About Breanne Oakie
Breanne teaches grade 7/8 in a smaller town in Alberta. Instead of giving you a formal bio here, take a moment to read the below email highlighting the story she shared with me over email…
“Sam,
Thank you for an amazing session today. It was emotional and I loved how you had us all involved. The way you presented made it feel like we were actually together, which I think many of us needed to feel. I’m sure you are going to get bombarded with emails today but I wanted to tell you a short story that touches on what you said about our worth.
I teach grade 7 and 8 in a smaller town. One year, my supervision schedule had me as the detention room supervisor. This seemed very weird to me as I am not known to be a hard disciplinarian and I’m a bit of a talker and it’s not supposed to be a social time in the DT room. On the lunch hours I supervised, I saw the same kids over and over, many from the year before who were in my grade 7 class so naturally I wanted to catch up with them, find out why they were there, what they needed help with etc. Over time, they just seemed to present this sadness. I decided to email them telling them that I hoped they didn’t judge their self worth by the time they spent in the detention room, with the conflicts they had with their teachers, that were worth so much more and in time they would recognize it. They never responded to me but they were in grade 8 so emotionally, they aren’t always up to discuss their feelings.
A year later, I ran into one of the boys who was in high school now. He said he thought I would be happy to hear that he had figured some things out and was doing really well at school and was feeling successful. He said he hadn’t realized his role in his own learning – that he was responsible for attending class and actively listening to the lessons, for participating in discussion, for reviewing his notes, for being prepared. He is graduating this year.
The other boy was struggling with family trauma, drug use as a coping mechanism, and touched base with me when he was in high school. We try to touch base every few months to just check in. He messaged me to not let Covid dim my light:) He is on schedule to graduate but has some challenges ahead for sure.
Both boys said they got my email when they were in grade 8 but that they didn’t know how to respond to that level of emotion but now that they are older, welcome any kind of motivating letter from their former teacher. I’m pretty sure Covid will prevent me from attending their graduation but I am working on their grade 12 letter to send them on their way into the real world and I think I’ll reference some of the points you highlighted in your presentation.
Thanks for starting my day off perfectly,
Have a good one,
Breanne Oakie”
Get excited! This was an amazing conversation!
Connect with Breanne: Email | Linkedin
Listen Now
Listen to the episode now on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or on your favourite podcast platform.
Resources Mentioned
Wolf Creek Public Schools Website
Alberta Teachers’ Association (ATA)
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 (00:00):
Welcome back to another episode of the High Performing Educator podcast. This is your host and youth speaker, Sam Demma. Friday, February 19th, I got this email from today’s guest, Breanne Oakie. She was a part of the teacher’s association that I was keynoting at, speaking at a teacher convention out in Alberta, and she reached out and she ended up sharing this really long story over email which I thought needed to be heard by you, by other educators, by people that work with young people that might be inspired to hear this transformational story.
Sam Demma (01:13):
And so I invited her on the podcast and she came on and we had an amazing conversation about so many different things. She is a grade seven/eight teacher in an elementary school that’s a part of Wolf Creek public schools in the Alberta area, North Red Deer. I hope you enjoy this conversation with Breanne and I will see you on the other side. Bri, welcome to the High Performing Educator podcast. Huge pleasure to have you on the show. Why don’t you start by introducing yourself and sharing a little bit behind the reason why you’re so passionate about the work you do today?
Breanne Oakie (01:48):
So I’m a junior high teacher and I kind of fell into that by accident. My degree is in elementary and I, I taught kindergarten one year and then after that I was teaching grade seven grade/eight grade/grade nine, and I’ve been doing that for the past 15 years. And I actually really love that grade cuz it’s kind of this juxtaposition, I guess, of emotions. You know, they’re going through a lot of hormones. They don’t wanna talk to you, but they need to talk to you. And it’s just a, you know, people always say that that’s a hard age but it’s actually one of my, my favourite things to do is spend time with teenagers. Just you feel really validated when they choose you to listen to their stories.
Sam Demma (02:34):
Hmm. I love that. And I’m actually curious to know why you got into teaching. Did it, did you know from a young age, were you one of those people that just knew or did someone nudge you in that direction? How did you end up landing in education?
Breanne Oakie (02:46):
Ah, it was completely by accident. I actually wanted to be a veterinarian course and I went to university and was recommended to go through a conservation biology course degree through, through agriculture, which you could get into vet school if you had taken the right the right classes. And so my first two years were in science and I kind of got my butt whooped by statistics and math and the labs. And I was like, I don’t belong here. Like there’s things I love about this. I love the animal courses. I love the nature courses. I love all of those things, but living in the lab and, and the scientific method and I just aren’t agreeing like it was very hard. Yeah. And I don’t know if it was just because I didn’t spend enough time studying. I wasn’t prepared or maybe I just inherently it wasn’t for me.
Breanne Oakie (03:37):
Hmm. So I actually got asked by the university to take some time off and I took the year off and I was like, what am I gonna do? And I was pretty stressed out because I always thought like, you have to go to university like, this is, you have to end up back here. What the heck are you gonna do if you don’t go there? So I worked at a whole bunch of different jobs that year and I did take some night classes just to get some credits and I wrote a letter to the university and they let me come back on probation. Nice. for the same program. But I took all the options for education, but mostly because I asked my friends, I said, I don’t know what to do with myself. And they said, well, I don’t know why you’re not spending it with people because that’s what you like to do. And they were like, you should either do psych or why don’t you be a teacher? Like you love spending time with kids. So I got into education and immediately it’s completely different. Like there’s, there’s nothing really scientific about it. It’s all about talking, sharing philosophy. And I definitely belonged in that realm a lot better.
Sam Demma (04:40):
Ah, I love that. So growing up, did you have teachers that had a huge impact on you or would you say that most of your drive came from your friends pushing you in that direction?
Breanne Oakie (04:49):
I did have amazing teachers and I loved school. And I remember my kindergarten teacher. My grade one, two teacher was the same teacher for two years. And , I remember when I had to move, she had a big special day for me and I went to her house and spent time with her kids and, and I just remember feeling so loved and having so much choice in the things that those teachers offered. My grade four teacher, my grade six teacher, I just, they were doing so many things that we’d talk about now, like mindfulness, you know, taking that time to set intention for your day, sun salutations in gym class. And I remember thinking nice, like, man, we’re just talking about that stuff now. We’re still trying to implement that stuff now. But when I was, you know, nine years old, my teachers were doing that and I just feel like they were kind of ahead of the game and and they never really inspired me to be a teacher, but I definitely remember how I felt out around
Sam Demma (05:43):
Them. Hmm. Oh, that’s awesome. Yeah. Maya Angelou always says you, you might not remember what people said, but you’ll remember how they, how they make you feel. Yeah. Which is awesome. How do you think we can make students feel how you felt back when you were in school today? Like what do you think is important to focus on as a teacher?
Breanne Oakie (06:04):
I think we have to realize for a lot of kids that they’re not like us, like not a lot of kids love school for academic reasons. Yeah. not a lot of the kids wanna go to university or that’s their plan, so they’re not, they’re not mirror images of us. So the very first thing we need to do is make that connection with, you know, what, what interests you. So if they play hockey, I spend a lot of time with hockey players in my school. Watching them play hockey. I don’t understand anything about hockey. I don’t have a favorite team. I don’t watch any NHL games, but I watch a lot of minor hockey. And they’ll be like, did you see my goal? Did you see this? And I’m like, I did see that, you know, and they wanna talk about it and they know that you will take the time and then it, it kind of segues into, you know, when they’re having a really bad day stress maybe about that or anything in their life, they know that, you know, maybe I’ll take some time to listen to their problem.
Breanne Oakie (06:54):
So I think it’s more just like that reconnection the heart to heart.
Sam Demma (06:58):
Yeah. Like
Breanne Oakie (06:59):
Listening. It’s not all, it’s not all curriculum. It’s not all academics.
Sam Demma (07:02):
Yeah. No, that’s awesome. I love that. Tell me more about what teaching right now specifically looks like for you is COVID having a big impact on the way you teach right now or is, is it still in person for you? How does that look?
Breanne Oakie (07:15):
It’s in person now. However, like our school is a 6, 7, 8 middle school and it used to be, we all had the same recesses and so the gym would be open and we’d all get to the kids, could all play in there at recess and the teachers could go in there and play basketball with, with them. And you could have relationships with kids in all different areas. Like I used to, I teach grade eight, but I coached grade six volleyball in the past. So I would know some of the grade sixes. And you can just have those, those ranges. And now we run our system on the grade, sixes have a completely different schedule. The sevens have a different schedule. The eights have different schedule. There is no mixing of grades. And so you can’t really connect with those kids. And like, it’s been a talk like a topic, get staff meetings, or the grade six teachers are like, you know, these grade seminars wanna come back to talk to us, but we’re teaching because their recess break is during our teaching time. And so we’re losing those connections when we’re trying to encourage them to have a person in the school, but the person is not necessarily the teacher that they have at the moment. It’s the person that they were connected to last year. And there’s a, there’s a gap there, right? Yeah. And we can’t have our classes intermingling. So if you know somebody from a different grade eight class and they wanna talk to you about a problem, they, they can’t come in your room. So you have to, it’s kind of hard.
Sam Demma (08:34):
Yeah. It’s a, it’s a weird time. And I’m gonna ask you, like personally, what has helped you with your teaching and what has helped you just stay positive during during the, the turbulence
Breanne Oakie (08:49):
Acts of service. I think it has affected me a lot. Like I remember crying because last year we were at home for three months and then we came back in September and then things started getting aggressive again. And they’re people like, I think we’re gonna shut down again. And I was like, no, no, no, no, no, we can’t do that. And I found out during a parent teacher meeting that the, like the, the government was having their meeting that night, that my husband was texting me. And he’s like, I think you guys are gonna be back at home next week. And I was like, what? I’m talking to parents right now. And one parent said, well, I just heard the news. So now, and I was like, what’s the news? And, and I, I remember crying cuz I was like, I do not like teaching kids because they disengage or they don’t have the internet.
Breanne Oakie (09:30):
And you don’t hear from them for so long. Mm-Hmm that it’s not the same as being in person. So for me to, to make myself feel better, I have to give back. So I did a lot of COVID drop offs. As soon as I heard that, I was like, okay, I’m gonna mark my calendar. And in two weeks I’m gonna, I’m gonna do these little drop offs for these people that I know are gonna need a little boost. And it makes me feel better, but I like to do it as a surprise, but they always know it’s me. Their parents always know to check the doors step, but it makes me feel better. And I know it’s ridiculous. Like some of the things that I put on their doorsteps are very,
Sam Demma (10:01):
Very funny. What do you put on them? Tell me .
Breanne Oakie (10:03):
Oh, well, so like I started last year, so like Easter, I made little Easter bunny eggs and I glued ears on the Ziplocs and I just dropped them all off and left a little message from the Easter bunny and then nice one summer was coming. I, my friend cleaning air basement. And she gave me this book of paper airplanes. So there was like premade ones, you just had to fold them. And so I folded like, like 10 of these airplanes and I had packages of sunflower seeds and I made a little tail and I just said just a little bit of sunshine for your day. And then I thought, well, they could flat them. So one of my students pictures over the summer of these sunflowers, like grow against her house. And then at Christmas I made little salt dough ornaments for their trees and just stuck them on their doorstep.
Breanne Oakie (10:43):
And it was actually a lot of work, but I think I needed to keep busy. I needed something to make me feel connected because we, we can’t see anybody. We can’t even talk to people in our school really. Like the teachers can’t have staff meetings together. You’re really not in proximity of people. You know, you can’t hug each other and I’m, I’m a very physical person. Yeah. That it’s hard when you’re going down the hall and they’re like, we have to be away from each other. So I just try to make people’s days in, in the smallest of ways, I guess.
Sam Demma (11:14):
I absolutely love that. It’s the whole idea of like being at the taco, right. yes, exactly. But such cool ideas, like who would’ve thought that a, something as small as a sunflower seed that a kid would be passionate about it, it plant them and send you pictures and now you, you can probably bond over that thing all the time. Like if they bring it up or if they send you a new picture or, you know, oh yeah.
Breanne Oakie (11:35):
If they always think that they’re my favorite, but I tell them that they’re all my favorites so I’m like, cause you got sunflowers. Someone else got something else. Like I love everyone. So yeah. But it is fun because then I, I get to have those relationships for years to come.
Sam Demma (11:48):
Right? Yeah. No, it’s so true. And sometimes, you know, a students like a sunflower, you know, sometimes you see them flourish, sometimes you don’t and, and sometimes they flourish 20 years later and, and you don’t really know the impact that you had, but I’m curious though, over your years of teaching, have you had any, have you witnessed any student transformations due to the, the love and attention from a caring adult? It could be you, it could be someone else in your school will. And the reason I’m asking is because there might be an educator listening, who’s burnt out and mm-hmm needs to be reminded why this work is so important. And I think, you know, seeing students transform and seeing students grow and become successful or become their best selves is one of the most rewarding things that this, this calling gives teachers. Mm-Hmm so when I ask you that question to any stories or students come to mind and, and if it’s private, you can change their name.
Breanne Oakie (12:39):
Yeah. yeah. I have ive had a few students. I have some students now that are either their twenties. I taught grade seven, two. Nice. And I was there for a couple of years and sometimes you, I like, and I taught friends. I was actually the French teacher, so I was teaching English. But then the school was like implementing this mandatory French program and they hated it. They lived in this like small little town and they’re like, this is so ridiculous. We have to take this. And I was like, oh, I love French. Like, this is my passion. Like, and this kid, he was like, and I remember he was always like skipped school to go to these farm. I don’t know, you call ’em symposiums. Right. He come back with all these free pencils and like talk about these tractors. And like, I’m not coming to school, I’m helping my dad with a Hey, like okay, whatever.
Breanne Oakie (13:22):
And like just last year. So he would be like 20, 24. And he sent me a message on Instagram and it was like some weird meme and was like, did you ever really experience high school? If you didn’t have a crazy French teacher? And I was like, dude, I haven’t heard from you in 10 years. And he’s like, do you remember? He’s like, I could barely get through English and you were making me learn French I, and I was like, this is coming at a really good moment because I had applied to take the year off because I, I was kind of burnt out and I was like, I just needed to figure out I, if I needed some more time or maybe I just need something different. And it was like the day before the last day of school and I was really emotional about saying goodbye to everybody.
Breanne Oakie (14:04):
And he was just like, you know, even though I hated French, like you were really like, you really made a connection with me. And I was like, I can’t believe you, like, after all this time you were reaching out. And it wasn’t like there was, he didn’t have any trauma or anything like it wasn’t like, but he didn’t, he wasn’t like a school person. Right. So the fact that we still had a positive relationship where he could think of this funny memory really made me smile, cuz I was like, man, I didn’t really know that you ever thought of me after all this time. 10 years. Yeah. Like a long time. But I mean I, and I know his family. I still try to keep in contact with a lot of people. But I’m trying to think if I can think of other people, sometimes you’re really amazed of the transformation.
Breanne Oakie (14:48):
Like if you only have a tea, a student for one year and you just pass them off and you don’t really have a relationship with them, you might not see that difference. Mm-Hmm . But I do have some students that I’ve been purposely in their lives or have taught their, their siblings. And I know their parents and you’re really happy that you stayed along the journey for those years, because then you do realize that they needed to you. Mm. I have a student who’s who’ll message me. He’s like, I really hope that when my cousin comes up to you that you teach him the way you taught me. Hmm. That you open up your heart and you, you talk about the hard things with him, because talking about the hard things is what really helped him because he wasn’t talking about those with his parents. But just being vulnerable. Yeah. I think is it’s very hard for people, but sometimes you have to be that person right. To kind of force them into, to opening up. Cause it’s a lot of pain if you keep it all inside.
Sam Demma (15:44):
Oh, it’s so true. And I’m curious to know the student who, who was skip class and go to the farming symposiums like what did, do you, what do you think you did while you were teaching him that had such a significant impact on him?
Breanne Oakie (15:57):
Well, we talked about chickens a lot. He was really into chicken farming. Nice. And I, I had moved to an acreage and I was like, I really wanna start chickens. Like, I don’t know how, I don’t know anything about chickens. And he was like, it’s like, you’re overthinking this. I have 100 chickens. I was like, I want five chickens. I just he’s like, yeah. So he made like a slideshow, him and his friend made a slideshow like how to build a coop and like what you had to do. And it actually took me seven years before I actually got chickens. And it’s true. Chickens are really low maintenance. They’re lower maintenance cats. and I told him, I said, well, I finally have chickens. I still five chickens. They only took me seven years to follow your slideshow to build this chicken. But yeah, I think just like kind of those interests and being fun like
Sam Demma (16:39):
That. No, that’s like, that’s so cool. Curious, do you still have the chickens?
Breanne Oakie (16:44):
I do. And I actually have, we still have one chicken that is still alive from the very first time we got chickens. So she’s like four or five years old. Yeah. but yeah, we, we always get a few more chickens every year.
Sam Demma (16:55):
Are the eggs good?
Breanne Oakie (16:57):
Well, mine are lazy. So they don’t really and they’re old. Like, I think that’s why most people get rid of them after a year. And then they get new ones. Yeah. But we get them, we get babies, but then they all grow up to be rooster. So now we have five roosters and then it’s really
Sam Demma (17:09):
Loud at our house. Now, now it’s an alarm clock system.
Breanne Oakie (17:11):
Yeah. And they do find their way into the house. Like they come out of their pen and they like, they know they eat the dog food. And then I found one in my, my kitchen the other day. Cause it came through the dog door so they’re not afraid of anything. So, but it’s fun, Mike. That’s awesome.
Sam Demma (17:27):
No, that’s awesome. So you would think it’s mostly about connecting with students on their particular interest
Breanne Oakie (17:34):
At the so yeah. Yeah.
Sam Demma (17:35):
Cool. I love that. And when you think back to the teachers that you had in, in, I think you mentioned them that grade one and kindergarten grade two, do you think they did the exact same thing?
Breanne Oakie (17:47):
Yeah, they did. I remember when we have journal time in grade one and you have those little booklets with half page of blank space for your drawing and then half lines for you to write your three sentences on. And I was always right about animals, about how I saw a deer or I was walking in the woods with my dad. And I remember she once wrote in there, like, I think when you grow up, you’re going to be like a wildlife biologist or you’re gonna be in a college just you’re gonna really observe nature around you and I, when I was 20 and I was in that program, I was like, you know, I love this, like listening to these CDs of bird sounds. And my dad is a birder and that’s just kind of inherently in my life. Hmm. Like thinking like how does she know that that was gonna be such an important piece of, of who I was. Right. but like other, their teachers I think mostly when they were with me during hard time, my parents separated mm-hmm I remember just like their actions when they found out that that was happening of how they treated me and how they were there for me. Really impacted me too.
Sam Demma (18:43):
Yeah. It’s tough to have hard conversations. How do you think you should initiate a tough, a tough conversation with a student?
Sam Demma (18:51):
It’s a tough one, right?
Breanne Oakie (18:53):
Sometimes it’s really scary. Yeah. And sometimes even though we’re adults, we try to avoid hard conversations. Like I, I do sometimes, like I know there’s kids, I need to talk to about hard things and I’m like, I really don’t know how to approach this. But sometimes I’ll be direct. If I, I can, if it’s, or sometimes you can just tell if you’re like an observer and you watch them come in the, in the morning and they sit and their head is down or the bell rings and they don’t leave for recess right away. And they’re kind of lagging around or they ask to stay in multiple times and you can kind of infer that something’s going on with their friends. And they’re not spending time with those people. Then it’s time for a talk. And some, sometimes I’ll be like, so let’s just lay it out straight, like something’s going on.
Breanne Oakie (19:36):
And you don’t have to tell me what it is, but I want you to know that I’m sensing that something is off. And, you know, if there’s someone in the school that you wanna talk to, then please let me know and we can facilitate that conversation. Hmm. Sometimes you wait too long and then like something happens and a, a kid runs to the bathroom and they don’t come back. And, and there’s, you have to have that hard conversation while they’re in tears because they waited too long to talk to somebody about it. Right. So you just have to be make space for them to be able to talk about their feelings. We do talk a lot about making safe space and trust. And I know a lot of students are afraid to say like one student told me a couple weeks ago, he’s like, I’m kind of afraid to talk to you because I’m afraid of what you hear.
Breanne Oakie (20:22):
You’re gonna make a phone call and things are gonna change for me. Hmm. And it’s like, really, like sometimes you’re amazed that you spend so much time with people and so much time’s gone by and you have no clue of what is happening. And so, I mean, I’m lucky I have two teachers like I have a partner teacher, so we split. So she sees those kids. We have two EA who get to work with some of those kids. The four of us adults can, can group and be like, something is, something is off. And one of us can at least make a connection with those kids. And then we have a counselor at school who does talk to them. But I think as an adult, you have to kind of get over that fear and just approach gently.
Sam Demma (21:04):
Yeah. Well, so true. And I think that students, like, they want to be treated like adults also. Right. So being able to have those real heart to heart conversations that are just super authentic, they probably connect to those too. Right.
Breanne Oakie (21:19):
Yeah. And I would hate to have a kid be like, you know, you, you were my teacher for two years and you never once reached out to me when I was struck. Mm. You know? And I’d be like, yeah, I couldn’t, I think that’d be really hard on me. Like I never reached out to you because I was afraid to talk about something hard with you. That’s my job. Like I’m supposed to, to make space for you to feel free, to cry or talk or just get it all out and, and then assess. Right. Sometimes I think they think, like he say something and, oh, no, shouldn’t have said it. And then there’s like not a plan. I’m like, you know, like let’s just sit and talk and let’s make a plan. And if certain things come up, then we do have to talk to a higher power. But sometimes it’s just, let’s just get it out and let the leg guys come because you’re obviously carrying something that’s very heavy. And if you don’t talk about it, then that’s, it’s painful for you.
Sam Demma (22:10):
Yeah. It’s gonna weigh them down. Mm-Hmm , if you could go back and give your younger educator self advice from when you just started teaching, like what would you say?
Breanne Oakie (22:23):
I, I think I would be more, more gentle mm-hmm I remember being like, you know, like even for something is public speaking, like the anxiety of, of kids crying and breaking a kid and being like, you know what, this kid’s gonna remember me forever for the wrong reasons. There are things that are more important than accomplishing certain tasks. Like I remember I had one, one little guy and in grade seven and he caught me a lot of grief and I, I’m probably not his favorite person. And he’s graduated since, but he was very smart and he just felt like he didn’t have to do what we had to do in class. He wasn’t gonna take the notes. And I think, you know what, maybe I wouldn’t have fought him so much. Like, you know what, if you think, you know, it, I’m not gonna sit there because eventually it escalated.
Breanne Oakie (23:07):
And he was suffering from a lot of turmoil. And I just thought that he was in there to dig it to me every single day. And then one day it, all, this came to a head with another student and he was bawling. And I was like, oh no. And it was going to the vice principal, this, this problem. And he was terrified. And I was terrified for him because I was like, I don’t know, at this point, if people have the strength to give you space to, to, to feel how you’re feeling right now, people are upset. They’re angry. They want you to have consequences for your actions. But it’s kind of haunted me ever since, because I remember sitting with him that moment and he’s telling me his story. And I’m like, I wish I had known this earlier. Hmm. You know, because right now you’re gonna get suspended. probably, and this is the way I wanna end everything. But I know he’s okay now, like he’s he’s grown up, he’s graduated. He’s he’s doing okay. School was never really his thing still, but he got through it. But I’ve never talked to him since. And I, it’s kind of one of my regrets that
Sam Demma (24:18):
I couldn’t be gentler at an earlier stage in my life. I think that it was just like, like teaching’s not a pres I think before it was like, we have to do this. Like we, this is our lesson. It has to get done. We can’t just abandon the lesson like this is, but now I’m more like, you know what, throw it out. We’re going to the forest. You guys need a mental health hour. Like, let’s just go and let’s go play. You guys need to run around. We’ll come back. We’ll regroup and we’ll get this done to. Yep. But I think when I was younger, it was more like they had to get done. Ah, that’s such good advice. And the, the mental health hour in the forest, is that something that you, you try and do now?
Breanne Oakie (24:57):
Well, because I do have like outdoor time with them. We’re supposed to be like outdoor education, but we just call it outdoor time because they only have gym three days a week. So we have this forest behind our school a little bit down the ways, and the kids love it, cuz it’s completely wild. It’s like dead fall. And they just, and we, we just play games in there. So we’ll play sometimes it’s camouflage or sometimes we’ll play infection tag and we’ll run around. And sometimes we just be quiet in there. There’s lots of deer in there. It would be nice if, if the grades could settle down enough to just do like journaling in there or read our novel study in there and, and be happy just being in outside. Right. But a lot of those guys have a lot of energy. So we do a lot of tag games in there, but they love it. The flag just for running around and like, I love it cuz our classroom has no windows cause we’re kind of inside. Yeah. And I don’t like not walking every day, so it’s just good for us to get out and just expel all that energy. Right.
Sam Demma (25:51):
You ever seen a bear in there? Pardon me? You ever, have you ever seen a bear in there?
Breanne Oakie (25:56):
Oh, there’s no bears in there. No, just lots of deer. Okay. We don’t have bears in town here. We’re in bear. We’re definitely in bear country, but not in town. Cool.
Sam Demma (26:05):
Cool. Awesome. Well, thank you so much for taking the time to chat. Good conversation flew by. It’s almost been 30 minutes. Thank you so much for sharing some of your stories, some of your personal philosophies on teaching the advice you would share to yourself. If another educator is listening and was inspired by anything you said, or just wants to connect about something, what would be the best way for them to reach out to you?
Breanne Oakie (26:27):
I don’t have any special platform. You can send me an email at my at my work email is fine, breanne.oakiecarriere@gmail.com.
Sam Demma (26:42):
Awesome Bri. Thank you so much. I appreciate you coming on the show.
Breanne Oakie (26:44):
Thank you.
Sam Demma (26:46):
And there you have it. Another amazing guest, an amazing interview on the High Performing Educator podcast. As always, if you enjoy these episodes, please consider leaving a rating in review so other educators like yourself can find this content and benefit from it. And here’s an exclusive opportunity to, I mentioned at the start of the show, if you wanna meet the guest on today’s episode, if you wanna meet any of the guests that we have interviewed, consider going to www.highperformingeducator.com and signing up to join the exclusive network, you’ll have access to networking events throughout 2021 and other special opportunities, and I promise I will not fill your inbox. Talk to you soon. I’ll see you on the next episode.
Join the Educator Network & Connect with Breanne Oakie
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.
