tuning in, you will hear the stories and ideas of the world’s brightest and most ambitious educators.  You can expect interviews with Principals, Teachers, Guidance Counsellors, National Student Association, Directors and anybody that works with youth. You can find and listen to all the episodes for free here.

Leanne Forrest — Program Manager for Educational Assistants at the Ottawa-Carleton District School Board

Leanne Forrest — Program Manager for Educational Assistants at the Ottawa-Carleton District School Board
About Leanne Forrest

Leanne Forrest, is the Program Manager for Educational Assistants at the Ottawa-Carleton District School Board. Her career has spanned over 35 years in special education. She was nominated in 2022-2023 for the Ronald K. Lynch Award for an outstanding and significant contribution reflecting either a sustained compassionate and dedicated commitment by an OCDSB employee to the success of students with special education needs. 

She began her career as an Educational Assistant supporting students with autism in specialized program classes, then joined the central Learning Support Services team for Autism. As more leadership roles became available, Leanne moved into the role of Applied Behavior Analysis Coordinator and then became the first Program Manager of Educational Assistants in 2024 at the OCDSB.

Connect with Leanne Forrest: Email | Linkedin

Listen Now

Listen to the episode now on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or on your favourite podcast platform.

Resources Mentioned

Ottawa-Carleton District School Board

Bonus Q&A with Leanne Forrest

 1. Why do you do the work you do with young people? 

I’m drawn to working with young people, and particularly in special education, because I believe every child deserves the chance to thrive. I’ve seen firsthand the incredible potential that exists with our students, regardless of the challenges they face. It’s about looking beyond the labels and diagnoses, and seeing the individual – their strengths, their passions, and their unique way of learning. For me, special education isn’t just about accommodations and modifications; it’s about building genuine connections, understanding each student’s specific needs, and creating a learning environment where they feel safe, supported, and empowered to reach their full potential. 

It’s also about the staff who support these young people. A lot of my work now revolves around supporting Educational Assistants who walk alongside students each and every day supporting their mental health, social, communication and learning needs. 

2. What got you into this work? 

My path to this role was driven by a deep belief in the power of inclusive education and ensuring our students with special education needs were met. I’ve seen firsthand how dedicated teachers and EAs can transform a student’s experience, providing not only academic support but also a sense of belonging, safety and joy. I was inspired by their compassion and commitment, and I wanted to be part of a system that supports these incredible individuals and amplifies their impact. 

How it all began for me: 

When I was 16 years old I had an opportunity to do a volunteer placement at a specialized school in our district for students with developmental disabilities. I had never been in an environment like this and was in awe of the students’ needs and how the educators supporting them were positive and passionate about what they were doing. I found a place where I felt I belonged, where I shared the same joy in giving back, and pride in seeing students reach their full potential. I knew from that time on I wanted to work in special education. 

It led me to pursue my post secondary education in supporting students with special education needs. Through my education I experienced another life changing student placement opportunity where I worked in a specialized class for students with Autism. Supporting and learning from some of our most vulnerable 

students with complex needs gave me a sense of purpose and drive to do more. In these environments you are surrounded by caring and dedicated staff invested in creating safe and caring spaces to welcome students where they are at. 

3. What challenges are you currently faced with? 

With my new role as the Program Manager of Educational Assistants, one of the ongoing challenges is ensuring we have adequate staffing to meet the growing needs of our students. Finding and retaining qualified EAs is crucial. Another challenge is providing consistent and relevant professional development to keep EAs up-to-date on best practices and specialized skills and ensure EAs feel valued. 

4. How are you overcoming those challenges? 

We’re actively working on several fronts. Our HR department has implemented targeted recruitment strategies to attract qualified candidates. 

We’re actively working on developing mentorship programs to support new EAs and help them thrive in their roles. 

We’re developing partnerships with local colleges and universities to create pathways into the field of education assistance. 

And we’re continually seeking feedback from EAs themselves to understand their needs and address them effectively. Staff feedback is crucial to understanding not only the barriers they face in the work they do but also an amazing way to gain insight and suggestions from those doing the work. 

It is also about elevating the job and bringing awareness and appreciation of the work they do. You were a large part of sharing in the recognition of the important work EAs do when you joined us in August for the EA Leaning days. 

We’ve also just had our first EA appreciation day back in November and I will continue to strive to bring recognition and support to the role of EAs across our district. 

5. What programs did you run last year that were a success with students and teachers? 

Last year we ran a number of After School Social Skills Development Programs for neurodiverse students who were having difficulty with play skills in Primary 

grades as well as a program called PEERS for Intermediate and High School students who were having trouble making and keeping friends. 

Both programs gave students the opportunity to learn vital play and social skills in a safe and caring environment where they could take chances and build skills and peer relationships. Teachers got the opportunity to focus on important skills, learn the evidence based strategies to elicit the skills and build connections with students they may not have already had. 

6. What gives you hope? What do you think is the biggest opportunity right now? 

What gives me hope right now is the unwavering dedication and passion of our Educational Assistants. In my new role I have had the privilege to walk alongside EAs who are doing remarkable things for students. 

They are truly amazing individuals who go above and beyond for their students every day. The biggest opportunity right now is to elevate the profession of Educational Assistants. By providing more training, support, and recognition, we can attract and retain top talent, ensuring that every student has access to the support they need to succeed. I think there’s a growing recognition of the vital role EAs play, and I’m excited about the future. 

7. What mistakes have you made and learned from that are worth sharing? 

Early in my career, I wanted to be the fixer. I wanted to solve the issues. I didn’t always take time to listen and reflect before trying to solve an issue. Through my leadership courses and some amazing mentors in my career I have learned the importance of this. 

You know System Principal Deb Lyon, she has been an amazing mentor to me and helped me understand the power of listening to others and taking the time to reflect. You don’t have to react immediately and make suggestions, you can give others time with their own questions to reflect and maybe come up with the solution before you make a suggestion. I find it really empowers others. 

I have also learned the importance of surrounding yourself with people who not only share your values and views but the importance of being around those whose views differ from yours, who add the diversity and creativity that makes the process of collaboration so important. 

I’ve also learned the importance of student voice, parent/guardian voices alongside our educators in the decisions we make. We can’t make decisions 

about them without them. We can’t make lasting, supportive change unless we include the voice of everyone involved. 

8. What is your motivator (or your driver)? 

“My motivator is seeing the positive impact our educators have on students’ lives. It’s not easy work but they do it anyway. Knowing that I’m playing a role in supporting these dedicated individuals and ultimately helping students thrive is what drives me every day. It’s about creating a more inclusive and equitable education system where every student and staff member feel valued and supported. 

9. Tell me a story about a situation where you heard the impact a program had on a student. 

As I mentioned earlier, in our After School Social Skills Development Programs part of my role was to train staff to run the programs at their schools. When I would do onsite visits I would hear first hand how students were building play skills and making connections with one another. I would see the excitement and joy staff had in running the programs and feeling like they were really getting to know their students and building connections with them. They would tell me it was the best part of their day! 

I had a parent stop me and tell her how her son in Kindergarten was playing with others for the first time and asked when the program would be running again so they could keep making friends. 

In our PEERS program I had a student who for the first time walked home with a peer, got invited to a hangout at someone’s house and felt like he had a friend. It may not seem like a lot but for many this is the difference of wanting to come to school, having a sense of belonging and can really support their mental health and well being. 

10. Where can other educators reach you if they want to bounce ideas around? 

I’m always happy to connect with others. They can reach me by email at leanne.forrest@ocdsb.ca or through my linked in account. I believe in the power of collaboration and sharing best practices, and I’m always open to discussing new ideas and approaches to supporting students and EAs. As I am still new to the role and not sure if other boards have a similar position, if there’s anyone out there that supports educational assistants in their boards I’d love to connect. 

Join the Educator Network & Connect with Leanne Forrest

The High Performing Educator Podcast was brought to life during the outbreak of COVID-19 to provide you with inspirational stories and practical advice from your colleagues in education.  By tuning in, you will hear the stories and ideas of the world’s brightest and most ambitious educators.  You can expect interviews with Principals, Teachers, Guidance Counsellors, National Student Association, Directors and anybody that works with youth. You can find and listen to all the episodes for free here.

Callie Sue Costello – Senior at Centennial High School, Boise, Idaho and Idaho FCCLA State President

Callie Sue Costello - Senior at Centennial High School, Boise, Idaho and Idaho FCCLA State President
About Callie Sue Costello

Callie Sue Costello is a dedicated senior at Centennial High School in Boise, Idaho, and has been an active member of the Family, Career, and Community Leaders of America (FCCLA) since her freshman year. Currently serving as the Idaho FCCLA State President, Callie has demonstrated exemplary leadership, compassion, and empathy in her work with her peers and the community. These values are at the core of her work within FCCLA, where she has focused on building strong connections with others, as she believes that relationships are the foundation of meaningful change.

Callie Sue has a deep passion for Family and Consumer Sciences (FCS), which has inspired her plans to attend Boise State University (BSU) in the fall to pursue a degree in Early Childhood Education. With aspirations of becoming a teacher, she is committed to making a positive impact on the lives of children and their families.

One of Callie Sue’s most defining traits is her resilience—she never gives up. Whether it’s through her leadership in FCCLA or her personal academic pursuits, Callie is determined to face challenges head-on and continues to inspire those around her with her perseverance and dedication.

Connect with Callie Sue Costello: Email | Instagram

Listen Now

Listen to the episode now on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or on your favourite podcast platform.

Resources Mentioned

Centennial High School

Family, Career, and Community Leaders of America (FCCLA)

Idaho FCCLA

Boise State University (BSU)

The Transcript

**Please note that all of our transcriptions come from rev.com and are 80% accurate. We’re grateful for the robots that make this possible and realize that it’s not a perfect process.

Sam Demma
Welcome back to another episode of the High Performing Educator Podcast. This is your host, Sam Demma, and today we are joined by Callie Sue Costello. Callie, a senior at Centennial High School in Boise, Idaho, currently serves as the Idaho FCCLA State President after being actively involved in the organization since her freshman year. Her leadership within Family, Career, and Community Leaders of America reflects her core values of compassion and relationship building as catalysts for meaningful change. With a deep passion for family and consumer sciences, Callie plans to attend Boise State University to pursue early childhood education, channeling her notable resilience and determination into her goal of becoming a teacher who positively impacts children and families. She is also one of the most persistent and dedicated people that I know. Callie, thank you for taking the time to be on the show here today. Please, tell me a little bit about your experience as a student and how it got you involved in FCCLA.

Callie Sue
So, back like four years ago when I was a little baby freshman, I took a class called leadership. And at the time we had a student teacher, Mr. Montana, who is now my like FCC advisor. My advisor like there’s like the lead teacher that was Ms. Berglund. She’s like my first advisor and I love her to death and she moved away so that after my freshman year. I took leadership and that class is tied in with FCCLA. So you do projects with for FCCLA in that class and then it just like you get created on that you get tied about FCCLA. You could say hey come to this event let’s go. And you get a day out of school pay 20 bucks to go You know, it’s a day at school. I didn’t care what I was missing And then I took that as okay like like this is gonna be fun because I wanted to be a part of something Knowing myself. I’m not someone that doesn’t try hard. I’m not someone that just gives up on something. So I wanted to I wanted to be an essay so I make a change. So my freshman year I was a chapter officer so for like for my school um which is just Centennial I was the first VP so I took all the notes for the meeting and just hope if the president was gone and then I said okay I want to do more this is not enough for me I’m not doing anything and then I ran for um district so a little bit bigger part of Idaho, and I did PR. So social media, Instagram, Facebook, that was fun, but I wanted to do more. And I said, I’m not gonna stop there. And then my sophomore to junior year, I ran for state officer, that was my first term. And I did PR again, because it’s a little bit more like the bigger scale, state officer is a big step. You go through all the crazy speeches in front of all the 500 people at the state conference and the nerve-wracking just everything about running for the office is crazy. Makes you want to cry. And then last year I wanted to run one more time for my senior year and I was elected as the state president for ILO at CCLA against, and I have a team of eight right now, so I am meeting I’m getting asking to our conference in April.

Sam Demma
Tell me a little bit about wanting to be a part of something. I think that is a desire that everyone has, you know, and tell me how FCCLA kind of filled that desire or want.

Callie Sue
Um, well, I think growing up, my mom said, you’re going to be able to, you’re going to do something, Kelly. She always said, you wear your heart on your sleeve. You care for everybody. You need to, you need to do something with that, like with your passion. And so, at CCLA, I learned, I found my love for being a teacher. Within the CCLA, I just competed in a project a couple of months ago about positive guidance for children, and that is teaching teachers how to be a better teacher. And looking at me, who is a little baby high schooler that doesn’t have a college degree or anything that just has worked with time and been involved with leadership and connection and communication. It’s like I can make a change on a student through talking to a teacher in a different way. And from the consumer sciences is really what that is, is connection and leadership. And basically what you need to do, you need to have SES to even do a lot of basic things, like cooking and getting dressed every day, you need to have SES to do that.

Callie Sue
And so I think being able to make a change through, like even like when I met you and I introduced you to my team, like that was like, I made a change of like, hey, like we can get this guy. He’s crazy. Like we can bring him, because everyone on the team said, no, you can’t do that. You can’t, you can’t make him, you can’t pull him onto our team. I was like, no, no, no, no, no. Just watch. And that’s why I’m just very persistent. And I don’t like giving up and that’s the way that I make a change. I feel like it’s because I’m setting the bar higher than someone else. Maybe not. Maybe I think I reached that bar and you know, and I’m going to be the one that says, no, I’ll try. Just watch. I’ll try.

Sam Demma
For context, for everyone listening, Callie saw me speak at a conference in Boise. I wanna say it was last November. Two years ago, me. Two years ago. And decided, you know,

Callie Sue
Sam, it’d be awesome to have you come and speak at our event as well. The event is a little bit of a smaller size event. So the team probably told her, there’s no way it’s gonna work out. Logistically, it’s not gonna be possible. And she drafted up letters for local businesses and rallied support and I was blown away by it all and we found this cool win-win-win scenario and I’m going back to Boise as a result. So you really are very persistent and I applaud you on it and hope that that’s something you carry forward for the rest of your life.

Sam Demma
You mentioned you’re not in college yet or have a degree, but you’ve had so much experience working with young people. When it comes to building relationships with students and youth, that’s what every teacher wants to do.

Callie Sue
What do you think is most important? I think I have a twin brother, because some people don’t know that about me. We are very, very opposite. Like I am the one that wants to go, go, go and keep trying. He’s like, no problem, I’m just giving up. So I think people mistake him to be me. And I’m like, no, no, no, no, no, I’m Kallie Sue. I’m not him. I love him, he’s my brother. But I want to be different. And so my teacher, cause she both of us are in her class, she’s like, what is, you get to think like, yeah, we’re twins.

Callie Sue
But I think her connecting with me and seeing that I could do more is what I wanted to do for little children. A lot of little kids, this is like teacher language. If you have a kid that’s like a problem child or like a challenging behavior, people just give up. And they want to say, no, if I can’t teach this classroom, I don’t want to do it. I can’t continue being a teacher in here. I say, no, I’ll go in there and I’ll do it. Because you can’t give up on a child. They just need help. Every form of behavior is a way of communicating something. People don’t see it like that. And I’m like, no, no, no, no, no, look at it. Maybe because the teacher in there hasn’t been consistent enough with whatever they’re doing. It’s a fallout on what you shouldn’t you’re not doing and that’s what they’re reacting in that way But some people tell me I’m just crazy and I know nothing But I’m like, no, no, no, like look at it like the situation like it’s not I Know I go on but when I talked about my workshop, I taught my boss That used to work for did love me talking about that because I’m just a kid. I was like, no, but I don’t want to be more than a kid. I want to be seen as someone that wants to help help your staff and wants to help those kids in that class because I love those kids and they’re not mine, but I love them. And I don’t want to be seen as like a threat. I want to be seen as a teacher that just wants to help somebody. And that’s why I think like having the change and not giving up is what I am fond of or what I usually try to aim for because that’s what children deserve and that’s what like adults deserve too is like to not be giving up on.

Sam Demma
You’re gonna make such a big contribution to so many young people, I can already feel it.

Callie Sue
I wanna teach kindergarten one day. High schoolers in me and I’m not a fan of high school. And at kindergarten, like that age is just beautiful and they’re learning how to be a big kid. And I just love that, because I loved being a big kid when I was little, like getting into elementary school and seeing what I could do with what I want, like what stuff I could pick that day or what my friends I saw, just being a part of that is what I want to inspire and change.

Sam Demma
Something I have to share with a lot of my friends and younger people in my life is that age doesn’t determine ability. Sometimes it does, but for example, you could have a 60-year-old person who’s never taken a professional photo in their life and a 13-year-old student who’s been taking photos with a professional camera for two years. This young person who’s been taking photos for two years has more experience with professional photography than the 60 year old. Just because you have age doesn’t mean you have experience with something.

Sam Demma
You can be a young person obsessed with helping young people and be more obsessed with that than someone twice your age. And just because you are younger, it doesn’t mean your input, your insights, your ideas aren’t valuable. So never forget that. I think you’re going to make a big impact.

Callie Sue
I think that’s why I love FCC so much is because I get to make decisions. I get to be a part of that and say things. Like we just picked our gifts, everyone gets it. Like at a conference, like I got to be a part of that. And it’s like just making little decisions to put like our conference together and to put like a lesson plan, what I want to put together, like you’re just like being a part of that. And then she said like let me be a leader and like I have people like this one on my team now that ran because of me. Like she ran because she saw me at BASIC and teach a conference and a workshop about communication. Like that to me, just like okay, like I’m doing something right. I’m not, I’m not feeling, I’m not stupid, I’m not dumb, I’m doing something right. That touched her and said, I can be an officer just like how I do.

Sam Demma
Wow, you know, you’re balancing a lot. School responsibilities, FCCLA responsibilities, other things in life. There’s a teacher listening to this doing the same. Balancing teaching, balancing extracurricular activities, balancing life at home.

Sam Demma
Sometimes they get extremely overwhelmed and a little bit burnt out. And I’m sure you’ve had that experience at some point in your life. What advice do you have for teachers who might be going through that? Take it a day at a time.

Callie Sue
My person, like my boyfriend is terrible at managing everything. He just wants to break down and cry. And I’m like, okay, I’m like, okay. Like I had two binders for my class, for my SDS class. I’m like, okay, one day at a time. I’m really good at making like a list of what I need to do right now. And then other things they’ll just fall. They will just fall into your day. If you’re up till 1am that’s okay. I don’t recommend that because you need sleep. But take it a day at a time and it will all go the way you want it to. It may seem crazy. You may want to cry for five minutes to ten minutes but then make a list and realize what you need to do right now what’s most important for you or your students that day and then everything else would just fall into place. Where did you get all this wisdom from at such a young age? Because I’ve done a lot because I um I think I taught me a lot of that. I think I taught me time management when I have a deadline that I have to meet and I’m in a set deadline, I’m like, oh, okay, I need to do that. And then I’m a daughter and a sibling and a girlfriend and a friend and a peer and a teacher at my work. And it’s just, I used to laugh at my mom a lot. Maybe when you meet my mom, you’ll learn how I act. But she has shown me to never give up. And that’s, I think, where I get it all from because you give up and you’re saying that, that you’re weak, I guess in a way, or that you, not weak is not the right word, but if you give up, you’re letting whatever’s in front of you become way too big of it needs to be. And don’t let don’t want to be a cloud over your head. Just keep going. The rain cloud will go behind you and it’s okay.

Sam Demma
One of my friends always told me the worst time to stop is in the middle of the storm. If you’re going through a storm, don’t stop, keep going to get to the other side of it, you know?

Sam Demma
And it sounds like that’s been a common theme throughout your life. I’m curious, when you think of other caring adults who’ve had a big impact on you, it sounds like your mom has been foundational. Who else has had a big impact and what specifically did they do for you?

Callie Sue
Right now I’m in an early childhood class at Moravian High School. I’m going to get my CDA and her name is Miss Phillips and I have known Miss Phillips since I was a baby freshman and I met her when I ran for state officer as well and I’d become her student. That’s where I bug her and she’s annoyed at me because I went to her so much now but um before I ran for state president I called her bawling my eyes out crying because I didn’t think I could do it I didn’t have the support really from the people that I wanted to have support from and I was told that I can’t do it and I’m gonna fail and I can’t juggle at all I said no no no okay so I called myself I was at Hobby Lobby doing something and I called her. I called her crying and I said, tell me I can do it. Tell me that I’m not gonna fail. I need someone to tell me that I’m not crazy. And she’s like, why are you so nervous? Because I’m just doubting what people told me and I’m doubting that I can’t do it. Because I just can’t, I want to be a state president. I cannot, that’s crazy to me. And she just listened to me and she told me that it was okay to cry and it’s okay to think about it if I chose to not run for state president, but She just listened to me. I guess was the answer to that question and she never told me like yep, you’re crazy Yep, you’re gonna fail She said you may fail and that’s okay, but it’s okay to fail. It’s okay to have a day where you are Off for your late on a deadline. It’s okay, but you can do it. And I left Hobby Lobby and sent my application in and then I went to the office and got picked for state president and here I am.

Sam Demma
One of my favorite quotes from Denzel Washington, Matthew McConaughey, there’s a few people who have said it, is that failure is the feedback you need to get closer to the goal you’re trying to achieve. And if you look at it from that perspective, it’s not a failure, it’s a stepping stone in the right direction. And without any failure, it’s unlikely you’ve ever tried. If you’re not trying, you’re not failing. If you’re trying, at some point, you’re gonna have feedback. I think it’s so important that we all keep that in mind. This advisor, Ms. Phillips, does she know how much of an impact she’s made on you?

Callie Sue
She does. I probably, I don’t tell her it enough, but I see her every other day when I’m in class and I always say I love you and she said I love you too, Callie Sue, because that to me shows that she knows just how much effect that the fact that I’ve made on her and she’s made on me. She doesn’t know a time that um some of her students are running for state officer actually this year and she goes I told them I want them I want them to beat you. They need to look up to you, Kaisu. I’m like no no no, that’s a good idea. Like like they’re gonna be like the next Kaisu like reaching for the sky like there’s no limit because that’s what you do and I’m like oh thank you. So she knows I’m gonna give her something for family year because I adore her and she never ever gives up on anybody and that’s that’s really how I love her kids too, she’s a good kid either. That’s what she’s like is a teacher for her, is what she’s offered and so she never gets, she has all these ideas of what it means to be a teacher and I just love that she never gives up on us as like an adult, a young adult or a preschooler that’s having a behavior problem.

Sam Demma
What I’m taking from this interview, especially from the perspective of an educator, is that sometimes the people in your classroom that are being impacted by your words and actions, your students, will tell you. Sometimes they might not, you know. You said, you know, maybe you don’t tell her as much as you should. And there’s some educators listening who don’t maybe all the time hear how much of an impact they’re having on their students, but it doesn’t mean the impact’s not there. I’m also taking away this idea of never giving up in all aspects of life, because the challenge that shows up, you don’t wanna give it power over you. You don’t wanna allow it to, you don’t want it to allow, you don’t wanna allow it to change the way you choose to proceed. I’m taking this idea away of shooting from the stars and recognizing that things may be difficult in the moment, but don’t stop then. You know, get through the other side of it.

Sam Demma
Take it day by day. Control what you can control. Is there anything else you’d want to say to any student or educator listening? This has been such a lovely conversation.

Callie Sue
You will get there. You may have some dream, make it your reality. My dream is to be a teacher one day and I just got enrolled in college to be a teacher. So never ever give up for the stars like you said and If you cry, that’s okay. It’s okay to cry for five minutes, but keep going and don’t ever give up.

Sam Demma
Cali Sue, thank you so much for taking the time to come on the podcast here today.

Callie Sue
Of course.

Sam Demma
I’ll see you in Boise.

Callie Sue
Oh my gosh, yes I will, bye.

Join the Educator Network & Connect with Callie Sue Costello

The High Performing Educator Podcast was brought to life during the outbreak of COVID-19 to provide you with inspirational stories and practical advice from your colleagues in education.  By tuning in, you will hear the stories and ideas of the world’s brightest and most ambitious educators.  You can expect interviews with Principals, Teachers, Guidance Counsellors, National Student Association, Directors and anybody that works with youth. You can find and listen to all the episodes for free here.

Christine Preece – Manager of Mental Health Services & Mental Health Lead at the St. Clair Catholic District School Board

Christine Preece - Manager of Mental Health Services & Mental Health Lead at the St. Clair Catholic District School Board
About Christine Preece

Christine Preece has over 30 years of experience working in child and youth holistic health. Presently she is the Mental Health and Wellbeing Lead and Manager for Student Mental Health Services for the St. Clair Catholic District School Board supporting a system-wide approach to adopting evidence-based mental health strategies through a tiered approach.

Previously Christine worked in public health as a Manager of School Health and a Health Promoter at Middlesex-London and Lambton Public Health Units. In all these roles she has facilitated and guided many disciplines to work together to better the lives of others in our schools and communities.

She firmly believes that youth can move mountains when given the proper learning conditions and opportunities to make change for the better, regardless of their personal situations. She believes that schools need to safe spaces of belonging for every student and staff member. 

Connect with Christine Preece: Email | Linkedin

Listen Now

Listen to the episode now on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or on your favourite podcast platform.

Resources Mentioned

St. Clair Catholic District School Board

Middlesex-London Public Unit

Lambton Public Health Units

The Transcript

**Please note that all of our transcriptions come from rev.com and are 80% accurate. We’re grateful for the robots that make this possible and realize that it’s not a perfect process.

Sam Demma
Welcome back to another episode of the High Performing Educator Podcast. This is your host, Sam Demma, and today we are joined by Christine Preece. Christine brings over 30 years of experience in child and youth holistic health to her role as the Mental Health and Wellbeing Lead and Manager for Student Mental Health Services at the St. Clair Catholic District School Board. A registered Ontario social worker with dual master’s degrees in health science and as a certified health education specialist, she implements evidence-based mental health strategies through a tiered approach. Her career spanning public health management and school health promotion reflects her core belief that schools must be safe spaces of belonging for all students and staff. While her extensive volunteer work with organizations from Water Polo Canada to the Ministry of Education Ontario Wellbeing Advisory Committee, demonstrates her commitment to giving back to the community.

Sam Demma
Christine, thank you so much for taking the time to come on the podcast today.

Christine Preece
Thank you for having me.

Sam Demma
Please tell us a little bit about what got you into the work that you do today with young people. Oh, wow, that’s a big, heavy question.

Christine Preece
You know, it just kind of, my journey has been very interesting, Sam, because I started out in recreation. And when I was in recreation, I was a rec director before these years that you talked about. I learned the importance of youth voice and youth engagement and how when you actually listen and hear the words of youth and their ideas, they can actually make such a difference in the lives of other people, but also themselves. So that kind of brought me in over to public health where we were doing a lot of work with children and youth because, you know, we have a really big role to play as adults in their lives and was looking at how we can really make a difference related to that. And I started off in public health working in the area of physical activity. And that is a passion of mine. And just looking at some of the programs that were done way back then, which is still running today in our school board, which was Playground Leadership Program, and it was done for youth by youth. And so, you know, you really can make a difference. And I was involved years ago with the Canadian Intramural Recreation Association. And we had a whole student leadership program within that where we actually trained students to run and organize intramurals in schools. That was years ago, obviously.

Christine Preece
And just the power of that and seeing how youth can really make a difference. So I really am passionate about children and youth holistic health and how we can help them make a difference in their own lives. That’s kind of a short story.

Sam Demma
You mentioned the power of actually listening and hearing the words of young people. It’s such a difficult skill sometimes because so many people listen just to respond or share their thoughts. But when you really truly listen, you uncover things that you probably wouldn’t have heard otherwise. Where does that skill come from and how do we build more of that? Because I think it’s needed in society.

Christine Preece
I don’t know where the skill comes from. I think it’s really having an understanding understanding of, you know, where children and youth are at, and being able to hear them out about their needs and wants. Often, when we’re adults, and I did this as a mother, is we think we know what’s best for them. But do we really if we aren’t listening to them and hearing what their needs are?

Christine Preece
And it’s not about giving in to them and not making them entitled. It’s about giving them the power to self-advocate, to do the best they can for themselves, and to have the tools in their toolbox to become a successful adult. And that’s where I was way back when, even around when we were in recreation, right? right, because I saw the power of youth and how they could make a difference, you know, whether it be organizing recreation activities for their peers or becoming a leader at a camp or wanting to inspire others through some advocacy initiatives. I just really believe in the power of youth and having that skill of listening and understanding where they’re at is so crucial in helping human growth and development really for children and youth, right? And it should be as even when they’re little, right? It doesn’t mean they get everything, but you have to hear what they want and hear what they’re saying.

Sam Demma
Do you believe that schools need to be safe spaces? And I couldn’t agree more. I think that if a school is not a safe space of belonging for every student and staff member, whether we intend to listen or not, a student or another human being might not be comfortable actually sharing their genuine thoughts if they don’t feel it’s a safe space of belonging. How do we cultivate those safe spaces of belonging for students and staff and school buildings?

Christine Preece
You know, it’s about setting a culture, a positive school culture where people feel safe and that takes a lot of effort. We know that when we have our school climate surveys, students want a safe place they can go to with a caring adult that they can talk to who’s going to listen to them. We don’t always have to have the answer, Sam. We just need to listen. And if they want help, then we can support them and advise them about where to get help. But it’s really not rocket science. I remember working years ago on a global youth health promotion program with a few agencies, and Dr. Bruce Ferguson was on there, but also Robert Blum from John Hopkins, and he said that an adult listening in a school to a youth for 10 minutes and not judging, not providing their thoughts or giving advice or can really change the trajectory of a youth’s life. So hearing them out, listening to them and being that caring person and inspiring them to help themselves through very creative ways, right? Because some kids have, or some students, I shouldn’t say kids, some students just don’t have those skills and we haven’t developed those skills. I’m a real firm believer that they just aren’t born with them, they develop them. We teach them that. So we are responsible for their skill development in schools. And I think that is one of those skill developments, right? And you know, with the whole stigma piece and all that kind of stuff that goes on around mental health, because I know this podcast is about mental health, we really can play an important role to break down those barriers and to help our children and youth to reach out for support. Because we know that children and youth won’t reach out for support because one, they don’t know how to, and number two, they don’t know who to go to. And so we need to be able to support that.

Sam Demma
Speaking on the mental health challenges faced by young people today, you’re very close with those challenges within your specific school board and many other initiatives that you’ve been a part of in the past. What do you think are some of the challenges, main challenges facing young people today?

Christine Preece
Oh boy. You know, since the pandemic, it’s growing. I’m not saying it wasn’t there before, but I’ve seen a significant change since the pandemic. Anxiety is really number one. And when we don’t teach them the skills of how to deal with their anxiety, and that is skill development, by the way, if we don’t teach them those skills, it can lead into depression in older years. And so we see a lot of anxiety and the world events that are happening now, and that’s spread through social media.

Christine Preece
So there’s been some really big shifts in children’s mental health, one being the iPhone and social media. We cannot deny that. There’s good things to it. I’m not saying it’s all bad, because it’s never going to go away. But we, I think, as a society, and education particularly, we have a role to play in teaching them how to use it in a positive way, to be aware of the impact that it can have on your mental health. And when children are young and people are saying stuff over social media and then it comes into school, which we see a lot, that hurts them. And they don’t have the skills to learn on how to develop that, do you know what I mean? Or how to support that or how to help themselves with that. Their brains aren’t fully formed. I mean, they’re not fully formed until they’re 25 or 30. Yet we’re giving kids these tools when we haven’t given them the tools of how to use that particular resource. I kind of went all over the map, didn’t I? Sorry.

Sam Demma
You did answer that. And I’m curious, as a follow-up, when you think of the resources or tools that have been most helpful within your specific school board. Are there anything that comes to mind that you think this has been helpful, that this has helped many students that another educator listening might look into or think about striving to implement within their own organization or school?

Christine Preece
So we have taken a real comprehensive approach, Sam, to social emotional learning. And it started about 2017. We brought in the MindUp program, which is from Goldie Hawn Foundation. Goldie created this program with Kim Schonert-Reichel, who was out of University of British Columbia, and Dr. Molly Lawler, and they developed this program because Goldie saw after 911, the anxiety levels go up for children and youth. And she had a real concern around that. So MindUp teaches children about their brains and how their brain, they can use their brains to become empowered to make decisions, but also understand how it impacts their thoughts, feelings, and actions.

Christine Preece
And we teach that to kids. And so we started that program and we see, we evaluate it every year, Sam, and we see that those skills are going up. And if you ask our attendance counselors, where students are attending for various reasons, mostly mental health, they see that those, they bring them back to that. Remember when you learned this skill when you were in elementary school. But we’ve taken on a whole comprehensive approach to that around helping kids develop these skills so they can help themselves when they’re older. It’s not perfect, but we are seeing some great outcomes from that because we’re teaching kids, number one, most important skill of social emotional learning is self-awareness.

Christine Preece
If you don’t have self-awareness and understand who you are, what your values and beliefs are, how you impact others, you will never be able to self-regulate, develop healthy relationships, make wise decisions. It all comes together.

Christine Preece
So we’ve really broken it down and taken a really comprehensive approach to social emotional learning. And we’ve got our whole team of social workers, and child and youth workers, but then we also have educators that are supporting the educators in the classroom. And it doesn’t take a lot of work, Sam, to implement social emotional learning, you can do it two minutes before lunch, two minutes after lunch, like it really, but if you do it consistently every day all week for the year, you’re going to see a huge change in your students. We did a pilot program two years ago, and we saw a huge change in our students.

Christine Preece
We actually focused in on certain schools and classes. We actually had a teacher who wanted to quit, and she said, this changed my life. This changed the way I taught. So we’ve made some really good in ways in, but we still have, we have places to go to, right? It’s not perfect. But we have a real passion in our board to move this forward because we know it works. We’ve seen it work. We’ve seen it work in small scale. Now we just need to have it larger scale, like everybody doing it in every school and every board. And you can do them school-wide events, you can do it classroom events, and we’re doing it as well individually through our work with social workers and child and youth workers and small groups. So it’s been interesting. It’s been an interesting ride, that’s for sure.

Sam Demma
It sounds like it’s been impactful with the students that have been exposed to it so far. So I hope the reach continues to expand and the uptake from schools and teachers continues to expand. It’s a tough challenge that we’re all facing, especially in the education space right now. And I think every action and every attempt to help matters.

Christine Preece
Yeah, have you watched the movie, American Tragedy? And it’s the story of the two boys in Columbine. And at the end of the show, the mom of one of those boys said, this should be taught in every school. And they’re actually, she’s promoting social emotional learning, starting in kindergarten, going all the way up. She feels that if every child had these skills, then we would lessen many things, right? Situations, right? So yeah, that really hit home for me because I’m really passionate about it. And so is our board. So is our director, our superintendents, everybody in our school board.

Sam Demma
Thank you for sharing that. Are there any other resources or things you’ve come across that have shifted the way that you think about supporting young people that an educator listening might want to also watch or look into?

Christine Preece
Yes, thanks for asking that. Well, School Mental Health Ontario is an excellent resource. It has resources in French and English, and it is led by Dr. Kathy Short and Dr. Teresa Kennedy, and every school board has one of me. And we have a mandate to actually do youth engagement, parent engagement, mental health literacy, mental health supports. And School Mental Health Ontario has been a great resource. And everything we do there, Sam, is evidence-based. It’s not like we go on Dr. Google and pull this strategy because we know that some of the work that was done pre-School Mental Health Ontario was actually doing harm to kids. We were bringing in programs that weren’t based on evidence, weren’t based, and all good intentions, don’t get me wrong, but all good intentions, but actually they were harming children when they left, right? So that’s why Dr. Bruce Ferguson and Kathy Short actually went to the ministry and said, you need this in your mind in Canada. We’re actually one of a kind, I think, around the world. And it’s been instrumental in my learning, because they have professional training. Constantly, they’re putting out resources constantly and a teacher, they have a lot of resources, which I would call add, water, stir, you open it up, you do the you do the activity, and there you there you go, you’re done, right. So it’s a really, really good resource that people can Google online if they wanted to or go into online.

Sam Demma
You said earlier in the interview that if an adult listens to a young person for 10 minutes, based on research that you cited, that it could really change the trajectory of their life. And I’m curious to know, when you were going through school, or even in the start of your professional career, or even now, was there an adult or caring mentor that listened to you and had a big impact on you?

Sam Demma
And if so, who was that person or who were a few of those people and what did they do for you?

Christine Preece
Well, that’s a really good question. I’ve had a few, yes, I’ve had a few. I had my former director of public health, Diane Buick, was so instrumental in my work in public health in Middlesex, London. She taught me so much about having quality standards for work and implementing those quality standards to the best of your ability, but also how it impacts others.

Christine Preece
It’s not about me and my, what I think is best and what I want. And sometimes I see that we can get caught up in that in society. well, I need this, I need that. But what are the, what do those people that you service need? And how are you helping them? So for in public health, she was always putting what we call the client at the center, right? The client was at the center. Now over in school health, and I did work primarily in school health in public health, but now over here in our school board is the student at the center. And we have to bring people back to that because it’s a tough job in education, right? It’s a tough job. And I’m not gonna say that it’s easy to do. It’s a tough job. And there’s a lot of things that are coming into education that weren’t here before. And as I would give an example, Sam, is we are a microcosm of larger society, right? So you see larger society and what’s happening in larger society in the world, we’re a microcosm of that because we have our own community.

Christine Preece
And you see those things coming into our schools and it’s how do we help support and build the best environment possible for the people that are in that system? And that doesn’t just mean students, but it also means staff. They need to be well in order to teach students. The support staff, the EAs, the ECEs, the custodians, the secretaries, the bus drivers, the yard supervisors, they all need to be supported and know how to support students as well through their own actions. So it’s a big role. And education is definitely, it’s changed since COVID. That’s all I can say.

Sam Demma
Yeah, you echoed similar thoughts and sentiments that a lot of people I’ve talked to regarding that on the show or in private conversations. One thing I’ve noticed about your career journey from what I know about you and what I’ve read and others who have spoken on the show before is that volunteer work has had a positive impact on their lives. Tell me a little bit more about your volunteer work and do you think there’s a connection between volunteering and even feeling good?

Christine Preece
Oh, yes. Definitely. Bruce Ferguson did. I don’t know if you know who Dr. Bruce Ferguson is. He was also a person who changed my life, but he wrote the early leaders report. And in his data, in his report, he found that students that volunteer actually have better mental health, right?

Christine Preece
And so if you’re giving, and we know that around mental health, it’s not about receiving, it’s about being able to give, it’s about gratitude, it’s about forgiving, those kinds of things. And volunteering has taught me a lot of that, is that I don’t need to be paid all the time to do this work. I have volunteered for a long, long time. I first started, as I mentioned, on the Canadian Intramural Recreation Association, and then went to the Ontario one. Then I was a chair of the Ontario Healthy Schools Coalition. And I’m still continuing to volunteer.

Christine Preece
I’m locally volunteering and then on Water Polo Canada. I really believe, one, for me, it helps you grow and become much more open-minded and have a growth mindset as opposed to a closed mindset. But it also helps you realize that there’s so many different kinds of people out there. And what I love is I meet many different people that aren’t always from the same field or background, right? You know you meet people that are Financial advisors or you meet people that are lawyers or you meet and they’re all very different and they think very differently But when you come together for common goal, you can make a collective impact and through volunteering and so it’s made a huge huge, huge difference in my life. I would never, ever say I’ve regretted one minute of it.

Sam Demma
The Early Leavers Report, is it something that is accessible or do you have to purchase it to read it?

Christine Preece
I don’t think so. If you Google it, Dr. Bruce Ferguson, he wrote about the Early Leavers Report and why students left school early. He talked about having part-time jobs, volunteering, I forget the other things. There were some key areas in his report that actually inspired the development of School Mental Health Ontario as well. And Bruce, I mean, I think he’s retired now, living somewhere in Ottawa, has been really an angel in my eyes to children and youth and what they need in their school system. Because he’s shown a lot of research that students who may be involved in, are involved in youth engagement are less likely to think about self-harm and suicide, those kinds of things. So he’s really taught me a lot about children, youth, and mental health and what they need, those positive, positive protective factors and how we can develop and support those through education. I mean, education, as you can see, Sam, plays a very important role in the knowledge and development of children. And right now, what we’re seeing is people have a lot of information through social media and internet and all that, but do they have the knowledge? Do they have the factual knowledge, right? And I think that’s really key, and that’s a really important part of education to give children those skills and youth.

Sam Demma
I had a teacher who fundamentally changed the course of my life, who listened to me at a time where I was struggling, and almost no one at school really knew about it except for this individual. And if it wasn’t for him, I wouldn’t be the person I am today.

Sam Demma
And I can’t thank him enough. I fortunately stay in touch with him and his wife and have lunch with him in Bowmanville on their porch at least once a year. And it’s almost always the highlight. And we have such a lovely conversation. And one of the things he taught us is to lose yourself in the service of others.

Sam Demma
And I didn’t realize that maybe there was something going on in my brain at the time, but I always felt so good doing it. And I believe it’s one of the ways I refound myself after my own adversity when I was a senior in high school. And so I’m looking forward to reading this report. I appreciate you sharing it. Yeah, he’s a ruthless.

Sam Demma
Yeah, I mean, not was. He’s still alive, but he really was a trendsetter for sure around this area and particularly in education because he worked out of Sick Kids Hospital, right? He was a child psychiatrist, right? So he saw a lot when he, people that came through his door. So.

Christine Preece
I got you.

Sam Demma
This has been such a stimulating and informative conversation. Thank you so much for taking the time, Christine. If there’s someone listening to this that wants to connect with you or ask a question, what would be the best way for them to get in touch with you?

Christine Preece
They could email me at my email. It’s been a pleasure. I thought you’re gonna ask me about Hawaiian pizzas because you had that question on you. And it was I was gonna say well Sam. Did you know they were invented in Chatham? They were. Which is you know where my school board is.

Sam Demma
I have been to Chatham. I want to say someone told me because I strongly dislike them I may have had selective memory. I don’t like them.

Christine Preece
I love, I love Hawaiian pizzas.

Sam Demma
That’s awesome.

Christine Preece
That’s so funny. That’s so funny. I was waiting for the question.

Sam Demma
That’s awesome.

Join the Educator Network & Connect with Christine Preece

The High Performing Educator Podcast was brought to life during the outbreak of COVID-19 to provide you with inspirational stories and practical advice from your colleagues in education.  By tuning in, you will hear the stories and ideas of the world’s brightest and most ambitious educators.  You can expect interviews with Principals, Teachers, Guidance Counsellors, National Student Association, Directors and anybody that works with youth. You can find and listen to all the episodes for free here.

Janis Volker – School Counselor at Chetek-Weyerhaeuser High School/Middle School

Janis Volker - School Counselor at Chetek-Weyerhaeuser High School/Middle School
About Janis Volker

Janis Volker is the School Counselor for grades 6-12 at Chetek-Weyerhaeuser High School/Middle School. She started in the district in 2004 as the elementary counselor and spent 4 years at Roselawn Elementary School. In September 2008 she transitioned to the high school/middle school, making this her 21st year in the district. Prior to entering education she was a program coordinator for Barron County Restorative Justice for two years. That experience working with law enforcement, schools, and community members was a wonderful foundation to school counseling. She felt honored to be present with victims and offenders that worked to heal the harm that was caused.

In the high school/middle school she has many roles that support students, including the coordination of the Early College Credit, Advanced Placement, Start College Now, and Youth Apprenticeship programs. On a daily basis she is assisting students with their academic and career planning, college applications, scholarships, and providing individual counseling and SEL classroom instruction. She coordinates the ASVAB Career Exploration program and the PSAT/NMSQT, as well as assisting with the proctoring of state assessments. Behind every successful program and initiative at school is a team that works together to get everything accomplished. No one does it alone.

Advising students on their next steps and encouraging them to explore dual credit courses to earn college credits in high school are some of her favorite experiences working with students. Seeing the growth, both academically and socially, from year to year and celebrating them as they cross the stage at graduation; are some of the most rewarding days. She is proud to work in her district that is so supportive of students, families, and staff. 

Connect with Janis Volker: Email | Instagram | Linkedin | Twitter

Listen Now

Listen to the episode now on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or on your favourite podcast platform.

Resources Mentioned

Chetek-Weyerhaeuser High School/Middle School

Roselawn Elementary School

Barron County Restorative Justice

The Transcript

**Please note that all of our transcriptions come from rev.com and are 80% accurate. We’re grateful for the robots that make this possible and realize that it’s not a perfect process.

Sam Demma
Welcome back to another episode of the High Performing Educator Podcast. This is your host, Sam, and today we are joined by Janis Volker. Janis has been in education and counseling for a total of 21 years. She has worked in the middle school age bracket, the high school age bracket, and the elementary school age bracket. Janis and I will cross paths here shortly in her school district.

Sam Demma
And I’m so grateful that before I had the opportunity to chat with her. Janis, welcome to the show and thank you so much for being here.

Janis Volker
Good morning, thank you for having me.

Sam Demma
Tell us a little bit about what got you into education and wanting to support young people.

Janis Volker
Well, way back in high school, I thought I was going to be a college professor and I just had that in my mind, I’m going to be a teacher. And then I started off in college and, you know, I had a rough start. And I was once told, I don’t think your grades are going to get you into that school of education. And that really hit me hard.

Janis Volker
And it was a little bit of a wake-up call that this is serious. This is like, this is all counting, you know, I need to really figure myself out. And then I found my path down psychology and loved psychology. And that was my first degree. And then in my senior year, I discovered, oh, wow, this whole world of if I continue and get a master’s degree, I could actually work with students and help them in a way that I wanted to. And that’s how I discovered school counseling.

Sam Demma
What about psychology intrigued you?

Janis Volker
Well, I have to be honest. I think it was a lot of figuring out myself and my family and the dynamics and then also just being able to help other people. I found it fascinating, all the different theories, you know, psychotherapy. And I knew I didn’t necessarily want to do that, but I just wanted to be around students. But I didn’t think I wanted to teach.

Janis Volker
And so that’s how I found my way into the education system.

Sam Demma
It sounds like you married the best of both worlds. Work with young people, fulfill that love for psychology and supporting them with it. Tell me a little bit about after the psychology education, what happened next?

Janis Volker
I actually first started in school psychology and after just one term of it, had to do a shadowing experience with a school counselor. She was at the elementary level and I just loved her job. I thought it was, wow, look at her. She’s sitting on the floor with these stuffed animals talking to kids about their feelings. It was like, this is so much fun. And so I did that switch to school counseling right away in the program.

Janis Volker
But I think it was, you know, just, I didn’t realize when I first started college in psychology that I couldn’t probably get in front of people and help people unless I continued my education. Like the opportunities were more limited. So that’s why I decided to continue on. And I kept going. Took me a while because in that time I also was married and then became a mom myself and so didn’t take a direct path through college.

Sam Demma
Did you have a counselor in middle, high, or college that really supported you through your own transition or challenges?

Janis Volker
I definitely had people that supported me but I wasn’t one that would go and seek out help myself. So I didn’t really have that experience other than like helping with scheduling and talking about college visits and things like that. But it was a teacher of mine, a professor in my undergraduate that taught us all these career opportunities. And I think without him, I don’t know that I would have kept going. I was really thankful that he shared that with us before we graduated.

Sam Demma
You and I are very alike in the sense that we sometimes don’t go out of our way to seek the help we might need in the moment we need it. And I would argue that’s most people because of a stigma and a fear. And it may even be most students in a school building. Are there any signs or signals of distress that you look for in students to recognize if someone might need some help but are a little bit afraid to ask for it?

Janis Volker
Yes, I think there’s lots of clues. When you, as an observer, just see, you know, when someone’s going down the hallway, are they talking with other people? Are they really by themselves? You know, at lunchtime, are they with a group of friends? Are they off in a corner on their phone? Are things going on in their life that you know about, but they’re not seeking help? Have they had death in their family, repeated other kind of challenges? And then grades are a big clue.

Janis Volker
All of a sudden you see a dip, or maybe you’re not going out for the sport you always used to get involved in and things like that. So I think as long as it doesn’t have to be the school counselor that reaches out, just any adult in the building that makes connections with students. Sometimes that’s the favorite person, the person who’s doing attendance in the main office. That’s their person that they connect with, that just says good morning every single day.

Sam Demma
I had a guidance counselor who supported me in all my post-secondary applications for college and university in the United States. We were trying to figure out the eligibility requirements as a Canadian who wanted to do a Division I scholarship in the United States. And she became someone that I felt very comfortable sharing things with over my high school experience. I know that oftentimes the administrator’s office or the guidance counselor’s office can be a little bit intimidating for a young person when they walk in the door. What are some ways you help calm people down and just let them know that they’re here to be supported and it is a safe space?

Janis Volker
You know, I think I have a friendly face, right? I like to smile, I like to laugh, but my first three words are usually, when a student walks in, “You’re not in trouble.”

Janis Volker
There’s this fear of, I got called to the office and I say, you know, we do a lot of things in here. We help with your schedule. You know, we talk about college. We talk about youth apprenticeships. Like, I don’t just call people in to say there’s a problem or there’s, you know, a concern. So just trying to, you know, get to know students in different ways in the building. So to make that connection that, you know, you have to do those conversations sometimes

Janis Volker
about dress code, and then you get that reputation. She’s going to tell you you’re wearing the wrong kind of shirt today.

Sam Demma
I just remember situations when I was in school and I got called down from class at the office and I was like, oh man, this is gonna be bad. I think that’s a really good way to start the conversation just to let a student know, you’re not in trouble, we’re here to help.

Sam Demma
How do you think you build a connection with a student to the point where they really look forward to chatting with you and trust the advice or trust the guidance?

Janis Volker
I always, I mean, I’m more of an introvert to be honest. So I’m not that person that’s out there, like the super fun cheerleader, but I’m more the quiet, always supportive, always there to listen and really ask you questions about, you know, your day or your struggles. Or I like to remember certain things about a student that I can bring up the next year. You know, like I remember this when we were in seventh grade

Janis Volker
and you were talking about the careers and you said you wanted to go into welding. You know, and then I see them pursue that as they get older in high school and comment on that, you know, so that they know I’m listening, I’m aware. You know, I wish I could do that more

Janis Volker
with every single person in the building, but I think that’s really, students really, really want to be cared for. That’s, I mean, don’t we all, but it’s really important.

Sam Demma
You must have a long list of notes from all these conversations.

Janis Volker
I do, yeah, somewhere in my head, but. And at this age, sometimes they lose us, but yeah. I think the intent to remember

Sam Demma
is already a phenomenal start. It forces us to, creates a forcing function for us to pay more attention when people are talking to us, as opposed to thinking about the past or the future, which is so easy these days. Question for you, do you, or can you share a story

Sam Demma
of a student who walked into the office that was very confused, very uncertain, very overwhelmed, and after a couple years and some guidance, you just were so proud of the young person they became. And you don’t have to share their name. And the reason I ask is because

Sam Demma
there’s an educator listening to this that may be a little bit overwhelmed, or even a guidance counselor that may be a little overwhelmed, and they may have lost sight as to why they do what they do and I think that these little stories of

Sam Demma
transformation are really at the heart of why most people get into the work

Janis Volker
They do with young people. So sure. So someone comes to mind a young man who really dealt with mental health and had a lot of family struggles a lot of there was a lot of death in the family. Just you know, there was poverty. There was a little bit of everything. And he missed a lot of school.

Janis Volker
And he would have moments where he just needed to take a break from class or he wouldn’t come to school just feeling overwhelmed. And I never felt like I was making a difference because when you’re listening, I always feel in their mind, they must be thinking, I still feel just as anxious or I still have this depression like things are, I mean, things progress much slower than we all want them to.

Janis Volker
But then his senior year, he, I got a letter from him. It was a really cool activity where the seniors get to pass out letters of people that they want to thank before they graduate. And when I received that, it was one of the most meaningful things, you know, in my career. Like, wow, because I’m not I’m not in front of students as much and more in this office. I try to be out and about, but I mean, teachers, I feel, get to build those connections on a deeper level with every student than maybe I do. And it just it meant the world to me that that I was able to help and that he recognized that.

Sam Demma
I just think about all the students who have walked in your office whose lives you’ve had an impact on but who haven’t written a letter. That’s what we hope. Yeah, that’s the… It’s so funny, I did a performance last week for a high school and the audio system was not great and they swapped out four mics in the first 30 minutes.

Sam Demma
I feel like the first 30 minutes, people didn’t even hear what I was saying. And we finished the performance and we had a good number of students still rush on over and ask questions and thank us and take photos. And in my heart, I was like,

Sam Demma
I could have reached more, you know, like this was a waste, we didn’t make a difference. And this one, like the setup was not great. And then, you know, we got home and the cameraman who was with me, Matias, was like, dude, there was a couple of students that I saw who were absolutely glued and locked in despite the audio challenges. I promise you it reached some young minds. And that’s all that matters, even if they hadn’t written that letter or written that message.

Sam Demma
And just this morning, it’s been a week, I got a message from a student that was like, hey, you came to the school last week and I just wanna let you know, our friends really enjoyed it and I was like, if this ain’t the universe, just like let me know.

Sam Demma
You know, like, stop being so critical and stop judging how other people are receiving it. Just show up and do your best. Like I think that’s something that I’ve tried to carry forward with me in everything that I do. Have you ever had any moments in your work where you questioned if like, oh, is this the right work for me to be doing? And if so, how did you get through some of those

Janis Volker
Moments? Yeah, I mean, definitely the mental health piece takes a toll. And I don’t know that I’m the best at self-care. I, you know, I can tell people like, oh, you need to do this and you should be exercising and a great diet. Make sure you get out in nature. And I’ve improved in that area by developing my own hobby of photography. That became something that I felt like just relieved stress like nothing else to just be outside and at sunrise. That’s all I need really to feel better. So I think just trying to be self-aware of you need, if I ever hit that point where I’m burned out, I need to release myself because you’re not helping anyone once you reach burnout. So I guess that’s something I always think about because I have thought about, well, what would I do if I did something else?

Janis Volker
And I still think it’d be helping people. It would just be in a different scene, maybe healthcare or something, but that’s always what I want to do.

Sam Demma
Was photography something you discovered earlier in your childhood or when did that come about for you?

Janis Volker
Just being in the house and I just started observing that stay at home order we had for a few months that first spring. And so I was working from home and at the dining table and I was surrounded by windows and I thought, all these birds come to my house during the day when I’m not here. Like, wow, this is really cool. And then I just, it kind of created this, you know, interest of mine, curiosity.

Janis Volker
And then I started taking pictures and then I kept getting different cameras and then I was hooked. And then I was taking pictures every single day. So it’s, yeah.

Sam Demma
A pipe recently burst in our basement bathroom and my dad had his friend, a subcontractor named Jimmy come over to fix it. And while we were in the bathroom, I was handing him tools, he was fixing it. He started telling me about the books he had bought that morning. Did you know that you can go to a thrift store and buy a book for 50 cents? I was like, yeah, I know, I know, because I used to buy a bunch from Value Village, and he’s like, Sam, I bought seven books for $3.

Sam Demma
I was like, this is awesome, man, I’m so glad you’re excited about books. And he told me about this one book called Who Moved My Cheese by a guy named Kenneth Blanchard and he’s a business slash management author and he gave me a very high level overview of the book that there’s these two mice and one is always waiting for the cheese and the other one is always like searching for it. And that to remain curious and to keep searching for things in life is such a beautiful way to live. And you said one of the things you realized from the book is that the mice that would wait for it just live the same life over and over again. Like everything about their day was exactly the same. Whereas the mouse that was searching or curious would take different paths and try, find the cheese down different roads.

Sam Demma
And isn’t that interesting? Like COVID changed up your routine. And instead of going to work, you stayed home. As a result, you saw these beautiful birds out the window and boom, a new passion for photography came to life. I think that remaining curious is so important, not only for students, but everybody. Trying the new restaurant, taking the different route home, looking out the window and pausing for a moment. I developed some passions during the pandemic. I’m curious, like, has photography remained a part of your life?

Sam Demma
Oh, yes. Do you take a lot of pictures? Like, tell me a little bit about it

Janis Volker
Yes, I do. And the last year I haven’t as much, which is funny, that the more I tried to get into selling it, the less I actually did it. And so that was a really good lesson of, wait, you need to keep that focus on your enjoyment, like what you, what relieves the stress, which is the whole point, you know, to have something so fun. And that what I like about photography is there’s, there’s no two sunrises that are identical, like everything.

Janis Volker
There’s just no two pictures are going to look the same, just because of all the different components. And that’s the same way I love my job here is you can never predict a day in the school. And it just keeps it kind of fresh, even though it’s the same office every day, it’s very different from day to day.

Sam Demma
In your 21 year career in education, have there been any colleagues or teachers who have walked into your office and said, hey Janis, can I ask you a question? Looking for guidance.

Janis Volker
Yeah, definitely. Especially, you know, with the loss. And loss by suicide is one that when we’re growing up, we don’t really, you know, it’s something that’s not really talked about. And people don’t feel comfortable asking someone when they’ve experienced that loss. You know, people tend to avoid the really uncomfortable conversations. So when someone’s experiencing that in their family for the first time, no matter the age, you need help. You need support. So I know definitely those are times too. And just we’re struggling with, you know, just having a rough time either in school or out of school just needing someone to listen?

Sam Demma
I ask because when we were all little babies, we very openly accepted failure and recognized it as a necessary thing. How many times will a baby fail before it learns to walk? As many times as it takes and we’ll cheer them on all the way.

Sam Demma
But then at a certain age, a child starts to believe that it’s not acceptable to make a mistake. It’s not acceptable to fail. And then I think as that child grows up and becomes an adult, there’s another unconscious belief that we start to carry that we can handle things on our own because we’re now big people.

Sam Demma
And it’s like, it’s okay to reach out for support and ask for help. And I just hope that if there’s an educator listening to this right now who’s struggling, that this little portion of this conversation encourages them to reach out and ask for it.

Sam Demma
So I appreciate you sharing that.

Janis Volker
Yes, thank you.

Sam Demma
If there is an educator listening to this or even a student and they are a little overwhelmed, what words of advice or encouragement would you offer them?

Janis Volker
I think, you know, it’s kind of, everyone says this, but chunking it out like one piece at a time, one day at a time. Let’s just focus on today. You know, what can you do today to relieve that stress? You know, can I can you get some help talking to the teacher that you need some help with that you don’t understand the assignment?

Janis Volker
Is there is there another student I can get, you know, to help you? Maybe we do need to call your mom right now and have this conversation and get this off your chest or sit down with a friend. I think just whatever you can do in this moment and not worry about fixing everything between now and three months from now. Let’s just get through today.

Sam Demma
Yeah, that’s a great way to look at it. If there is an educator listening to this and they just want to ask you a question or reach out, what would be the best way for them to get in touch or connect with you?

Janis Volker
Oh, I would say, you know, my school email, right? My school phone, hopefully those are all published on our website and that’d be great.

Sam Demma
Awesome. Jan, just keep taking photos.

Janis Volker
I Will. And you know, I wanted to tell you, I did just read your book and I think it’s fantastic. And one part that really stuck out for me was when you talked about for students, the five people that you surround yourself with. I was like, wow, that I really like how, because that is so true. We’re not saying you’re all going to make bad choices, but if the group you’re with is not doing things like you said to build you up, then they’re not, they’re not helping you get to your goal. So I appreciate you for sharing those types of tips because even though I’ve been in this business 21 years, I can always still learn and find new ways to help students.

Sam Demma
Well thank you for reading the book. You can’t get it at the thrift store for 50 cents unless someone drops it off there, so please don’t. I appreciate you taking the time to be here. I appreciate you reading the book. And I appreciate all the effort and energy you place into helping people, whether it’s teachers or students.

Sam Demma
You are making a serious difference. And I look forward to meeting you here soon.

Janis Volker
Yes, thank you. Two months, we get to see you in person here.

Sam Demma
I’m counting it down. All right, Janis, keep up the great work. And we’ll talk soon. And we’ll talk soon.

Janis Volker
Thanks, Sam.

Join the Educator Network & Connect with Janis Volker

The High Performing Educator Podcast was brought to life during the outbreak of COVID-19 to provide you with inspirational stories and practical advice from your colleagues in education.  By tuning in, you will hear the stories and ideas of the world’s brightest and most ambitious educators.  You can expect interviews with Principals, Teachers, Guidance Counsellors, National Student Association, Directors and anybody that works with youth. You can find and listen to all the episodes for free here.

Lynne Beck – Principal at Diamond Jenness Secondary School

Lynne Beck – Principal at Diamond Jenness Secondary School
About Lynne Beck

Lynne Beck fell in love with the North, its people, and the unique lifestyle it offers when she first arrived in the Northwest Territories in 1992. She initially came to the western NWT to offer short-term swimming and canoeing programs in the Tlicho & South Slave regions. After completing her Bachelor of Education at the University of Prince Edward Island, she was drawn back to the North in the spring of 1993, where she returned to Fort Resolution to establish a long-term swimming and canoeing program and stayed on as an Adult Education teacher.

Her journey in education continued when she moved to Hay River in 1994 to work with Aurora College in Adult Education. In 1998, Lynne joined Diamond Jenness Secondary School (DJSS), where she has held various roles, including Junior and Senior High Teacher, Program Support Teacher, Vice Principal, Guidance Counsellor, Academic Advisor, and ultimately Principal since 2014.

Lynne’s dedication to nurturing the next generation is deeply influenced by her mentor, Ainsley Rose, who emphasized that everything educators do should focus on maximizing student learning and that hope means “helping other people excel.” As a mother who raised her children in Hay River, Lynne sees her legacy not only in her professional roles but in the way she has shaped and influenced her family and the students that she and her dedicated staff have the honour of educating.

Lynne’s love for the North continues to shape her work, as she is committed to making a difference in the lives of students and the community she calls home.

Connect with Lynne Beck: Email | Instagram | Linkedin | Twitter

Listen Now

Listen to the episode now on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or on your favourite podcast platform.

Resources Mentioned

University of Prince Edward Island

Aurora College

Diamond Jenness Secondary School

The Transcript

**Please note that all of our transcriptions come from rev.com and are 80% accurate. We’re grateful for the robots that make this possible and realize that it’s not a perfect process.

Sam Demma
Welcome back to another episode of the High Performing Educator Podcast. This is your host, Sam. And today we are joined by someone I met six months ago, seven months ago over a Zoom call that was supposed to be 30 minutes and lasted an hour for our joint passion for education and young people and making a difference. Today’s guest is my new friend, Lynn Beck, the principal of Diamond Genesse Secondary School. Lynn, thank you so much for taking the time to be here today.

Lynne Beck
Well, thanks for having me.

Sam Demma
Do me a favor, take a moment to introduce yourself and share who you are and what got you into education. Oh, okay.

Lynne Beck
Well, this is, I actually started in recreation. I did waterfront programming back in, I don’t know, let me date myself here, I guess that would have been starting in around 1992, I guess, if I do my northern journey. Prior to that, I heard about the Canadian North. It had always been, with my water, my love of the ocean, always had been a dream of mine to be able to swim in the Atlantic, the Pacific, as well as the Arctic Ocean. I am very happy to say that I made that happen as coming up to the territories. What got me into education? I think partly by chance, definitely, and I’m very much, I did a sort of a work checklist, like what would make you happy one time, and it was like an inventory and what came out of it for me was that challenging renewal drives me. Like that’s my key motivator in my life. So when I look back or I reflect on things as I’m entering, this is my, I guess officially I started in 93 in Port Resolution, Moved to Hay River, or the Hatlodichay Territory, in the end of 1994. Started in adult education and then loved it, absolutely loved it, but didn’t want to not experience working with youth in an educational setting and not just a recreation setting. So, yeah, I feel like I’m all over the place. I can’t keep my head on one question for you.

Sam Demma
But your passion for education has kept you working in it over an extended period of time. It sounds like you found it a little bit by chance, a little bit by design. What keeps you working in education though? What’s the why behind your work?

Lynne Beck
The why behind my work, I would have to say, is an opportunity to accomplish something that’s more than simply what I do. To have an influence, it’s not even as much as an influence as it is to help support others to find their voice. I would have to say that I didn’t, I can honestly say I did not have a voice when I was in school. When I went through the school system, did not have a voice. I was certainly not the perfect student. Shout out to all of those poor people who had to educate me back in the day. I’ll not say where. But yeah, I’ve heard it said that from a parent’s perspective, that the most important thing we ever accomplish is not what we do, but what our children are able to do. kids, but for other kids. And sometimes it’s easier to bring those things out in other people’s children than it is your own. And having had a couple of my own, I now understand that. I believe that our circumstances determine where we start, but our philosophy, our support determines where we finish.

Sam Demma
And you’ve had some incredible stories of success come out of Diamond, the school community. When you think of some of the stories of student success, without sharing a name, is there any that come to mind, you can even change their name if it’s a story that’s a little personal, but I ask because a lot of people listening to this are in education because they want to support and serve and amplify young people. I think it may just remind someone why they got into that work in the first place if they hear about some of the impact. Yeah, it’s tough. Even

Lynne Beck
changing names is tough. So when I think about that… From a high level without a specific story. Yeah, from a high level. Okay, so I think one of the things that kept us speaking a little bit longer than our anticipated, you know, 20 minutes, half an hour, was probably a statement something like this. From 2022 to early 24, our community was evacuated full, slate, full on, community evacuation three times within a 15-month period. And despite that, we had students complete their high school requirements for graduation, in addition to being able to be accepted into Southern institutions and in a small Northern community. When students are accepted into Southern institutions with scholarships and into some amazing programs as well as are also able to go into trades opportunities and when our community, when communities get destroyed, you realize how important trades people are. They literally, without them, we wouldn’t have our homes, we wouldn’t have the infrastructure and the things that keep us warm on days like today where it’s minus 45 with the windchill and vehicles are, you know, vehicles and plumbing and all of those kinds of things still need to operate. So, guide me back to the question.

Sam Demma
When you think of some success stories as a result of education, are there any that come to mind that may inspire a listener who is really getting into this work because they want to help people. I think the fact that there was a collective graduation at the school is exceptional. I’m curious to know, like what do you think contributed to that success despite the setbacks? The team, being acknowledged,

Lynne Beck
students having an opportunity regardless of the cards that they have been dealt, whether it be as a collective, as a community, or even personally, having an opportunity or having someone notice that they have gifts, they have value, helping them find their voice. And watching that, being able to watch someone. We’re an eight to 12 school, so being able to watch, you know, that very young, often timid, a little bit scary, it’s the high school, like everyone’s afraid of high school, right? Trying to get substitute teachers to come in the building. It’s watching that progression from being that shy, timid, doesn’t know, afraid to walk across what we call our concourse and am I wearing the right clothes? Am I doing the right thing? Are people, am I going to be accepted? And then later on and as they progress, am I going to be accepted for who I am? And then before they graduate, am I going to be accepted for what I become and where I go and come back. Like it’s being part of what many people, I believe, that are in education have had the experience of having someone notice them or notice the good in them, because we’re really good at being self-critical, even at a very young age. How do you acknowledge somebody as an educator?

Sam Demma
How do you acknowledge a student in a way that affirms them? And everyone is different, so maybe it’s not a one solution fits all answer, but have you seen it done that you think other educators may be able to replicate? You notice everything and you accept everything, especially the mistakes.

Lynne Beck
We have got to in education, and that’s one thing as a team I feel we do a really good job here. You have got to move beyond the, you know, the teacher is all-knowing, the teacher is perfect, our systems are perfect. We are a human system built for human beings, and human systems and human beings have to make mistakes. We are programmed to make mistakes. Just like, or I guess equally important to that is we’re programmed to learn from our mistakes. And if we don’t learn from our mistakes, we will repeat those mistakes. And so being someone to help stop that cycle of mistake-making and open up to the possibilities that there might be a different way of doing things that works better. I mean, there’s some common speeches that some of my kids, generationally now, have had to listen to, and it’s, you know, is that working for you? Did that work? What about trying this next time? Restorative practices, actually, are the one thing for myself because in all honesty when I started in administration back in 2008 Hey, I wasn’t necessarily wanting to do that Like who really wants to be the VP of any high school? Did you know you’re the one in charge of discipline? Not like it’s a rodeo that I I didn’t have Really a whole lot of desire to do my kids were you know, baby kids back then. But anyway, that was the position I took. That was the challenge that I decided to take on at that time. And in that first year, that was probably one of the lowest points in my career. And not because of who I worked with or the kids I worked with or where I was, But it was the role that had been established that had been done that way for years. And at the end of the year, the thing that stood out for me and that I knew I had to change, that was 2007-8 actually. So it ended in the spring of 2008. I reflected and said, if I can’t do things differently, I want to I’m not doing this again. So, and the reason for that is that the thing I will never forget is a staff that I own because I did it, so I’m not gonna blame anyone else, but I had 417 and a half suspension days signed by me. So, 417 days and I was only one of two VPs at the time and the principal also did some suspensions as well. So I don’t know the collective. I only gathered those stats on myself and I said, I can’t do it. I won’t do it. We’re supposed to be about educating students, not reminding them why they don’t deserve to be here. That is not helping them find their voice. That is not…

Lynne Beck
I don’t know. There’s a whole… We could do a whole podcast on, actually, we could do months of podcast time on the de-implementation of things within the school system. We spend a lot of time talking about the latest and greatest, and there’s all kinds of books published by all kinds of wonderful companies, and it’s fantastic. But that de-implementation, in my opinion, is just as important as implementing new things. But coming back to the restorative practice piece, which also leads to one of my biggest mistakes, because when I started that process, I worked with a UCAN organization who had done a lot of work with the United Nations. They were located in Ontario. I ended up doing a student exchange and all kinds of things to try to have kids that had been experienced, you know, that type of thinking, instead of getting away from, you did, therefore you’re punished before you’re able to come back. It kind of, we started what we thought was restorative when we really looked at the term restitution is still not allowing the two parties to regain their dignity. Restorative practice allows both parties. You need to have willing participants and you need to have… It takes a lot of time. However, the investment in doing that Doing that allows people to accept the fact that we are programmed to make mistakes and learn from them.

Sam Demma
And it makes it okay. What is the big difference between a restorative practice and just restitution, as you mentioned?

Lynne Beck
Restitution focuses on the person who did the wrong to come up with a plan or a way way by which they do something and that thing doesn’t necessarily have to be with another person. It can be, I’m going to shovel the sidewalks of the school, you know, those kinds of things. It’s not about repairing the relationship and not all relationships are meant to be friends, but to do that in a way that respects both of your rights to be in this building and to be educated, maybe sometimes even in the same class, and not to be friends. Learning to be friends and to not be friends is really, really important. It’s a skill and I believe they’re equally important.

Sam Demma
I remember when I was in grade seven, I dared a friend of mine to do something inappropriate to a classmate of ours. And he did it and didn’t tell the principal that I dared him to do it and it was my idea. So he got suspended. I went home. Fortunately, my parents tried their best to instill some good values in me So I felt this inner turmoil and I sat on my bed started bawling my eyes out My dad gets home from work walks past my bedroom does a double take Is everything okay? I Tell him the truth. He’s like get in the car. We drove back to school sat in my principal’s office. Mr. O’Neill told him the truth and he and he asked me a ton of reflective questions. And then he invited the young lady, Michaela, into the office to have a conversation with both of us. And he actually ended up giving me an in-school suspension and keeping it off of my official record. And I’ll never forget that moment. And if I think back at that experience, and I think if my dad had an adverse reaction, if the principal had an extremely adverse reaction, I may have never learned the full lesson, but I did because of the way they handled it, because of the way they approached it. And it sounds very similar to what you just explained. So I didn’t really know too much about restorative practice, but Mr. O’Neill did use it with me.

Lynne Beck
That is, it’s fantastic because again you encourage kids to be human, to make mistakes. But, and it’s not about making the mistake, it’s about what you do with it when you make it. Do you own it? Are you going to learn from it? Are you going to move forward from it? If you’ve harmed someone, getting rid of that, that gross feeling in your gut when you know, like, it just doesn’t feel good doing something because even when we make mistakes and we’re the person in the wrong we need to restore our dignity and our our sense of Being in good balance being okay with ourselves. You don’t want to drag that behind you right you want to let that go and and Next time think before you dare your friend to do whatever it is. You did right like it’s um yeah I mean it it’s it’s beyond that message of you didn’t follow the rules you you don’t deserve to be here you are not good enough get out someone else is going to go fix you and then you come back to us I’m I’m I’m not going to at all diminish but I certainly can’t even begin to express the significant impact of the residential school system, of schools not only in Canada but certainly in the Northwest Territories. Their legacy is very much alive and there are many people who are still suffering the residual effects from that. And that you are not good enough message is something that I personally believe we still struggle, everyone struggles with that, but I think that that’s something because of the deliberateness of that system to essentially annihilate a culture, multi, many, many cultures, because Indigenous culture is vast and it’s very… Each one has its uniquenesses and deserves to be acknowledged individually. In the land that we sit on, it’s the Dene people, but even within that, there are many different groups of people here, where Dene FTA, Chippewyan, Cree, like we have a lot of different groups all within our community.

Sam Demma
I told you on our last conversation about some of my experiences in Kenya and how leading with this lens of curiosity rather than difference or judgment with a group of people I haven’t been exposed to in the past or met and had conversations with led to some beautiful experiences. And I am so excited to be visiting the school in May with an open mind, open heart and lots to learn. And I just want to let you know, I’m so excited about that. And it’s a privilege and I look forward to meeting you and everyone in the community. When you think about people in education who had a big impact on you, it sounds like your school journey was challenging in some regards, but are there any people in your life growing up or even after school that have had a massive impact? And if so, what did they do for you that shifted that belief about being good enough or just your own self-esteem.

Lynne Beck
I mean, there were many. And actually, it’s funny because it’s hard not to reflect and not think of those that certainly helped and those that didn’t. So I think A, being acknowledged. Being acknowledged as a human, not being ignored. Having someone, I guess, want to or make you feel as though they want you to to be there and go above and beyond to say to it to say hello good morning what are you thinking to do and later on or how was that class or it’s it’s it’s little things sometimes or hey you didn’t seem quite like yourself the other day you all right you know I just those little acknowledgments that can just make such a difference. And then collectively, there’s a lot of talk about teacher collective efficacy and that whole notion that I may not be, because I certainly am not the person that everyone can relate to or that I am able to meet the needs of or find whatever that thing is that we need to help someone move further along the line to meet their goals. But when we do it as a collective, someone is able to do that. Maybe it’s little pieces that come together that’s able to do that. Because some kids will take a little bit more than others to believe it, and that’s based on the cards that they’ve been dealt. And if we can help them, even sometimes when those cards are really tough cards to hold, if we can help them play those cards in the best possible way and have them believe that moving forward, they’re gonna be okay and that they are good enough, it’s incredible what can happen.

Lynne Beck
And we’ve seen. I remember moments in my life where

Sam Demma
believing in myself was the last thing I believed in and somebody else’s belief in me made all the difference. And I think that educators’ most important contribution, or any staff member in a school building, is not, the curriculum’s important, but it’s giving a child belief in themselves that they carry forward with them for the rest of their lives. I think that is by far the most important thing we can do. And not even just in schools, but in life in general. And my grandfather always used to say, leave things better than you found it. And if you did that, you lived a beautiful life. And I think it’s the same with people. And I got goosebumps while you were talking and sharing. And I appreciate you spending some time just talking a little bit about your educational journey and restorative practice and some of your beliefs around connecting with students and the importance of acknowledging them. And letting them know that it’s okay to make a mistake because we’re all human and not that it’s necessary Yeah Necessary yeah, right no no kid. You know watch what I don’t know we all we all get so afraid of mistakes

Lynne Beck
Yeah, but the reality is every little kid Watch them learn to walk watch them learn to talk watch them learn to do anything And then all of a sudden we get to that certain age. I don’t know what age it is and then all of a sudden So if you hide it and you pretend you didn’t do it or you try to whatever you’re just gonna do it over and over again until you accept that There’s a different or a better way and then you then if that and if you don’t get that Then unfortunately many people that that start start living with that shame and that guilt and all of those reasons why they turn to other things, sometimes it’s substances, there’s all kinds of things that people turn to, to mask that not being good enough, not being enough, being shameful, like all of those feelings that stand in the way of them developing their gift. We all have a gift. That’s one thing that I love, absolutely fell in love with in the North, is that Indigenous belief that everyone is inherently born with a gift. And it’s the duty of everyone that surrounds that child, because every child is a gift. But to surround that child, to allow those gifts to come through, right? And it’s, no one gift is more important than another. It’s a beautiful way of life. It also gives lots of hope and optimism

Lynne Beck
when you think about your own existence

Sam Demma
from that perspective. And if you’re not using it yet, you know it’s there and you’re still in that search to discover it. And I appreciate you sharing that. Do you have any parting words for an educator who may be listening to this a little bit burnt out, a little bit discouraged? Maybe there’s some challenges in their school building right now and they’re like, ah, what do I do then?

Lynne Beck
Oh, well, number one, I’ll be totally honest. Yesterday, driving back with a colleague, this was not me. We all, like challenge, we’re all being really, really challenged right now in education.
And whether we talk about cutbacks, or we talk about the things that are happening globally or you know there are there are so many reasons to kind of allow yourself to go down into that we call it a rabbit hole up here right where you get sucked into that negativity and I again by far far far from perfect as I have made so many mistakes it’s not even funny, but I’m doing my best not to repeat them. And so when I find myself going down into that rabbit hole, I remind myself, okay, you find what you look for. So if I’m telling myself I’m going to come back today and I’m going to find that negative thing or that negative person or that whatever, I’ll find it. But it’s looking for those little sunflower moments. And even sometimes, even within the people or the situations that are challenging you the most. And that’s really hard to do when it’s 45 below and really dark and da-da-da. when you really, really, really suck, just finding that outlet, whether it is a person, whether it is your dog.

Lynne Beck
My great Dane hears a lot of my problems. She doesn’t try to give me the solution. She just listens, and I do believe that we all have those answers within ourselves. We just have to get it out. I don’t know if that means getting it.

Sam Demma
Maybe that’s why we have unconditional love for our dogs, because they don’t chime in when we don’t want to hear anything.

Lynne Beck
And they don’t judge you, nothing. They keep really good people.

Sam Demma
That’s awesome. Lynn, this is such a lovely conversation. If someone wants to reach out and ask you a question, what would be the best way for them to get in touch with you?

Lynne Beck
Probably email or phone call, because I am like, social media and I are just not, I’m just not, I don’t know, is it because I’m in my 50s? Is it because I see some challenges with social media You know up here. We talk about how kids have to Especially our indigenous students have to walk in two worlds well now with the with this whole social media Fake world where where again that that reinforcement of I’m not good enough. I just I just have a hard time Diving into that and and yeah, I don’t know I mean I get that AI is coming and I get that we need to embrace it and I get that That AI has the potential for for everyone to find their voice regardless of their level of education and it’s something that we need to To to to face head-on and to help students learn, but yeah, but in terms of reaching out best way Social social media no, but phone call or email, yes.

Sam Demma
I think that social media has attempted to make us more connected, but the result has been that we’re less connected and more glued to our phones. Email and phone call is my preferred way of communication too, so you don’t have to explain yourself at all. I will make sure that we just put your email in the show notes in case someone wants to reach out and ask a question. And until I see you in May, thank you so much, keep up the great work, and I’ll talk to you soon.

Join the Educator Network & Connect with Lynne Beck

The High Performing Educator Podcast was brought to life during the outbreak of COVID-19 to provide you with inspirational stories and practical advice from your colleagues in education.  By tuning in, you will hear the stories and ideas of the world’s brightest and most ambitious educators.  You can expect interviews with Principals, Teachers, Guidance Counsellors, National Student Association, Directors and anybody that works with youth. You can find and listen to all the episodes for free here.