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activity director

Joshua Sable – Student Activity Director at TanenbaumCHAT

Joshua Sable Student Activity Director at TanenbaumCHAT
About Joshua Sable

Joshua Sable is a veteran educator, speaker and memory maker. His personal teaching philosophy is to: “give students a reason to come to school tomorrow.” Joshua is also the Student Activity Director at TanebaumCHAT.

The way he fulfills this philosophy is through the memory-making machine of student activities and school culture. In this episode, Josh shares actionable strategies to help you students make memories, right now!

Connect with Joshua: Email | Linkedin

Listen Now

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

Resources Mentioned

Tanenbaum Chat High School

Theater and Performing Arts at York University

Mentor College

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. Today we have on a very purpose driven and passionate educator. His name is Joshua Sable. He is a veteran teacher, speaker, and memory maker. As you’ll hear about on this show, his personal teaching philosophy is to give students a reason to come to school tomorrow. And the way he fulfills this philosophy is through something he calls the memory making machine of student activities and school culture. In this episode, Josh shares actionable strategies to help your students make more memories right now. I’ll see you on the other side, Josh, thank you so much for coming onto the high-performing educators podcast. It’s a pleasure to have you. I want you to first introduce yourself to the audience, tell everyone who you are, what you’ve done in education up until this point and why you initially got started in the work that you’re doing today with young people.


Joshua Sable (01:03):
Thanks so much for having me here today Sam. Its a real, real pleasure. My name is Josh Sable. This is my, let me do the math. This is my 26th year teaching. So I’ve been teaching for 26 years. I’ve spent the last 23 years at a school called chats or TanenbaumChat in Toronto, which is a high school in Toronto. And I’ve spent most of those years as a teacher of dramatic arts in English, but mainly as the director of student activities, which I’ve been doing there for the last 22 of my 23 years.


Sam Demma (01:42):
Nice. That’s so cool. What initially got you into education. Was there a teacher in your life that heavily impacted you and swayed you in that direction? Is it something you knew you wanted to do since you were a little kid? Everyone’s story is totally different. I’m just curious what yours is.


Joshua Sable (02:00):
It’s a great question. I was really into performing theater drama entertainments as a teenager. And a young person was very involved in student leadership, sports arts at my high school and outside of the high school. And then when I went to university, I knew I wanted to study theater. I wanted to study performance. I wanted to develop my craft, but when I finished my four-year degree in theater and performing arts at York university, I knew that there was something else I still wanted to do. I was working at summer camps at the time and I loved working with young people. And the idea of working in the arts exclusively was exciting. But at the same time, I knew that there were other things that I wanted to accomplish and other things that I wanted to do. And all of those seem to surround working with young people.


Joshua Sable (02:51):
So I got my teaching degree, started teaching right away at the age of 22 and I’ve been teaching ever since. That’s awesome. That’s great. And then my first year asking about teaching philosophy and what got me started or what got me energized. Can I tell you a quick story about my first year teaching? Absolutely. That’s why we’re here. My first year teaching, I was teaching grade seven. So my first three years I taught at a school called Mentor College in Mississauga, which is a great school. And I was teaching a homeroom. I was teaching grade seven and I was, I wasn’t feeling that inspired. I knew why I got into teaching. I didn’t know if I was making a difference. I didn’t know what sort of impact I was having on the young people in my classroom. And I was, I was struggling a little bit going through a little bit of a down period in my first year teaching.


Joshua Sable (03:43):
And one of the things we had to do on a regular basis at this private school was called parents once a month, just to check in, give them an update about how their students, how their children were doing. So I called one student in particular, not on our regular day and not as part of our regular monthly call because he had been missing a number of days. And I introduced myself. Mum recognized me. We had met before and I said, is everything okay with Chris? I haven’t, haven’t seen him as frequently as we normally see him is everything okay? And mum then starts to tell me how Chris Chris’s parents, mom and dad were, were going through a really bad divorce. And I didn’t know. And Chris was really, really struggling with it. So I said to mom, I said, look, tell Chris to take as much time as he needs.


Joshua Sable (04:38):
You know, we’ll be here for him whenever he comes back to school, how can I help? What can I do to help? I am happy to do anything that you need me to do. I can call him over the phone. We can, we can work on his math, his English on the phone. What can I do to help? And she said, well, she said, no, you don’t understand. She said, the only reason that he wants to come back to school is to see you and to hear your jokes and to be part of your classroom experience. She said, thank you for giving Chris a reason to come back to school. And I got those goosebumps like we do sometimes. And I had no idea that I had been part had played any role in having such an impact on him. And it hit me, hit me pretty hard.


Joshua Sable (05:29):
And at the time I was taking some courses at Boise for personal education and development and they kept asking us, what’s your personal teaching philosophy? I don’t know, be nice. You know, so don’t, don’t get hit by the chalk. You know, I, I didn’t know what my teaching philosophy was. And it was at that moment, not to sound too cheesy, but I really had an aha moment there where I said, that’s it? What Chris, what Chris’s mom said to me was, was my PR became my personal teaching philosophy, which was give someone a reason to come back tomorrow. And I started to think, how, how cool would it be? If everyone in our schools, student leaders, staff, custodian, support staff, if each of us just gave one person a reason to come back to school tomorrow, how much better what our school environment be. And, and you can have that impact in so many different ways, small, medium, or large, but that became a personal teaching philosophy for me.


Sam Demma (06:32):
I love that. And sometimes teachers and educators don’t see the impact they’re having until decades down the road. So I think it’s so cool that you highlighted that was in your first year that’s, that’s phenomenal. And I’m sure you’ve had dozens upon dozens of more stories, just like that one. And I was actually going to ask you that later in the podcast, if you want to hold on to one or two more stories that you have, that you think would be really impactful, and we’ll share them a little bit down this down, this journey that we’re going on with this podcast right now, a lot of teachers are faced with challenges. One of the challenges being to give students like the student, you just mentioned those opportunities to want to come back to school during COVID. How do we create those scenarios? How do we make a student feel appreciated and cared for when sometimes you can’t do it in person and the virtual stuff is kind of different and difficult?


Joshua Sable (07:23):
Well, first of all, it’s not easy. None of us have a magic wand or a genie in a bottle where we’re all trying. And there’s so many amazing educators across the province, across the country who are doing whatever they can to create a sense of comfort, a sense of peace, a sense of fun in their classroom and in their schools. We’re all trying, everyone’s trying their best. I start by trying to smile with my eyes because we are now limited in terms of our smile, our smiles now go from about the bridge of your nose up to the top of your forehead. So I, I honestly try to smile with my eyes when I walked down the halls, when I’m in the classroom, when we’re engaging with students and student activities I really try to do that. I, I’m trying to learn as many names as I can, which we should all do as educators.


Joshua Sable (08:16):
People, people need to know that other people know your name. And it’s so hard in a time when once again, you’re only limited with the top party or face to face threat face recognition is even more difficult. So I’m trying to learn as many names as I can. We’re giving out as much free food as we can, even with the limitations due to COVID. So, first day of school, we gave our students a wrapped fortune cookies, and they were personalized fortune cookies, not personalized, but they were personalized for our school. So we had our student council come up with 25 specific fortunes that would be heard for our school environment. And we handed them out to the students on the way. And normally we’d be handing out free food, like cookies or chips or things that we putting our hands into. And obviously we can’t do that right now.


Joshua Sable (09:03):
So we’re trying to find rap snacks that still have a sense of fun in the sense of a culture we did pajama day, the other day, we usually do cookies and milk. So we found some packaged cookies that we got donated, and we were given out free packaged cookies for anyone who was wearing their, their PJ’s. A couple of other COVID ideas just before the summer, we were looking to do some, like everyone’s doing a lot of videos of social media during COVID for sure. The mass singer was big. So we came up with our own version of the mass singer, where we got as many teachers as possible to record themselves singing, wearing masks of any kind they could be wearing their they could be wearing a Darth Vader mask. They could be wearing their kid’s sweatshirt over their head COVID mask, whatever they prefer.


Joshua Sable (09:54):
And I had them record themselves, singing twice one with the mask and then a big reveal where they take off their mask. So we edited it together. We sent it out to the student body. Students had to guess whose voice belong to whom. And then we had a second episode of the mass singer where we revealed the identity of the mass. So we’re just trying to keep things moving, keep them light, look, students, they’re smart. They know we’re in the middle of the pandemic. They’re not expecting us to move mountains and perform miracles, but what they appreciate is any student leader or staff member who is trying to make a difference to connect with them, to learn their name and to give them a reason to come back tomorrow night.


Sam Demma (10:36):
I love it. The philosophy rings through even in all those principles. And it’s evident, you’ve practiced this for a long time and people would argue smiling with your eyes. How do you do that? Well, the first thing is with an intention, if you have the intention to do so, it comes across that you’re caring that you’re happy. You know, maybe we get some see-through mask or some magic material that allows you to see the mouth. But without that again, it’s just the intention behind it. And you have all the right ones, which is awesome. What are some of the challenges that you’ve seen in your school so far? I know virtual engagements, definitely one common one among all the educators I’ve spoke to. But what are some of the challenges you’ve been presented with or have faced?


Joshua Sable (11:18):
Well, like most high schools, we, we have limited our attendance on a daily basis. So at our school, we’ve got 50% of the student body attending each day and they’re only attending to lunch afternoons or virtual learning, which is similar to what other schools across Ontario are doing. But the biggest challenge, look, we all, we’re, we’re human beings. We crave social interaction, human interaction. We need to get close to people. We need to sense that they care about us. We need to interact. Sometimes we need a high five, a hug, a handshake, whatever way we’re comfortable communicating. And I think that’s, that’s difficult. It’s been really difficult for people to not be able to gather together as a community in the ways that they are used to gathering together at our school. Especially we have a great sense of community sense of traditions and at lunchtime or during break times, we gathered the students together or as many as we can in common spaces to do fun things.


Joshua Sable (12:24):
And it’s been really challenging, not being able to congregate as a group. So especially once again, we’re only half the student body as attending on day one and half the other half is at home. So that’s been really, really challenging. But as I said before, everyone’s frying, whether it’s synchronous, learning, asynchronous learning reaching out to the students, I have noticed an increased level of kindness and tolerance amongst people in educational settings, getting less frustrated in front of students or at students, because I think most people do realize that yes, we’re all in this together. Be this too shall pass. But see, the biggest thing we all need right now is human kindness, a little bit of tolerance, support and understanding, and, and not, not to be short with people or a short tempered person.


Sam Demma (13:20):
Showing us what really matters. And it’s about the relationships with our students and our fellow educators or student leaders. What keeps you going? What keeps you hopeful? You have this positive aura, this enthusiasm, this energy, even when things are difficult, I would imagine you’re the teacher lifting everyone else up. What, what keeps you hopeful and motivated?


Joshua Sable (13:40):
Well, I, you know, I mentioned before this, you know, part, one of the teaching philosophy, this idea of, of giving people a reason to come back tomorrow, when we meet with student leadership at our school at the beginning of the year, I often ask them, what’s, what’s, what’s your role this year? And they’ll say, oh, I’m, I’m the VP or I’m the treasurer I’m in charge of communications. And they usually don’t guess the next question, which is, well, that’s, that’s your title, but what’s, what’s your role within the school? What do you want to accomplish? What do you want to do? What sort of difference do you want to make in other people’s lives? And one of the things we talk about is this amazing opportunity that we have to make memories for other people. And I call student activities and student leadership, the memory making machine, you know, we’re in our school and yeah, as a teacher, it’s great.


Joshua Sable (14:32):
If you teach French, you can teach them how to conjugate a verb. If you teach math how to do algebra, if you teach science, you know, how to dissect a pig. But we all have this other amazing opportunity to actually create memories for other people. And yes, the memory can take different shapes and forms. The memory can be doing this great program at lunchtime and a kid got to wear a funny hat or get five more face or pay money to his teacher in the face with a sponge. And that’s part of the memory making machine. But part of the memory making machine is also opening the door for someone or, you know, smiling thumb when they’re having a bad day or asking them how their test was last period, or talking to them about the leaf game, because, you know, that’ll be a good distraction from whatever else is going on in their life.


Joshua Sable (15:25):
So making memories is not limited to being the most creative dynamic person who grabs the mic and talks in a big, you know, game show book. It’s about who’s overstayed checks, you know, which some of us can do, but that’s, that’s only a small piece of the memory making machine. So I encourage our student leaders to make memories and so own this idea of the memory making machine as much as possible. And, and that’s what keeps me going. This is challenge to make a difference in young people’s lives and to give them a reason to come back tomorrow through the memory making machine. That’s all


Sam Demma (16:01):
Awesome. And I want you to recall those stories now where you have helped other students make their own memories for themselves. Maybe they wrote, you wrote you a letter, 10 years down the road. Maybe they told you right when it had an impact on them, but recall a couple more of those stories that you think would be worth sharing to remind some fellow educators why it’s so important, the work they’re doing.


Joshua Sable (16:20):
Sure. And, and, you know, educators don’t do these things for the letters. We do everything just for the money. No. we don’t do things for the paycheck. We don’t do things for the, for the nice letters we do it because, you know, generally we, we care about young people and we were trying to give them an experience that’s maybe a little bit better than the experience of the students the year before or better than our experience. And we’re just trying to leave this school, this world a little bit better than, than how we found it. So. Sure. Yeah. I’ve got a bunch of stories. I’ll share a few and you can cut me off or tell me to keep going your, your, your call. Th the, the other thing I challenged student leaders to do when we come into meetings, I tell them my, my five favorite words to hear at the beginning of a student council meeting are, wouldn’t it be cool?


Joshua Sable (17:10):
If so, I want them to start a phrase with, wouldn’t it be cool if, and they finish that sentence. So oftentimes they’ll come into a meeting and they’ll say, and we had a student council president about 15 years ago, who said, wouldn’t it be cool if we slept at the school? And he was a bit of a, I don’t know, he was a bit of a showman. And he had all these crazy ideas. And sometimes the ideas didn’t necessarily come to fruition, but we all sort of laughed. And he said, no, no, no, I’m serious. Wouldn’t it be cool if we have a sleepover at the school? And we talked about it at first, everyone thought he was joking. And I said, well, you know what, Adam, we run a United way fundraiser single year. We don’t have a kickoff event for it. What if we had students pay money or raise money through their neighbors, friends, family, to sleep at school and we can run, you know a sleep over in the gym.


Joshua Sable (18:04):
We could have all these activities, we can play sports, play games. We can also decorate the school for United way. And then in the morning when people get up in the morning we’ll give everyone shirts that say, I slept at school for United way, and they’ll be wearing these big red shirts. And throughout the day, yeah, their eyes will be closed. They’ll be sleepy. There’ll be yawning and flat because they didn’t get much sleep, but that will be our big kickoff. Sure enough, the event came to fruition. Adam had the biggest smile on his face. He felt so good that this program was his idea. Sure. It’s our job as educators to help deal with logistics, to make sure the custodians know where to be, to make sure, you know, no one gets hurt, but we need to develop our ideas or to be energized by student ideas.


Joshua Sable (18:50):
And that was a classic example of that, you know a couple of years ago during the winter Olympics, students said, wouldn’t it be cool if we gave out some gold medals to to students for being great leaders at the school. So we brainstormed this at a student council meeting, we talked about it and they said, oh yeah. So how many would we do? Well, let’s do one per grade. We’ll give it to one student per grade. And another student said, well, wouldn’t it be cool if every student in the grade got a gold medal and that they, the kids said, yeah, that would be great. That would be amazing. And then other ones said, well, wouldn’t it be cool if each gold metal was actually personalized for the individual student? And they said, yeah, yeah, yeah. And then they said, well, wouldn’t it be cool if it were not only personalized, but referenced a specific skill or traits or characteristic that the person had and the kids say, yeah, let’s do it. So we’ve got a thousand kids in our school. We took these student council members from each grade. They’ve divided themselves up. They took old CDs, which if you have a young audience members there, I don’t know. How would you describe it, Sam? What’s, what’s a CD.


Sam Demma (20:02):
It looks like a disk, the hole in the middle.


Joshua Sable (20:08):
Oh, we got our computer. Some departments that donate all these old CDs that they weren’t using anymore. We took a grade list. We had the students write down something specific about every single student in their grade. So it said, let’s say your name was John Smith says John Smith, great smile, right. Or Toby Toby Rosen is you know, great at dance or whatever it is, you know, has a great slapshot, nice hair, whatever it is. Then we had the student council come and set up all the classes all at the same time. And they handed out these specific metals on strings, put them around the kids. And every single kid in the school had their moment, their gold metal with these personalized metals around their neck. And I remember a moment where I was peeking into a class, taking some pictures during this. And one of the kids looked at his metal and he looked at someone else’s and he said, Hey, my mine’s different from yours. And he said, do you think that they wrote a specific trait or manual for every single student in the grade? And the kids said, yeah. And then said, how cool is that? So it was a great moment for the student leadership because they got to see a program start from the ground up and come to fruition. But it was a great moment for the students who received the metals, which was really, really, really awesome. Really great.


Sam Demma (21:31):
No, that’s amazing. I love that story. And I was just on the cusp of being too old to know what a CD was, but I did use them in my former earlier years for sure. That’s awesome. Now you’re also somebody who’s been responsible for bringing in external presenters, bringing in organizations from the community to come and work with students. Do projects, fundraise, someone that we both know you brought in was Blake fly. I remember I was there watching him when he presented over your 26 years of education, you’ve probably worked with dozens of speakers. How do you bring someone in, or what are your grounds for deciding, you know, this is a message that I want my students to hear. And I want to put her in front of them.


Joshua Sable (22:13):
There’s so many events, six speakers out there, and we know the impact that a great speaker like yourself or someone who has a message and idea that they want to share. How, how, how impactful that can be. So we just look for someone that we think is going to connect with young people, someone that has a message and idea, something that’s going to make a difference in a young person’s life. Sometimes they can inspire a hundred percent of the audience. Sometimes they’re only inspiring 5% of the audience to make change, but if they can help just a few people in the audience make their day a little bit better, switch their perspective, switch their focus, give them a new angle, a new, take, a new taste. We’re excited about it. So, yeah, I, I, you know, every once in a while we try to bring in someone and whether it’s to work with a specific grade or leadership group or with the entire student body we’re happy to bring that in because it can make a huge difference.


Sam Demma (23:10):
Cool. Yeah. It’s helpful for people who maybe just be getting into a role or into education to hear that kind of stuff. And in relation to the messages that you’ve seen that have had the biggest impact, is it the message itself, the delivery, is it how they interact with the students? What leaves the greatest impact on the audience?


Joshua Sable (23:28):
Look, it’s it’s, you know, as, as the audience may guess who are listening today, it’s, it’s oftentimes a combination of those things, combination of the contents and the delivery. But young people are smart. They know when they’re being talked down to, they know they want to be respected in the same way that you were, I want to be respected and they want that sense of trust and that sense of community we all want to be liked. So I think if they feel like there are parts of the speaker’s worlds and that they are not being talked down to that they’re being respected as an interesting young adult with ideas and plans and hopes and dreams for the future. There’s a good shot that we’re going to, we’re going to have a connection along the way. Cool.


Sam Demma (24:13):
Awesome. And there’s an educator listening right now. Who’s been enjoying the entire conversation. We’ve almost been talking for 30 minutes now, but I want you to imagine they were your age when you just started there 22 years old listening, just start in education. And this is their first year teaching, very different from your first year, very different from so many other educators. First year of teaching. What would you tell your younger self, if this was your first year, what words of advice would you have?


Joshua Sable (24:41):
Three words, take a nap. You got to rest up, you know and I’m not joking. What I mean by that is we, we all want every lesson, every program, every game, every show, anything we do in school to be perfect, to be 100% and it won’t always work out. So yeah, you can prepare for your English class or your math class or your history class or the game you’re about to coach or the kids. You’re about to direct in a play. You can do all that, but there are going to be curve balls along the way that you’re going to have to adjust to. So you need to be in it for the long haul. You need to have patients, you need to be able to have the resilience to bounce back on a daily basis. And if, and if you can do that, if you can stick with it for the long haul, the rewards are, are unbelievable.


Joshua Sable (25:40):
And, and many of them fall in that memory making machine worlds, because you get to hold onto this unbelievable collection of memories from your career, and you get to make a difference in the life of a young person and perhaps be ingrained in their memory as a person who made a difference or a program who made that made a difference or an idea that inspired them to get into politics or teaching or mathematics or construction or whatever they want to get into. We have this amazing responsibility as educators to pass these people on to the next stage in their life. And it’s, and it’s an amazing opportunity to make a difference and to ultimately make the world a better place.


Sam Demma (26:25):
Some of them wants to reach out to you and hear a little bit more about anything that we talked to today. That could be from a different province, different country, want to bounce some ideas around what’s the best way to reach out to you and have that conversation.


Joshua Sable (26:36):
Yeah. I, you know, I’m slightly embarrassed to say that you can’t find me on Facebook. You can find me on my wife’s Facebook. I do have an Instagram account, but it’s not public it’s private. Email is the number one best way to do that right now. I probably will have a website coming out a little bit later on this year for student leadership and training and workshops and all that fun stuff, but that’s not out yet. So the best way is through email I’ll it’s a long one. So I’ll say it a bit slowly. It’s jsable@tenembaumchat.org, and hopefully no one falls asleep or takes a nap now. So it’s great. S as in Sam, a B as in Bob, L as in Larry E that’s my name jsable@tanenbaumchat.org, which is my school. She hasn’t Tom a N as in Nancy, E N as in Nancy, B as in Bob eight U M as in Mary, C as in Charles, H as in hello, a T as in tom.org.


Sam Demma (27:37):
Awesome. Josh, thank you so much for taking the time to chat. This has been phenomenal, and you’ve definitely done many interviews before, and I can’t wait to see your website.


Joshua Sable (27:46):
Thanks so much for having me, Sam and good luck with everything. You’re you’re an inspiration for many people. So thanks for, thanks for doing this.


Sam Demma (27:54):
Another action packed interview with veteran teacher and memory maker, Joshua Sable. So many actionable ideas that you can take away from this episode. If you want more, definitely reach out to Josh and please consider if you enjoyed this taking a minute out of your day to leave a rating and review some more educators. Like you can find these episodes of this podcast and benefit from the conversations we’re having right now with all these educators. And if you are someone who has ideas to share an inspiring stories about the impact of education on young people, please reach out, you know, email us, info@samdema.com. So we can get your stories and actionable ideas out on the show ASAP. I’ll see you on the next episode. Talk soon.

Join the Educator Network & Connect with Joshua Sable

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.

November 20, 2021 by Student Activity Director Student Leadership Student Success Teachers 0

Shonna Barth – Principal of Crescent Heights High School

Shonna Barth - Principal CHHS
About Shonna Barth

Shonna Barth (@ShonnaBarth), is the Principal at Crescent Heights High School. She is a recipient of the 2020-2021 Distinguished Leadership Award presented by the Council for School Leadership of the Alberta Teachers’ Association. She started at Cresent Heights eight years ago as a counsellor and moved into her role as vice principal after three years and is now the Principal of the school. 

She cares and works with ALL students in the school. She enjoys all aspects of the Grade 7-12 life including student leadership, drama, band productions and athletics. She coaches volleyball and is an avid supporter of other CHHS extra-curricular events. Shonna believes it takes a variety of life experiences and a village to help students grow and develop into their best potential. Student and staff wellness is a passion of hers as she continues to work to find balance and fulfillment in her own life.

Connect with Shonna: Email | Twitter | Linkedin

Listen Now

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

Resources Mentioned

Council for School Leadership

Alberta Teachers’ Association

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 (00:02):
Shonna, welcome to the high-performing educator podcast. Huge pleasure to have you on the show here today. Why don’t you start by introducing yourself and sharing a little bit behind your journey that brought you to where you are today?


Shonna Barth (00:13):
Awesome. Well, thanks for having me. I am the principal of Crescent Heights High School and medicine hat Alberta. I have worked in kind of all levels of education. I spent a good chunk of the first part of my career in elementary, mainly grade six, and I really found with grade six. So you had that real opportunity to build student leaders at that age. They’re the oldest kids in the school, and they’re just really keen on giving back to the community and being part of the school as a whole. So I often led the student leadership with, through the schools and just try to really branch out with student experience to not just in the classroom. How can we impact their lives beyond that and how can we help them impact the world beyond that as well? So that’s been a passion of mine, right from probably about the third or fourth year when I started teaching before too long, I moved into the role of part-time counselor.


Shonna Barth (01:02):
So I was half-time teacher part-time school counselor, not a, I don’t have a mental health background per se, but just, I always told the kids, I’m an adult that gets along with kids. Well, and so through that platform, I was able to really get to know what some of the real concerns kids were going through. You have more time to sit and talk with kids and chat about what’s going on in their lives. And then from that, we could work with the student council kids to, okay, we’ve got a lot of kids going through this. What could we do to try to support those students? Although I still put a lot of time into my classroom and my teaching that side of my career started to really feel like a passion for me. So I spent about five or six years as a school counsellor.


Shonna Barth (01:41):
And then I moved into what we call mental health capacity building, project program in Alberta. So we had three for three years. We worked in the schools to try to work in the universal side of supporting our students and families. So we would go into classrooms with programs. We would work in small groups on things that were going on, and that was funded by Alberta health. Recognizing that teachers don’t go to school in order to be able to work with a lot of these things. We don’t get taught a lot of that. So we were building capacity within the teachers to support their students through some of these challenging times, the administrators, the families we’d offer family nights. So I was really immersed then in that whole world of mental health, then resiliency and building grit. So that has been an excellent resource for me moving into high school. I moved into that after that, with working with the grade nine through 12 counseling and teenagers are a whole different breed and, you know, just as exciting if not even more. So I think grade six and then I’ve been in administration the last about five years, I guess, and just moved into being a principal this year.


Sam Demma (02:43):
Awesome. And did you know, like from a young age that you wanted to get into education and teaching, or like what kind of steered you in that specific path?


Shonna Barth (02:51):
Well, my whole family, pretty much your teachers. My father was an administrator, my aunt uncle. So I actually didn’t want to be a teacher cause I was determined to do my own thing and make my own mark on the world, but it was fairly early. Obviously I wanted to work with people and that I am on that side of the spectrum of working with things. So I had at one point really wanted to be a social worker. And my mum was worried about my, my soft heart in that world. Cause that’s a real challenging world at times. And I big props to anybody who is doing that work has that is a, it’s a challenging area, but man, you can really make a difference. But once you got into education, I realized that that side of me could also come out through my teaching as well. Once I did my first round of student teaching, I was hooked when I got to know those kids. And there’s no looking back after that.


Sam Demma (03:39):
That’s awesome. And you mentioned at the beginning of your response that you thought grade six is like the perfect age to start introducing students to student leadership. Like what does that look like in grade six? Is it getting students involved and engaged in planning events? Yeah, like take me back there for a minute and kind of explain what that looked like or why you thought student leadership was so important to introduce at that age.


Shonna Barth (04:01):
Yeah. So in our curriculum, a big part of grade six, social studies is about government. So there’s kind of a natural fit to start forming some sort of student government. I was always reluctant though to do the whole voting thing. Like I know there’s some value in learning of that, but I also know there’s value in rejection and how bad that can feel to be begins a popularity thing. So my philosophy has always anybody who wants to get involved, come on, we just called it leadership. And yeah, it was a lot of planning, looking at the fun events in the school and the extra activities and really started with that part of it. Cause to me, that kind of gave them the hook with the other kids in the school. It also gave me a hook with the other kids in school. I never had to deal with discipline because kids knew I was the lady who planned the fun stuff.


Shonna Barth (04:42):
So they don’t want us to get in trouble with her. And then we kind of branched out as I got to see how these kids had influence in the school and really started to work with them on how can you use that, that for good, rather than for evil, because you don’t want these kids thinking they’re a big deal and bullying the grade fours because they’re in grade six leadership and taking a look at those kids who maybe didn’t have a buddy to sit with or that sort of thing, like really encouraging get some of them aren’t at that maturity to be able to think outside themselves. But there definitely was ones that good. So we kind of balanced it out between planning Western days and school, spirit days with also, okay. We’ve noticed a lot of kids like really kind of on their own, what can we do to help those kids?


Shonna Barth (05:24):
So try to balance that they were lunch hour meetings. We also rounded once I moved to a more of a six to eight school, we ran a leadership class. And so within that class, the students chose to come to that. So we could go in a little bit deeper about what it looks like to be a leader, looked at traditional leaders in our community as well as throughout history and just try to pull out some aspects of things they were doing. So just tried to really branch out on the interests that they already had past planning, school dances and fun days.


Sam Demma (05:54):
I love that. It’s amazing. And when did volleyball come into the picture? I know you also coached now. And did you play when you were younger or where’d that passion?


Shonna Barth (06:02):
I did. And that I told this story a few times, I guess, but I went to a smaller high school where my dad was a principal and I tried it on grade seven and I didn’t make the team, which if your dad’s a principal, you gotta be pretty bad not to make the team in grade eight. They brought me on as a manager, cause I think they felt sorry for me that I still kept coming out and trying. And I would go to camps in the summer and I kept working and I’ve made the team of grade nine. And by grade 12, I was the captain of the team and never have I ever received an MVP trophy. But through my, my years of volleyball and different sports, I played most improved or more sportsmanlike. And I tell it to these young kids that I coach a lot that a lot of the real rock star volleyball players that I played with, they’re not playing anymore.


Shonna Barth (06:47):
As soon as they came up against somebody that maybe was as good as them better, they got frustrated and they were done. I had always been in it because I love the game. I liked being part of a team. I like part of that atmosphere. So once I got out of university, I knew I wanted to provide that opportunity for other students. So the first, probably five or six years, I coached a team of the kids. Who’d been cut from other teams. So we would just form a team, our own little team and so that they still get to play and we’d go into the league and we didn’t win a whole lot, but the kids were just so happy to be there. Mandy of them still played right through, up till about grade 11. And now we’re playing as young adults and I’ve ran into them because I still play in the ladies league, not at tier one or anything anymore, but I still play and I’ll run into those kids and they quite regularly say like, thank you for providing that opportunity. So I, the reason I stay with it now, as much as it’s a little bit overwhelming time commitment wise is that’s where I really get to connect with kids. You don’t get to, you don’t have too many kids coming back to a school going, oh, I remember when you were my principal. Like, it’s more about the coaching and the times that we get to spend with them, then.


Sam Demma (07:55):
That’s amazing. And you know, it’s cool because you are a student who tried really hard and didn’t make the team. And I’m in a situation you’re probably in yourself is, you know, you have to bring on some kids and turn down others. How do you do that effectively? Like how do you know, how did it, how did, how did the other coach do that for you when you were in growing up and maybe your dad helped a lot there? Cause he was the principal. And, and how do you do that now? Just to make sure students still feel motivated like you were to keep trying.


Shonna Barth (08:22):
We we added another team here again this year, once we got to the cat. So we try to find as many adults as possible. There was a few that just, unfortunately there’s just not enough gym time and not enough coaches to enable everybody. We try to be as respectful as possible. We don’t post a list where somebody has to read it at eight in the morning and deal with rejection all day at school, you get a letter at the end of the day and you’d take it home. And we would list all the other things that are going on in the school that we encourage them to try out. So that we’re hopefully that if volleyball, wasn’t their thing, we have a really strong drama program. We have a cross-country program, things that there aren’t as many cuts having to be made. So we try to encourage them, okay, this wasn’t your thing, but that’s all right. Try something different. And on student council here too, we’re always like, Hey, come join us. You can still be part of things. So a lot of times when kids come and they don’t have the skills, you’re not necessarily coming because they love volleyball. They don’t necessarily even know volleyball. They just really want to be part of something and be part of a team.


Sam Demma (09:18):
And you mentioned that students, some of their fondest memories are with extra curricular activities and you know, that’s, that’s how you really get to connect with kids. Like, do you think it has a huge impact on students and like, have you seen the impact be realized like you have students come back and say like, oh, the volleyball team made a big difference. And were there any stories that may have been like very impactful that stick out to you and maybe even to the point where you could change the student’s name, if it’s something really serious?


Shonna Barth (09:44):
Yeah. Well, I am a for more, I guess the teaching has so much more one-on-one impact than you do as a principal in that sense. So I reflect back on that era, maybe a little more. So through that grade six era, like we would go for outdoor ed trips where we’d stay for two or three nights out at camp and be together, we’d go to Calgary and go to the Calgary science center. So you’re sitting on a bus, you’re walking around the science center with kids. You’re walking around the zoo with kids. We did a lot of just, oh, I used to have science sleepovers where the kids would stay overnight in the school. And we do science experiments and they get to have races up and down the hallway. And just like lot of work on my part, like I was tired, but the bucket feeling you get as an adult from that.


Shonna Barth (10:25):
So what I’ve found now that I’m able to go out places where you can have adult beverages and things like that. And you run into students that you have taught at those ages. They come sit down and they had me a beverage and that like, they want to talk about, remember when we were walking on that hike and elk water, and we were talking about blah, blah, blah, like, and they can remember almost word for word in their mind what they felt. I said, I can barely remember the conversation. I can almost always remember the student, but those are the times you really get to have those real conversations with kids and they get to have a glimpse of you as a human. And you get to see them as a human as well. And I can count how many cards I’ve been sent over the years or kids who’ve stopped to have those conversations.


Shonna Barth (11:08):
Just about things that we talked about, the difference I made in their life. I’m like, wow, like you were such an easy kid. I never really felt like I was doing anything super impactful for you. Or on the flip side, sometimes the really challenging kids I’ll see them a year or two later. And they act like they’ve never met me before. And I do think some of that is they don’t want to remember who they were at that point in their life. And you’re kind of a reminder of that. We still kind of hope that some of the conversations you had maybe had some impact, you’re not going to affect every kid for sure. But yeah, I think this one young lady who I, I, I should move down for grade four, five and six on charter all three years. So I had got to know her very well.


Shonna Barth (11:49):
And then I remarried her again in grade 10. At that point, she was kind of going sideways in life, just making some bad choices and we just run into each other somewhere. I did not recognize her because she was pretty changed the makeup and the hair. And didn’t look quite as innocent as she did in grade six. And she just came over and talked and we talked for about an hour and I’ve heard from message from her about three years later about that, that conversation was that I’ve changed time for her. It just reminded her who she used to be, where she wanted to go. And she couldn’t. I asked her if she had any like specific thing that I said and said she couldn’t remember, but just having that conversation and that connection with the person that she was and where she wanted to go. And just that summer, I didn’t just walk away and ignore that. I spent some time with her time for a lot of these kids is, is a huge value. And it’s not always easy if you have 32 kids in your class to be able to have those one-on-one. So if you’re not able to do some of the extracurricular, you miss out on those really cool opportunities. Yeah.


Sam Demma (12:50):
Yeah. It’s so true. I even think back to my own high school experience and I play on the soccer team cause I was a big soccer player. And I remember building not only deeper relationships with the coaches of the team, but also the teammates I find that you don’t, unless you proactively schedule time with the friends in your class to hang out, you don’t really have another opportunity during class to build super deep relationships. Because if you talk, the teacher starts yelling at you and it’s like stop talking, I’m teaching, you know? And the soccer field enabled that as well. So I ended up building relationships with so many other students which is why looking back. I wish I got way more involved in high school. I was just way too focused on soccer that I didn’t really join anything except for the soccer team. And it’s like one of my regrets when I talk to students now and encourage them to get involved. But what are some of the, like, education has changed a lot in the past two years, it’s been a lot of challenges. What do you think some of the challenges are that your school and yourself as a principal are currently faced with? And then how are you trying to overcome those things?


Shonna Barth (13:52):
I think, I guess from a personal part I’ve really pride myself a year and a half, two years ago that even with 1300 kids in the student school, somebody walked down the hall that wasn’t part of our school. I would recognize that. And now with the masks, it’s just, it feels like we’re so much more anonymous. Like kids, I normally smile everybody that walks by, they can’t tell if you’re smiling and like, we’re just losing that personal connection. And I worry about that because for some kids that just those little conversations in the hall might be the only time they talk to an adult during that day, like on a one-on-one sort of thing. Definitely the loss of some of those extracurricular this last year has been really concerning. Like they we’ve had kids not come back. Finding jobs has been really important part of high school because for some of them they’re the sole breadwinner in their home.


Shonna Barth (14:43):
So they’re, excuse me, they’re not going to leave their job and come back and play soccer or volleyball or join the band cause their family needs them. So it’s become kind of a place right now of just come get your education because that’s what you have to do. And then go back to your real life. So we don’t have the pep rallies. We don’t have this th the school assemblies everything’s done over zoom. And I do think that depersonalizes us. It’s also on the positive side, it’s encouraged us to be creative and try to find some new ways to connect with kids. I think some students, when we were online, being able to talk one-on-one with their teacher over screen was a little less intimidating than having to put your hand up in class and potentially say something down with your teacher can only hear you when you can only hear them.


Shonna Barth (15:31):
It’s it allows for some really positive relationships, but I do worry just about the students’ physical health, their emotional health. It’s been a lot of sitting in front of screens these last two years, and that becomes very easy to do. It’s when you’re a teenager, especially there are junior high kids who struggle a bit with anxiety to start with staying at home can feel really comfortable and safe, but then learning how to push through that and learning how to deal with difficult kids is, is unfortunately, this is a skill that we need, like adults, don’t all of a sudden become nice. When you turn 18, 19, you’re still gonna have difficult coworkers or difficult bosses. And so I think we’re missing out on some of those skills as well, that would benefit them in the work world.


Sam Demma (16:15):
And like what I know this has been ongoing for two years. What, what are some programs or things that you did in the past year that were successful despite the challenges or things that the school adjusted or that the teachers might’ve tried that worked out kind of well.


Shonna Barth (16:32):
Oh, we still through our school student council still been trying to organize some sort of spirit day. Sometimes it’s like, even when we were at home, like dress up and we’ll take pictures of you over zoom, like we’ve tried to encourage that sort of thing at home. We really tried to keep up with our any sort of justice projects that we can to make sure that the kids aren’t getting so insulated into their own world, that they’re forgetting what’s going on in the world. So within our English and social programs, they do a lot of work in, in those areas. We still managed to pull off a musical at the hand of last year. Our she was just amazing, like they’d practice over zoom, which of course is delayed and backwards trying to do dance. Like the creativity that they have come up with has been just incredible.


Shonna Barth (17:15):
So the last two days of June parents were able to come in and watch a performance. So those grade twelves who’ve been part of musical theater since grade seven, got to still have their, their audience, which meant a lot to them. We still ran some sports in the fall and the winter when we were in the real lockdown, not so much, but we just kept it to more of an intramural type things. We didn’t go play schools from other places, but we took more kids. So we had a guy coach guy seven last year, we had like 30 grade seven kids that came out. We just broke them into teams and they played against each other where in the past, we would’ve broke back down to only 12 students. So we had 30 students that, you know, maybe the only time in their life, we’re part of a team and got to have the shirt and take home the shirts and that sort of thing.


Shonna Barth (17:59):
So just really trying to keep things as normal as possible. We did manage to pull off a graduation both years. First year was very, I felt very personal and we had a lot of positive feedback from that group of parents took us about three days to get through it. But each parent and students and their parents and family come up on the stage, the parents handed the diploma to the student. We stood in the back and clap for them to pictures. So the parent didn’t have to sit through 200 other kids getting their diploma was very personal. We had a couple of photo booth set up and then this year was more of a traditional one in our, one of our larger convention centers, which I know the parents and kids appreciated my, the kids appreciate it because they got to have their peers with them. But it last year definitely was very, it was kinda heartwarming. Cause we, we got to those kids that really had a tough time getting to that diploma and worked their butt off together. We could really celebrate that student heart and cheer and congratulate them and made it really personal. So those are some good things have come out of this.


Sam Demma (18:57):
Yeah, I agree. I think with every adversity, there’s an equal opportunity somewhere. It’s got to be creative to find it and figure it out. What keeps you hopeful? Like what, what do you think inspires you to continue doing this work with a big smile on your face and show up every day and lead others and coach and try and make an impact in these young people’s lives?


Shonna Barth (19:18):
Definitely from the, I picked the hardship of missing my first seven days as a principal cause I was home with COVID and not being able to see people face-to-face and having to do it all over zoom or just join into assemblies, made me appreciate the energy of the kids, the resiliency of the kids. They continually amazes me. Like we really thought coming back to school this fall with mass mandate being implemented again, we had thought when we left in June, we’re kind of done with all this and we’re going to be more back to normal. And we’re really our numbers are really high mess. Not right now. We thought the kids were we’re going to be fighting with the kids and they’ve been amazing. They’ve just, I just continue to remind you why you’re doing what they’re doing. You’re doing, they’re so positive.


Shonna Barth (20:01):
And they are sometimes they’re teenagers and they’re going to grumble about things. But honestly I find the adults gumball more than the kids do. So I just, I think being able to watch those kids walk across the stage, being in a seven to 12 school where we get to Washington through their junior high axed and struggles. And then by the time they come to grade 12 and I know every one of those kids walking across the stage and like this time, we’re like, oh man, I wish I could give you a hug. Like, you know what so many of them have been through. So I think being able to watch the growth and how they learned to be grateful, even by the end of grade 12, not always grateful and grade eight, but by the time they hit grade 12, like know to just recognize what everybody in the school is doing for them of that.


Sam Demma (20:42):
I love it. And there’s a lot of younger educators listening to this podcast as well, who might be just getting into education. And I think there’s a lot of value in sharing your experiences and also your mistakes. You know, like when I talked to high school, because when I talked to high school students, I say like one of the mistakes I made was not getting involved enough and I can reflect on that and encourage students to get more involved as an educator and like a, you know, a teacher. Do you have any mistakes that you’ve made or actually learning opportunities that you’ve experienced that you think are worth sharing with other educators that are listening?


Shonna Barth (21:14):
Yeah. I think for new educators, a couple of things that I would stress is get involved. Like I’m not going to say this one mistake, cause I definitely I’ve been involved. I’ve been doing things my whole career. It is a balance though, of your personal wellness and the students. I worry sometimes now where we’re putting our personal wellness. So high up on the scale that we’re missing out on opportunities that would make us feel better. I think we don’t necessarily recognize that. Yes, physically. I was tired Saturday night when I walked home at 7, 7 30 at night after coaching all day, but just sit and reflect on how the kids improved throughout the day, playing volleyball and their excitement and their cheering, that bucket feeling kind of stuff really can. It makes you feel really good too. So I guess that’s been a vice like mistake can be thinking that putting time in equates to being tired, you gotta put your time in the right places.


Shonna Barth (22:10):
I know when I first started, I was, I’m not artistic, but I put insane amount of time into my bulletin boards in my classrooms. Like every month I’d completely change the theme of the room where I spend five hours on a Sunday, making a game of some sort for the kids to play that would take them about three minutes to play. They would never appreciate it as much as I felt they should, because I knew how much time I had put in to making that thing. I thought they should be bowing to me and saying like, you’re just the greatest teacher ever. They don’t value that stuff as much as they value the one-on-one the time you spend with them. So a beginning teacher having that Pinterest perfect classroom might make you feel good. Your kids don’t really value that as much. You know, they don’t want to come in and see a bare walls or a total disaster either. But thinking about where you spend your time, like time spent with kids will always pay off. Always time, spent marking all that stuff has to happen. But if you can find ways to make that less in your life and time one-on-one connecting with kids, you’ll have a great career.


Sam Demma (23:15):
I love that. That’s awesome. That’s amazing advice. Well, Shauna, thank you so much for coming on the show. It’s been a great conversation. If another educator is listening and wants to reach out, ask you a question, bounce, some ideas around what would be the best way for them to get in touch with you.


Shonna Barth (23:31):
Probably email. And I would love that. I really love exchanging ideas. People always tell me I’m a creative person, but I’m an idea stealer. I like to take stuff from people and adapt it from where it’s at and I’m more than willing to share that we’ve done as well. So my email address is Shonna.Barth@sd76.abb.ca. I think what you’re doing is great here, Sam. I really appreciate it. I think we need more people spreading the positive things that are happening in education and sharing ideas. So I really appreciate you taking the time to be doing this.


Sam Demma (24:07):
Pleasure, and it’s been great chatting with you. Keep up the great work and we’ll talk soon.


Shonna Barth (24:12):
Sounds great.

Join the Educator Network & Connect with Shonna Barth

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.

November 17, 2021 by Principals Student Leadership Teachers 0

Paul Dols – Climate & Culture Coordinator at Monrovia High School in Southern California

Paul Dols Student Leadership
About Paul Dols


Paul Dols (@PaulDWildcat) is the Climate & Culture Coordinator at Monrovia High School in Southern California. His responsibilities include being Activities Director, Renaissance Coordinator, and Link Crew Coordinator. 

A classroom teacher for 26 years, his passion and goal are to create a school that every student and staffulty member calls home and no one wants to leave.  Paul believes that education is the noblest of professions and provides the opportunity to “Sow the Seeds” each and every day.

Connect with Paul: Email | Instagram | Linkedin | Twitter

Listen Now

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

Resources Mentioned

UnSelfie: Why Empathetic Kids Succeed in Our All-About-Me World

Josten’s Renaissance leadership program

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):
Do you want access to all the past guests on this show? Do you want to network with like-minded individuals and meet other high-performing educators from around the world? If so, go to www.highperformingeducator.com. Sign up to join the exclusive network and you’ll get access to live virtual networking events and other special opportunities that will come out throughout 2021. I promise you I will not fill your inbox. You might get one email a month. If that sounds interesting. Go to www dot high-performing educator.com. Welcome back to another episode of the high-performing educator podcast. This is your host and youth speaker Sam Demma. Today’s guest is Paul Dols. He is the climate and culture coordinator at Monrovia high school in Southern California. His responsibilities include being activities, director Renaissance coordinator, and link crew coordinator, a classroom teacher for 26 years. His passion and goal is to create a school that every student and Staffold T member calls home. And no one wants to leave. Paul believes that education is the noblest of professions and provides the opportunity to sow the seeds each and every day. I hope you enjoy this conversation with Paul and I will see you on the other side, Paul, welcome to the high-performing educator podcast. Huge pleasure to have you on the show here today. Why don’t you start by just introducing yourself and sharing a little bit about why you do the work you do today in education?


Paul Dols (01:34):
Sure, sure. Sam, thanks so much for having me. I really appreciate it. I’m flattered. So I I’ve started in education back in the previous century. I had my first classroom in 95, 96 at a middle school in Northridge, California. I did middle school for a couple of years. And then in 1997, I moved to Monrovia high school. For those who don’t know where Monrovia is, we are in the foothills of Los Angeles about 10 miles from Pasadena in the rose bowl, which is kind of our GeoCenter for everybody. Who’s not sure where we are. And I’ve been at Monrovia ever since. It is a home away from home for both my wife and me. She’s an elementary teacher in the district. She’s my reason for being in Monrovia. And we, we have been invested in the kids and the families of this community now for gosh, 23, 24 years.


Paul Dols (02:26):
And it’s a passion, it’s a passion for, for this community. And especially for the kids who grew up in this community. I was social studies teacher by training and, and love government and, and politics and that kind of stuff. So that was what I taught for a long time. In 2008, I got tapped to take over something called the Josten’s Renaissance leadership program from a friend and mentor of mine who moved into administration. And that kind of started my divergent journey a little bit towards student leadership and towards reaching into the more social, emotional side of things which is where I’ve kind of been ever since. I, in 2017, I picked up activities as the activities director created a title for myself. I started calling myself the climate and culture coordinator and, and encompasses the Renaissance side of things and the activity side as to do our link crew program for our freshmen mentor project.


Paul Dols (03:25):
And I’m all about the social emotional side of education now. And it’s something that I didn’t think about when I started, I was all about the curriculum. And now it’s complete 180 and I am preaching for the mountaintops that we’ve got to take care of our kids on the social emotional side first and throwing out the, you know, the Maslow before bloom phrases become very popular lately. We’ve got to take care of what our kids need first before we give them that curriculum. So in a nutshell, that’s me, man. I I love what I do. I’m super spoiled here that I get to focus on that side of things almost exclusively. And that’s it, man. That’s, that’s the, that’s the nutshell version.


Sam Demma (04:09):
It’s it seems like social, emotional learning is finally coming to the table of discussion in all schools, across the, hopefully the world for an educator out there. That’s still unsure why it’s important and what it’s all about. Like how do you explain social emotional learning to someone and why you think it’s so important?


Paul Dols (04:27):
You know, I think the easiest way to do it. And I think one of the most important things to understand with there’s such a wide range of where teachers are and educators are on the spectrum of this is it’s okay, wherever you’re at. For some folks, they get into this, this job and it is it’s the, the subject they teach that they love. And they come to realize that they love the kids even more than they love the subjects that they’re teaching. And, but it can be hard for people. People have had all these different life experiences and maybe being a little bit more open with their own life with students is not something that they’re really comfortable doing. But the way I, the way I try to, to bring people to my side of things is basically just to reminding them that the world that we’re creating for these kids now, the businesses that are looking to hire these kids, when they get out of high school and college, the corporations that are trying to grow, they’re now looking at what used to be called the soft skills and it’s everything that they’re looking for.


Paul Dols (05:27):
It’s no longer about their GPA or their sat scores. And people are finally beginning to realize that those measurements really only measure one very small part of who a person is. And when you’ve got corporations like Google and Microsoft and, and even the banking firms are looking for people, AI that can work well together, that can critically think and analyze a problem and then work with other people to solve them. These are things that we don’t teach that well in America, we don’t really focus on it. It’s more about that rugged individualism still, but I think coming through COVID especially, and I don’t think we’re completely through it obviously, but through what we’ve experienced over the last 18 months, I think we realized that that individual I’m just going to get through this on my own kind of mentality is actually really detrimental to what we’re trying to accomplish.


Paul Dols (06:18):
And once we kind of realized that, and for me, I tried to instill in my kids as the leadership kids on our campus, to demonstrate that through how they act you know, practicing kindness above everything else, putting other people first taking and putting themselves in somebody else’s shoes, that empathy gap that Michelle Barbara talks about in her book, selfie is just incredibly true. And you know, that she cites a statistic that says that the more that we have less, less empathy, we have, the more anxiety we have, and we’re seeing this huge uptick in anxiety in kids. And we’re lucky enough, we came back. This is our second or first day of our second week back to school and we’re back fully in person and God-willing we get to stay there. But the anxiety that I see on kids’ faces and the concern and the unsuredness of what they’re doing is very, very real. And if, if that is the case, then we have to practice that empathy with, for those kids. And that is where I come at with, with staff work question, you know, I don’t know if I want to do this or not. We have to remind them that they’re not going to learn if they don’t feel safe. And like my buddy, Phil Campbell says, if they’re not seeing her in love, they’re not going to learn. How do we make them feel seen, heard, and loved.


Sam Demma (07:40):
That’s awesome. I love that. And the, the principles are so important. And you even have one behind you right now. I know this is only an audio podcast, so most people won’t see it, but it says leadership is an action, not a position. What does that line mean to you? And how do you use that to help students understand that we can all be leaders?


Paul Dols (08:00):
You know, I think it’s, we, we put that up there right before the pandemic. It was, it was ironic, but we so often, especially with, with like the ASB mentality or the Renaissance mentality of kids who come in and I’m lucky enough that I have classes, I have an ASB class, I have a Renaissance class. So it’s about 75 kids who are in our leadership program for a lot of people. Sometimes it’s a title. It’s something that they drop on a college application. It’s I was the senior class president. I was the ASB treasurer. I remind them on a daily basis. It’s not who you are. It’s what you do. It’s, there’s a, there’s a poster, the Maya Angelou quote up above me. You know, they’re not going to remember, you know what you say, they’re not going to remember what you do, but they’re going to remember how you made them feel.


Paul Dols (08:50):
For me, that is, you know, I just hung that up. We came back to school because I needed to see every day to remind myself or my kids leaving the room feeling better than when they came in. And for my student leaders, that same challenge as the case when they go into, when they’re in here and in my classroom, our classroom, it’s easy. It’s easy to, to be that empathetic kind soul. But what are you doing in math class and hour later, what are you doing at lunchtime to make other people in your campus feel important, feel connected, feel seen. And so it is that’s there to remind them and they see it. They can’t help, but see it cause it’s right above the board. And you know, it’s also to remind them that people watch them. I think it’s really important that, you know, there’s, I don’t, I can’t attribute the quote to somebody, but it characters what you do when people aren’t watching. And I think that is important for students to realize, even when you’re out in the community, your actions that you’re taking is going to determine who you are.


Sam Demma (09:53):
And they also impact other people, whether we know it or not driving by and looking over, right. One of the reasons why we would, we would always pick up trash on Saturday morning in large groups in very populated areas is because our hope was that someone would drive by look and instead of throwing their cigarette butt out the window, say, oh, maybe I should actually not. When you see 20 young kids picking up their garbage, you know it’s true. Every action has an influence. And I’m curious to know if something influenced you when you were growing up that directed you towards education. Like, did you know from a young age, on your own career journey that you were going to be a teacher, or did you like fall into this? What was the story behind your own career journey?


Paul Dols (10:33):
You know, I, I just told the story yesterday in class. That’s kind of funny. So I knew from the sixth grade off I was, I was blessed and I use that word very carefully, but I was blessed with incredible teachers from the little tiny private school that my brother that I went to in Baltimore through my middle school journey and then high school out here in California, I was blessed with teachers that just got it. They cared, they, they were invested in me as a person, not as a number on a roll book. And I I’d had a natural love for learning that I think came from my mom and dad that that really kind of drove me. I love to read. I love to learn about stuff. I don’t know. And that’s from a very young age, you know, I remember this is going to date me, but there was a huge deal when my parents bought the world book encyclopedia.


Paul Dols (11:26):
So for all the young people listed here, there used to be these books that took the place of the internet, the internet replaced the encyclopedia. But I just remember every year that we would get an update of everything that was new for the year. And I thrived on that book, I would page through it and just, it was amazing. So that love for learning drove me. In my brain, I always thought I was gonna coach basketball and teach U S history. That was, those are my two loves. The history part kept growing and the love for basketball is still there, but the idea of coaching and, you know, to all of the coaches out there, God bless you for what you do for the small amount of compensation that comes to you financially. And the time you give it’s amazing. But I made a decision when our, when our first child was born, that I can’t give up that kind of time with the family to do that.


Paul Dols (12:19):
But I just knew from the first time I stepped into a classroom as an educator, this was it. This was what I was supposed to do. I don’t have a ton of stuff left over from my time at a middle school, but there’s one picture in my office that it was my very first class and it’s just a class picture. It was super weird eighth graders, like, what are we doing, dude? But still hanging in my office to remind me of that day. And, you know, I think it is just, it’s such a privilege to do this job. When you realized that, you know, anywhere from 120 to 180 kids a year, you, you have somebody’s most precious possession and what you do with that can shape their entire life and you never know. See, and that’s the funny part. You never know when you’re going to influence somebody.


Paul Dols (13:13):
And when you’re going to say something that just sticks, that’s a little scary. Cause it gave me as I have a first period conference I’m blessed to be blessed. You know, I think it’s, it can be really intimidating when you realize that if you’re not in the right Ted space and you say something to a kid, it could send them the other direction. And there are days where that could happen. Cause because as human beings, man, we people forget that the teacher in the front of the room may be having a bad day too. And it may have nothing to do with anybody in the room. It could be something going on at home. It could be something that happened on the freeway. It could be an illness, especially, you know, with everything going on now. And so I think it is if you maintain that idea of being a privilege to serve and you approach it that way, you get so much back in return and these, these kids that I’ve been lucky enough to work with over the years.


Paul Dols (14:13):
I mean, they’ve gotten me through some really hard times. I’ve lost both of my parents in the last five years, six years now. But other than my wife and two children, the people that got me through it were my students, their reaction to when I came back the way they would lift me up and, and just kind of carry me through and just messages of encouragement that periodically see, and they give it to you. And they, you know, there was a kid who left me a note on my desk just the other day. She said, Hey, you look tired. I noticed the first week, but thank you for who you are. I don’t know who sent it. I don’t know who left it on my desk, but I was like, Ugh. So they give as much as we probably more than what we give. And it’s a, it’s a need for us to be able to look at a kid regardless of where we’re at right now and say, okay, that kid has a story. They’re writing their story right now. And we were lucky enough to be a part of it. And because of that, you have to take that role seriously. You have to step into it and embrace it and cherish it really.


Sam Demma (15:16):
I love that. That’s so awesome. That’s so cool. The note on the desk too, and it’s so true that every student is writing their own story chapter by chapter. And the coolest part is that the things that you say, the way that you hold yourself could actually alter the way they write their chapter. Right? That’s the, that’s the coolest privilege. You know, you mentioned you had, you were blessed to have teachers that just got it. What does that look like? Like what did those teachers do? That another educator listening could strive to do something similar in their own classroom to have a, you know, a positive effect on their students. Can you recall any of the things that those teachers did for you that made a huge difference?


Paul Dols (15:55):
You know, I think for, for, to have an impact on a kid, you have to be real with them, be authentic with them. And it’s, it’s, it’s not simple, but it sounds simple. And it’s, it’s being open with them about who you are as a person and making sure that you see them as people, not just as kids, the, the phrase you’d all well, kids these days, and then you fill in the blank. It’s, it’s always irked me a little bit when, when people talk about, oh, how could you teach high school? They’re so hard. They’re, they’re, they’re just disrespectful then. I’m like, no, they’re not, they’re not. You know, I think, you know, Diane dollar was my AP us history teacher and inventor at point of high school. And she had a passion for history and she taught her butt off every single day.


Paul Dols (16:49):
And she held us to a really high standard and it was hard. It was the only AP class I took in high school. I wasn’t one of, I was an okay student. I wasn’t a great student, but, you know, I took it because I wanted to have her as a teacher because I had heard you’re going to learn more than you ever can imagine. So I took that challenge and it was hard. And, but, you know, I still have contact with her and we still periodically, we’ll sit down every couple of years and have a cup of coffee and, and I get messages from her on Facebook and to just be encouraging, I mean, and that’s been good Lord, it’s 30 plus years now that I was in her class and you know, not every teacher is going to be like that. And I don’t think there’s a mold to create what that looks like, except for the fact that if, if you care about your kids as people first and you really delve delve into who they are as people and realize that those stories that they’re writing, that you’re just lucky to be in it.


Paul Dols (17:54):
And in operate from that mentality. I think one of the hardest things is there was always this idea of classroom management that we get taught in teacher school, which you know, is kind of the worst and giant waste of time that we do because you can’t really teach how to teach. You just have to get in there and do it. But you know, it was always, I’m going to respect you as the students, when you respect me first. And that’s actually the reverse of which had happened. And it’s hard for adults, especially the longer you do this. It’s, it’s hard to look at a 13 or 14 year old kid and say, I’m going to respect you for first. And then eventually you’re going to come back and respect me as the older person in the room, because that’s the opposite of what we teach in society, respect your elders, respect your elders, respect your elders, which is true.


Paul Dols (18:46):
And they should. But when you’re coming at an adolescent, who’s dealing with his own stuff at home and has a 50 to 60% chance of coming from a broken home where there’s, you know, one parent or there’s a divorce or whatever they’re dealing with and you add onto it, their mental health and their mental wellbeing. And if you come at a student and you say, look, respect me in their brain, the question should automatically be, why would I respect you? What, why is that required of me? But if you come at them with love and you come at them with compassion and you come at them with empathy, they can’t help, but respect you. I have a couple of kids that I’ve been working with for three years now. And it’s been a three-year battle for me to break down the walls that they’ve put up.


Paul Dols (19:33):
I’m starting to see that happening with them. And it’s just persistence. It’s an unwillingness to give up on, on that relationship. And I think when we throw that word into it, when you throw the relationship word into it, it gives some people back off a little bit because they believe there has to be this barrier between the teacher and the student. But if you build that barrier, you’re putting up an unnatural obstacle to the relationship. And so I think for me, that is, is what I focus on a lot. When I was teaching my content back in the day, I was never the most effective AP government teacher. You know, back, we used to have rate your teacher.com. I think they still have it. I would periodically be brave enough to go out there and read what they said. And, you know, my comments were always positive for the most part, but that was kind of said the same thing.


Paul Dols (20:24):
I may not have learned a lot, but I know he loved me. And I don’t know if as a, as a teacher, maybe that’s not the best compliment in the world for some, but for me, I’m okay with that. If, if kids leave here and they know what it means to be a good person and if know what it means to be kind to others and how to work with each other and to work their way through problems critically, I’m okay with that because I think that’s what the world needs. The world doesn’t need somebody, you know, that, you know, understands how the war of 18, 12 formed had happened and what was the relative salt of it because they live in a world now where that information is at their fingertips. They need to know how to relate to each other because that’s what honestly, that’s, what’s missing right now.


Paul Dols (21:17):
We’ve messed this place up so badly collectively as the adult for young people that we can’t fix it, the young people are going to have to fix it. And the only way it’s gonna get fixed is if they learn how to communicate, how to compromise and realize that it’s okay to have divergent opinions, if you’re willing to listen to each other and not see each other as that person is my enemy, they may have a different belief system. They may have a different faith. They may have a different opinion on masks. They may have a different opinion on a vaccine, but they’re still human. They still are writing their own story. And if we just talk to each other respectfully, we may not agree, but we have to be okay with that. And the adults in the room, whether it’s Congress or your state legislature, or your school board, or whoever, the adults in the room, aren’t modeling that. And because of that, what kids are seeing is society embracing conflict instead of compromise yeah.


Sam Demma (22:22):
Or discussion, right? Yeah. Yeah. It’s so true. It’s so, so true. If something that someone else says triggers you, it’s, it’s a, it’s an opportunity to go internal as well because people can’t make you angry. You know, they can say things, but at the end of the day, you’re, you’re in control of your emotions. And of course, sometimes, you know, we get upset and we say things, and again, that goes back to the idea that we’re all human, but, and then that all ties back to the importance of social, emotional learning and regulating your emotions. This has been such a great broad conversation. Paul, thank you so much for sharing a little bit about your journey into education, some of your own beliefs and principles that have served you and also the other teachers that had an impact on you growing up, if someone’s listening and wants to reach out and just have a conversation, another educator from somewhere in the world, what would be the best email to, to, to send or to get in touch with?


Paul Dols (23:15):
No, I would love that. I love talking about this stuff, man. I think, you know, one of the biggest, it’s a community of learners who do this job. I learn more from colleagues and from people all over the country that I’ve been lucky to meet through some of the stuff that I’ve done that social network and that, that PLC or that personal learning community. So yeah, you can reach out to me pdols@monroviaschools.net. I’m also on Instagram and Twitter at Paul D Wildcat. And I’m not on social media as much anymore because I watched the social dilemma. I am out there a couple of times a week posting some stuff and reposting some of the encouraging stuff that I see. But yeah, I would love to connect to anyone who wants to talk about social, emotional learning, what we do and why we do it and share stories. Cause I think it is incredibly important to pursue that.


Sam Demma (24:22):
Awesome. Paul, this was amazing. Thanks so much. Keep up the great work and I will talk soon. Thanks brother. Appreciate it. And there you have it. Another amazing guest and amazing interview on the high-performing educator podcast. As always, if you enjoy these episodes, please consider leaving a rating and review. So other educators like yourself can find this content and benefit from it. And here’s an exclusive opportunity that I mentioned at the start of the show. If you want to meet the guest on today’s episode, if you want to 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 Paul Dols

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.

November 1, 2021 by Student Activity Director Student Leadership Teachers 0

Jana Fisher – Teacher and Student Council Advisor of the year in 2020

Jana Fisher Student Leadership
About Jana Fisher

Jana Fisher (@Fisher_Jana) is a teacher, mother, and student leadership advisor at Wynard Composite Secondary School. As a member of the Saskatchewan Association of Student Council Advisors, she is always striving to provide her students with unforgettable experiences. In 2020, Jana was recognized as the student representative council (SRC) advisor of the year and was named by the Canadian Student Leadership Association, as the Leader of Distinction.

During the pandemic, Jana decided that student leadership was more important than ever. To take that belief and bring it to life, she partnered with Sam Demma to facilitate a virtual program for her leadership students.

Connect with Jana: Email

Listen Now

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

Resources Mentioned

Saskatchewan Association of Student Council Advisors

Canadian Student Leadership Association

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. Jana reached out to me back in May after I shared a graduation video with her. And since then we have worked together. We did a seven-week virtual program together for her student leadership council. And she’s just an all round amazing mom, parent and educator. Jana is a teacher, a student leadership advisor at winery composite secondary school. As a member of the Saskatchewan association of school council advisors. She is always striving to provide her students with unforgettable experiences and during the pandemic, she decided that student leadership was more important now than ever. And to make that a reality, she partnered with myself to run a seven week virtual program for our leadership students. She has so much to offer and so much to share. I hope you enjoyed this episode. I’ll see you on the other side, Jana, thank you so much for coming on the high-performing educator podcast. I love the backdrop with the chemistry. Can you please share with the audience who you are, what work you do and why you do the work you do with youth today?


Jana Fisher (01:11):
Definitely. Thanks, Sam. I am from Wynyard, Saskatchewan. We’re a very small school of about 200 students. Grades seven to 12 and community is about 2000 people and I’m teach mostly senior science, but I also am the SRC advisor and I’ve been an SRC advisor. This is the third school that I’ve worked with with student leaders and why I do what I do the youth they’re our future. And if we don’t have somebody giving these students some guidance we’ve got fantastic students, but they do need some guidance from some adults about how to be effective leaders and how to be positive role models. And so I think that’s, that’s probably why I do what I do.


Sam Demma (02:00):
When did you know, in your journey towards education that you were going to be a teacher?


Jana Fisher (02:06):
I was bossy from about the time I was six years old. And so I think I just always knew I’ve got some teachers in my family, but I think that I would consider myself lucky because it’s really hard at for, for students to, to try and figure out what they are going to be when they grow up. Right. And so I was, I think I’m lucky, but I think I’m in the minority and I, I, I always consider myself lucky that I’ve known that I wanted to be a teacher. And then along the way I taught swimming lessons and that’s what told me that I wanted to teach older students and rather than be in the elementary school. Cause they’re cute. But I have more patience for older, older kids than I do for, for little kids.


Sam Demma (02:46):
You should also know Jana’s a mother. So that’s why our patients is running a little low these days. How, how are things going for you? I know every teacher and educator I speak to has a totally different experience right now with COVID. It’s like we’re all in the same lake, but in a different boat is through always says, do you know what is your experience? And do you have any hopeful stories to share with other educators about overcoming challenges or continuing to do things despite the current reality? I know you put on a killer grad last year. Maybe you can talk about that a little bit or any other story where you’ve overcoming COVID related obstacles?


Jana Fisher (03:27):
Right? Sure. So I think March 16th was one of the most frustrating days of our lives and not just frustrating, but unknown. And I think if we could go back to March 16th and live that day again, we would’ve all hugged each other and, you know, made some, had some closure with our classes, right. Because we were kind of left with, well, maybe we’ll be back in a couple of weeks or maybe this’ll be a short term and little did we know that, that we weren’t going to return back to school? So yeah, so being that there were definite challenges and, you know, as far as, as mental health goes, I would say my mental health is pretty strong, but some of those times through April, as we’re trying to, you know, encourage students to get online and, and to try and learn some chemistry it’s got to be a little bit frustrating, but talking about successes, I think first year, right, our grad was, it was a huge success.


Jana Fisher (04:22):
We had to figure out we had 34 graduates and we had to figure out how to celebrate those 34 graduate, say they needed some closure, they needed a way to, to end this chapter of their life. So one of the things that we did as a staff was we got together and we traveled in separate vehicles from one house to another. We showed up honking horns and, and playing loud music. And, and of course we’re all trying to social distance as we’re meeting with each of the graduating families at their house. And with those, with with the graduate will also with their families. And, you know, we had so many comments about that saying that that was far more personal than, you know, a student wash walking across the stage and that type of thing. So I think we had a, I was exhausted by the end of that day, just because every house we went to there were tears, but they were tears of joy and tears of gratitude.


Jana Fisher (05:17):
And thanks for, for making that a fantastic day, that could’ve just been, you know, it was June the 12th and could have just come and gone. And I know that certainly was a success we did then go ahead and plan a big ceremony as well, a more formal ceremony that we did in August. And that was just a little bit different of a celebration, but I would not June 12th day for us, that was a huge highlight in this sort of dooms time of COVID. Because by that time we’d had quite a few students check out of our, of our you know, our programs and that type of thing. So I think that was really important that, that we did that day. And, and we could put stars beside that day, cause we’ll always remember 2020, but we’ll always talk very positively about June 12th, 2020 in the, in the COVID times.


Sam Demma (06:05):
That’s awesome. And speaking about the fall as well, the grad was a huge success. I know the fall brought its own. I don’t want to say problems. It just brought some challenges that we had to creatively leap over and figure things out as anyone in the school, including yourself, done something a little different this year that you think is a sharing with another school. Maybe there’s some cool ideas that have been executed. And maybe you can say Sam, it’s a little too early to talk about that, but I’m curious to know.


Jana Fisher (06:36):
We’ve we basically were told that our SRC or our leadership team were not, we weren’t, we’re not allowed to go ahead. And so we thought, well, we’re not okay with that. So not that we’re going against what, you know, what the people above us are saying, but we decided how could we do this and still fit in with right ideas. So we, I mean, we’ve been having bi-weekly meetings, but then we did, we partnered in with a young motivational speaker, which is you. And, and it just, it’s funny how the times work out that, you know, you had reached out to us with sharing a graduation video and that’s kind of how we got connected. And then, you know, we really, we were appreciative of your, I think that’s probably where I came from was I was appreciative of your response saying, no problem.


Jana Fisher (07:20):
You saw, however you see fit and then looking more into you and your high-performance program and that type of thing. That has been a fantastic opportunity for our students keeping us together. We have a really strong leadership team, but it’s hard to continue being a strong leadership team when people are saying we can’t meet and we can’t plan activities and we can’t, and we can’t, and we can’t. So we just said, well, yes, we can. We just have to do it in a different way. So, you know, we’ve partnered up with you. We also are looking ahead to seeing the, what can we do? So Halloween’s coming up. We usually have a fantastic, you know, couple of hours or hour to two hours of things throughout the day. So we’ve decided we’ve got a committee. Our students are going to come together and make a Cahoot, which if you’re not familiar with that, it’s kind of a quiz, something they’re thinking about, you know, dressing up all the teachers in which costumes taking years have contests and saying, you know, which, which is which, and so students can guess, you know, who’s Mrs.


Jana Fisher (08:22):
Fisher, who’s Mr. Oates? That type of thing. So we are doing some virtual games and that type of thing, our administration’s really supportive and they, they know the importance of molding these students and teaching them leadership skills through these activities. We’re also in charge of remembrance day. So we’re thinking about having some of the veterans in town, getting some videos of them and then virtually showing that as part of our remembrance day ceremony. So we are going to have to put that together. We’ll do videos of students. We, we have some musical students. So in the past we’ve have had steps. We have had students sing songs of remembrance, recite poetry of remembrance, do those kinds of things. So we’re not going to stop doing those things. We have to, we have to recognize the importance of leadership recognize our veterans, recognize that we do still need to do all of this just in a different way,


Sam Demma (09:18):
Just connecting students right now and giving them a community makes such a big difference. And I know in your years of teaching, you’ve seen that difference firsthand. You’ve definitely had students reach out, write Mrs. Fisher letters and let you know how much of an impact you’ve had on them. I’m curious to know if you can think of a story that sticks out in your mind of a young person whose life has been touched by education, who had been touched by leadership. Maybe they were struggling with something outside of school and maybe just caring for them or doing small thing for them made a huge impact. And the reason I’m asking you to share this is because there might be an educator listening. Who’s thinking what is going on this year? They’re feeling burnt out. They’re, they’re lacking hope and your story could reignite that fire within them. And by all means change the name of the student for the sake of privacy for the story. But the more vulnerable, it isn’t honest, the more of an impact it will have on others.


Jana Fisher (10:18):
I know that that student leadership, we always there saying, okay, we, we want volunteers, right? We’re asking at the beginning of the year, who wants to be on SRC, put up your hand. If we have a certain number of students while we need to kind of have representatives from their particular classrooms. And so we get these room wraps and quite often, you know, it’s not us that are running, it sits, it’s different teachers that don’t necessarily totally understand leadership, right? So it might be a vote. Lots of times that’s a popularity thing. So what, we’ve, what we’ve decided that we need to do as students that we see that are sitting somewhere that are, you know, not involved. We think it’s important that we go to those students and we say, Hey, you know what? We have this really cool thing we meet once a week or twice a week, would you like to join us?


Jana Fisher (11:06):
And of course their answer, all, always this, you know, they’re struggling or, or it’s not for me. And, you know, if we can just get those students to come to one meeting, we quite often, we quite often will, you know, we’ll, we’ll save those, not save those students, but give them kind of a, a purpose and a, and a thing. Right? So in my opinion, every student needs a thing, right? We’ve got some kids have basketball, that’s their thing. Some kids have sports. That’s their thing. Some kids, you know, they have dance, that sort of thing. But if we have a student who doesn’t have a thing, I think as educators that said, this is a really good opportunity to just have them be involved with something within our school. So, you know, we do, I can think of a couple of students that, that are like that, but one in particular.


Jana Fisher (11:53):
And I think I won’t use the name, but one in particular, in grades, I partnered in with the grades sixes because they coming over from the other school. So we quite often have these kinds of conversations, you know, do we have a student who really doesn’t have a thing? So, so we kind of shoulder tap this, this one girl shy, you know, if you asked her to speak out in class, she would just wouldn’t do that. And so, you know, they said this girl, I think she needs a thing. They didn’t use that, that actual terminology. But that was my understanding. I talked to this girl and she just, she wasn’t going to do it. But I said, I said a few things about, you know, being a bound partner, it has to be part of a team, not necessarily a sports team. I’m a big sports person that my kids play lots of sports.


Jana Fisher (12:38):
I played lots, but being part of a bigger idea, I talked lots and this girl showed up in grade seven and she handed me this, this page. And here, it was a list of things that, that list of goals that she had and these goals that she had quite a few of them were things that I had said aloud to her. And I thought, wow, like if I had not talked to these grade six teachers and had this fading and said, you know, what could we, what could we do to make this work? What kind of students do you have with who should we do? You know, if we wouldn’t, we wouldn’t have gone ahead and had that kind of conversation she would have existed through she’s now in grade 11 she would have just existed through and gone out of high school, kind of as one of those students that you just don’t really know this, an unknown student that just try to blend, she tries to blend in. And I think that was a, that was a real success story. So that would be one example that comes to my mind.


Sam Demma (13:34):
That’s awesome. And how do we make students feel appreciated and heard and valued even when school is a little different, maybe things are virtual. Do you have any ideas?


Jana Fisher (13:47):
We have, we have some different ways that we communicate. We do have some chat groups on that kind of thing, and that’s extremely important to us right now because we can’t get together in a room. And when you can’t get together in a room, well, what happens is the grade 12 students take over right here. We let them, they’re going to be the bosses. They’re going to say remembrance day is going to be like this. And the Halloween is going to be like this, but so we’ve got these chat groups that we we meet with and it might be, you know, I might be at five o’clock at night. We started, we have, you know, we’re not doing this at midnight, please don’t send me a message at midnight. But, but I mean, we kind of have office hours and, and we say, Hey, let’s, let’s have these conversations today.


Jana Fisher (14:34):
We’re going to have these conversations, you know, sometime around five, or I’ll send a message at work to talk about this right now. I think that’s, that’s really important. There is a fine line there, right? Because we’re, we’re dealing with some communications through this, through social media. There’s few challenges. As far as parents go grade seven students, grade eight students, for example, maybe aren’t allowed to use that particular type of social media then that involves educating parents and talking about, you know, the idea that phones and technology like that is not going to go away. So we, our responsibility is to educate those students how to properly use those, right? Because parents come and say, well, we’ve heard these horror stories about how so-and-so took this picture and ends up cyber bullying and that type of thing. And we have to teach kids how to use this technology. And I, and that’s what works for us is we do, we do have an, and this is, we used to do that before, but now it’s, you know, it’s, it’s times a times a hundred of what we did, you know, say a year ago just because it’s the only way that we can actually have discussion.


Sam Demma (15:43):
That’s awesome. And I don’t know if you remember your first year in education, but there are, there are a bunch of teachers who are tuning in educators who maybe it’s their first year in school. If you could give advice to your younger self, not that much younger, you’re still very young, but if you could give advice to your younger self, when you started in your first year of education, imagine this was your first year. Like most teachers starting this year, I thinking, what the heck is this? I did not sign up for this job. What advice would you have to, to share with them?


Jana Fisher (16:21):
I, first of all would say, congratulations on being part of this awesome profession. It, it really is, you know, there’s lots of negativity that goes on, but I think the first thing that we need to know is that it really doesn’t get much worse than this. They’re there on top of all of the things that they ask us to teach, we now are also trying to, you know, sanitize and make sure kids are wearing them and make sure they’re staying six feet apart. And add-ons right. So, so one, the best advice that somebody ever said to me was, as long as you are continually saying, how could I have done that better? That means that you actually are caring and you’re thinking about, and you’re, and you’re going to grow. If it, if you say that’s as good as I can do, this is the best I can do.


Jana Fisher (17:08):
That it isn’t true. You, everything that you do, you can do better at, but you can’t beat yourself up over something that you would consider a failure. You’re going to have classes. I’ve been, this is my 24th year of teaching. I sometimes have classes at the end. I go, whoa. And what was, what was going on there? Do we, you know, do we need to reteach that? I, I’m not sure what happened there, but as long as in my head at 24, you know, my 24th year, I’m still saying, what can I do differently? What do I need to do now? We can’t beat ourselves up. We can’t back up. We don’t have a DeLorean to go back to the future. We just need to be okay with what we did, but what can we change and, and moving forward, but it won’t get any more challenging than this year.


Jana Fisher (17:51):
You’re if it’s if you’re in your first year, it’s challenge, it’s the most challenging year you can possibly have to start with. And now we’ve, we’ve multiplied that by 10. So survived through this year B be an hour or two ahead of the kids, right? Don’t run out of material. So if you’re teaching something, make sure you’ve got an hour more than you actually think that you need. And then you live from one day to the next. And in soon enough, it’ll be, you’ll be 23 years into this. And you’ll say, how the heck did that happen?


Sam Demma (18:21):
That’s awesome, Jana, this has been a really fun interview. If someone’s listening and wants to reach out and share some cool ideas and talk to you, what’s the best way for them to do so.


Jana Fisher (18:32):
The best way to start off would be just to email me that’s how that’s, where we can start out. And then we can decide if we want to, you know, do a zoom call or something like that. But my email is jana.fisher@horizonsd.ca


Sam Demma (18:53):
Awesome. Perfect. Thank you so much for taking some time to record this interview with me. It’s been a pleasure and I can’t wait to stay in touch, continue the sessions we’re doing and see what other unique things you come up with during the year. Right.


Jana Fisher (19:05):
Great. Okay. Thank you so much.


Sam Demma (19:07):
And just like that, another interview on the high-performing educator podcast is complete. If you took something of value away from this conversation with Jana and myself, please leave a rating and review so that other educators just like you can find this podcast benefit from the ideas and feel motivated by the inspiring stories. And if you are somebody who has something to share, or, you know, somebody who has some inspiration and ideas to share, please email is info@samdemma.com. Should we can get your story and get you on the podcast and how hopefully connected with other educators around the world. Anyways, I’ll see you on the next episode. Talk soon.

Join the Educator Network & Connect with Jana Fisher

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.

October 26, 2021 by Student Leadership Teachers 0

Brent Mattix – Activities Director for Roseville High School in California

Brent Mattix Activity Director California
About Brent Mattix

Brent Mattix is the current activities director for Roseville High School, in Roseville, California.  He had the honour of attending Roseville High School as a student (Class of 1992).  His two sons are graduates of RHS and his daughter is a junior.  Brent Mattix began coaching in 1994 and has coached over 50 teams, from varsity football to t-ball.  He has coached football, wrestling, water polo, soccer, basketball, baseball, flag football, and is the current track and field coach for the high school.  

Mr. Mattix began teaching in 1999 and has taught English, speech and debate, positive power, leadership, and student government.  He has served as a class advisor, club advisor, smaller learning communities program coordinator, and link crew coordinator.

For nine years, Brent Mattix was an administrator, working as an assistant principal at Granite Bay High School for seven years and principal for two years at Thomas Jefferson Elementary School.

Driven to make a positive difference, Mr. Mattix loves working in the community in which he grew up.  In addition to teaching, Mr. Mattix is also a scoutmaster, magician, and pyro-technician.

In his free time, Mattix is passionate about spending time with family and friends in the outdoors via camping, hiking, cycling, canoeing, backpacking, and rock climbing.

Connect with Brent: Email

Listen Now

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

Resources Mentioned

Seven Habits of Highly Effective People (Workshop)

Seven Habits of Highly Effective Teens (Book)

Phil Boyte (Learning For Living Program)

Link Crew Transition Program

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. Today’s guest is Brent Mattix. He is the current activities director for Roseville high school in Roseville, California. He had the honour of attending Roseville high school as a student in the class of 1992. And his two sons are graduates of R H S and his daughter is now a junior.


Sam Demma (01:04):
Brent began coaching in 1994 and has coached over 50 teams from varsity football to T-ball. He has coached football, wrestling, water, polo, soccer, basketball, baseball, flag football, and is currently track and field coach for the high school. Mr. Mattix began teaching in 1999 and has taught English speech and debate positive power leadership and student government. He has served as a class advisor club advisor, smaller learning communities, program coordinator, and link crew coordinator for nine years. Brent was an administrator working as an assistant principal at granite bay high school for seven years and principal for two years at Thomas Jefferson elementary school, driven to make a positive difference. Mr. Maddox loves working in the community in which he grew up. In addition to teaching, he is a scout master magician and pyro technician in his free time. Brent is passionate about spending time with family and friends in the outdoors via camping, hiking, cycling, canoeing, backpacking, and rock climbing. I hope this bio does an awesome job of encapsulating everything that is Brent Mattix. He is a phenomenal person and educator. I had such an amazing time speaking with him on the podcast, enjoy our conversation, and I will see you on the other side, Brent, welcome to the high-performing educator podcast. Huge pleasure to have you on the show here today. Why don’t you start by introducing yourself and sharing a little bit about your story and what brought you to where you are in education today?


Brent Mattix (02:46):
Sure. My name is Brent Mattix activities director at Roseville high school in Roseville, California saved by the bell. Love it. There we go. We get long bells here. So I actually had the pleasure of attending the high school in which I teach, which was outstanding. So I’m class of 1992. I also, some of my backstory is I got kicked out of Roosevelt high school my senior year. So February 21st was my last day of my senior year. I pulled a prank. I was the top student in the school and suffer the consequences. So I guess the only way I was coming back was via education. And so I started coaching at Roseville when I was 20. And then in the interim, I was working on my teaching credential and came back to Roseville high school as an English teacher in 1999 and taught for eight years and then took an administrative position.


Brent Mattix (03:43):
So as an administrator for nine years and then came to my senses and wanted to get back into the classroom. One of my big motivations is my own three kids were at Roseville high school and I kind of had this scare where I realized my baby has seven years before she turned 18 and was out. So my mission shifted a little bit and I was very fortunate to get the activities director position. And now I’ve got two years left with my daughter. My two sons have graduated. I got my oldest boy in the us air force and my second is just graduated and he’ll be starting at UC Davis here in a few weeks.


Sam Demma (04:23):
Wow. That’s awesome. I mean, you can’t mention prank without explaining what the heck happened. You got to bring me back and tell me what’s going on back there.


Brent Mattix (04:33):
Well, I’ll tell ya. That was in 98 and 99. That was in 92. And you know, it was just one of those things where we had had some stuff going on with our rival. And so it was one of those feeling like, Hey, I’m the all American kid you’re supposed to pull off this epic prank where I went wrong as I involved firecrackers. And so that was right on the cusp of school violence. This was pre Columbine, but we had had a shooting and all of hers, which is not too far from us. And so I haven’t been an administrator and looking back, I can definitely get a sense of the concerns administration and the community had with, with stuff going on. And so anyway, what I tell students is that you make a mistake, you learn from the mistake you grow and that’s what life’s all about. And so took responsibility for it. And then it was really cool being able to come back and actually participate in graduation as a teacher. But I counted it.


Sam Demma (05:37):
Oh man. That’s awesome. That’s a good story though. Go, it goes to show that your, your current situation doesn’t have to equal your future, your future destinations as well. What, okay, so what led you down the path of education though? So after high school ends, you get it, you know, you go to school like what made you decide yeah. Want to go back to education where you direct them down that path, or did you know from a young age at that, that’s what you wanted to do?


Brent Mattix (06:05):
Yeah, I actually in high school wanting to go into politics because I I’m a community person. Yeah, I was really active when I was in high school, making a difference for the community and just wanted to give back in some capacity. I had the opportunity to go to Washington DC on a youth leadership, going into my senior year and went back and spent a couple of weeks at, we actually stayed at Georgetown and set up a mock Congress. And so that was an outstanding experience, but I realized some of the challenges in politics. And, and I remember, you know, here I am 17 and I’m thinking, holy smokes, this is going to be a grind to really make effective change. And so I, I think that’s when I started to shift gears and felt like I could be more inspirational and a benefit to the community by going into education, I’ve always wanted to help people.


Brent Mattix (06:59):
And I started coaching, you know, like I said, I was only 20 years old when I was coaching and, and just had to make a shift in a little bit of thinking and maturity in the sense of I wasn’t playing anymore. So now it’s all about a drive to help others loved English. I grew up reading and had a passion for it. And if I could teach anything, I wanted to teach a course called life. And they didn’t teach that in class. And I felt like English gave me the most flexibility to kind of hit some of those components again, just to be an inspiration and had some really good teachers in college and had some good folks that I was when I grew up, I had outstanding teachers and coaches. And so I think just probably looking at two, what they modeled and the impact they had had on me was, was what got me going.


Brent Mattix (07:51):
So I do have a little side note. One of my heroes was my Spanish teacher in high school. And I started coaching at the same high school I got kicked out of. And so Mr. George IVIG would always be working the gate as one of the supervision assignments. And so I’d come in with the football team and usually interacting with, interact with them for a few minutes. So when I finally made the decision, okay, this is where I’m headed and made a shift. I let him know and he looked at me and he said, don’t do it. And he was dead serious. And that was a little crushy cause I just idolized them. And he was just such an outstanding teacher and really did well with his curriculum, cared about his students. And for him to say, don’t do it. I, it, it caused me to pause and think like, okay, what’s that all about?


Brent Mattix (08:44):
And what he was trying to communicate was a, was a shift that he felt with the responsibilities as, as being a teacher and feeling a little bit set up where the challenges were going to outweigh the benefits. And so, thankfully I didn’t listen to him. So I hadn’t seen him in quite a while and then had the opportunity last year to sit now with him at just a little social gathering. We were, we were all outside cause of COVID we all were masked. And so it was great to catch up. So I reminded him that he told me that he kind of laughed and said, well, I’m glad you, you stuck it out. But I have seen it change a lot. And so that was the kickoff, just jumping in a full go right out of the gate, you know, I’ve lucky to get hired.


Brent Mattix (09:30):
I actually went to go see the assistant principal or sorry, the assistant superintendent who was in charge of discipline and said, Hey, do you remember who I am? And he laughed and said, oh yeah, you like to play the firecrackers. So I, I told him where I was in my life and I said, I didn’t want to waste his time or waste my time. And he said water under the bridge go ahead and apply. So yeah, I was fortunate right out of the gate. I, I got a job at a school that I knew really well and had a passion for and, and just jumped in as much as I could. So I, my first year of teaching, I got married, bought a new house, had the new job, and then about oh seven months after we got married, we were pregnant with our first kiddo. So I said, Hey, the four stressors in life, the biggest stressors, they’re all, they’re all. No, man, I don’t have to worry about anything else. Now that’s all.


Sam Demma (10:25):
The early stuff out of the way. Yeah. So you mentioned coaching a few times and it sounds like coaching is also an important part of your life. If I read your mind correctly, you coach tennis. Tell me more about it. And also is that a sport you played growing up or do you coach multiple things?


Brent Mattix (10:44):
So I actually have not coached tennis, but my daughter was leaving my class. So I have, I’m fortunate to have her in my class. Got it. She was out, she, she is playing tennis and a couple of her girlfriends that she was with are playing tennis. So they have their first match today. So we’re going to go check that out afternoon. Nice. So you’re going to get me on my soap box for youth athletics here. I’ve coached, I think somewhere between 50 and 60 teams anywhere from probably half of them at the high school level, from varsity football down to, with my own kids T-ball and little bitty soccer, so, and everywhere in between. So I’ve done football at the high school football wrestling on the current track and field coach and water polo, which I knew nothing about and just the coaching that had a blast with that for six years.


Brent Mattix (11:38):
And then at the youth level we had baseball, basketball, soccer, flag football. So, you know, a variety of stuff. I grew up loving athletics. She has had so much fun and was fortunate to be on really successful teams with coaches that were positive and it wasn’t about winning. So I think the winning piece was probably a lot of a by-product of just having this really engaging atmosphere that was enjoyable and, and made a lot of relationships. So I’m still best friends with my football buddies from high school and we still get together, you know, 30 plus years later. So it’s been a definitely an important part of my life. And just seeing where I feel athletics has changed with students where I, I see for a select group of students, it’s outstanding because that’s their life. And they really want to dedicate a lot of energy or all their energy to it.


Brent Mattix (12:42):
I’ve seen a lot of students just not have as much fun where it becomes a little bit more of a job and had conversations with them where they feel and communicate that they’re burned out. And so after I think it was 15 years of coaching in high school, that’s about when my, my kid was my own kiddos were getting into athletics. And so I jumped down to the youth stuff and there’s some amazing organizations that really focus on making it fun for the athlete and informative where they get to learn and grow. And then there are some programs that are difficult to work with because, you know, like my wife said, one time first graders should not be crying after a game. You know, so much intensity that gets pushed upon them by the Allston. It’s, it’s a difficult deal to work with. So I’ll tie this into education. I had a psychology of education professor that one of my other heroes in my teaching credential program and something that he would pull out often as there needs to be more teaching and coaching and more coaching and teaching. And that’s something just stuck with me through the years.


Sam Demma (13:51):
That’s a, I love that. It’s awesome. I played sports my whole life. I was supposed to go to Memphis university on a full ride scholarship and had three knee surgeries rip that apart. But yeah, I think sports are such a crucial part in development. And even if it’s not a sport getting involved in something outside of the classroom, I think is just so important. Did you play a lot of sports growing up yourself? Like was that a big part of your childhood also?


Brent Mattix (14:20):
Yeah, I started in like first grade with the T-ball did soccer, did flag football. And then once I got into middle school, we started with with football, with tackle football and that was my main sport in high school. Then I also swimming and wrestling and then just a ton of intermurals, but, you know, I grew up I’m 47. So I grew up in an era where that’s all you did as far as athletics. Cause if you weren’t playing with an organized team, you were playing out in front of your house, on the street, your front yard, if you’re playing tackle football is two and touch right in the street, less, less we wanted to get bloody. Yeah. I mean, constantly we, we would kind of mirror the professional sports where we’d be playing basketball and then the basketball season’s done and then we’re playing some baseball or football or whatever the case may be. So it was kind of 30, some kids in the neighborhood that would be in and out doing unorganized sports. And that was just an amazing experience where we had to figure it out ourselves and, and we kept score, but it was you know, it, wasn’t about just the score. It’s mostly about being together and having a good time.


Sam Demma (15:37):
And you mentioned at the beginning of this interview, that if he could have taught any class in the world, you would have taught a class called life. What does that mean? And if it was to be a legit class that does exist, what would it include and why are those things crucial?


Brent Mattix (15:53):
So I, I guess even when I was young, I, I gotta tell you when I was in high school, I was probably the shyest kid in the school. I at least successful, but I was an introvert. And I was always a teacher’s pet. I always could have great conversations with adults, but when it came to interacting with my peers, I really struggled. So I was talking about that youth leadership program. I went to and flew back to Washington DC, and we had to wait for another group to come in before they put us on the shuttle. So it was about a 45 minute wait. And we sat about a half hour in our seats, in the airport waiting for this other group to show up. And I think there’s probably between 12 and 15 other students all the same age. And nobody said a word for like a half hour.


Brent Mattix (16:41):
And I remember it was so painful for me to sit there because I wanted to say something, I just couldn’t get myself to, to do that. And finally somebody broke the ice and it wasn’t me. And within like seconds, we were just having this really great conversation because everybody’s the same age. Most of us were AP students. So we had just taken the AP exams. And so, you know, we were in the same place in life and we just, just got going. And that was a watershed moment for me, where I thought, why did I just spend 30 minutes of wasted time? Because I didn’t have the courage, the guts, the gumption to just, you know, say something. And so I started shifting where I pushed myself more to interact. So I say that as a foundation, for whatever reason, when I was in high school and even younger and early adult, a lot of people would come to me and just ask me for advice.


Brent Mattix (17:36):
Or they would share things with me where I felt like I was helpful. And so I think that carried over. So it was just that wanting to help people and make a difference for them. And that’s where the life piece comes in. So I had really, I was so fortunate. My second year of teaching, I had an administrator come to me and say, Hey, we’d like you to teach a class, a leadership class. And I didn’t know what that was. And I said, oh, that sounds awesome. What is it? And she looked at me and said, we don’t know you’re going to figure it out. So they said, we want you to write this course. They sent me off to a Stephen Covey workshop. And Stephen Covey is probably most famous for writing the seven habits of highly effective people. And that program was repackaged to the seven habits of highly effective teens.


Brent Mattix (18:27):
And that was what they were teaching. And so I remember I, it was a two day workshop and I spent the first day just not being very excited by it. Cause I, I, you know, wasn’t grasping where they’re going with. I hadn’t read the book before. And, and then day two, I think we were halfway through day two. And all of a sudden the light bulb went on for me like, oh my gosh, this is what I can use for my class. So that became the foundation for their, our leadership class. And so I’ve been teaching that I, I said I was nine years in administrator. And so I was away from the class for nine years, but you know, otherwise I’ve taught leadership for a lot of years. And just teaching students, some foundational elements or habits has been fantastic. What I have seen in the last five years that I’ve been an activities director is that a lot of students struggle with skills.


Brent Mattix (19:27):
So their managers, if I give them a task sheet, they will get it done, especially if I attach a grade to it. So if I put points on it, that’s been something that we’ve been working on is changing things from being expensive motivator to intrinsic motivator. And I’m so proud of the students in our program because we’re, we’re almost to that point where that’s where everybody is, but the points piece for kids. Yeah. It gets them going. So they’ll do stuff if you give them the list, but if you give them a task, which is, or I’m sorry, a project, which is where we are with activities, I’ve seen a lot of struggle and I’m in the midst of rewriting where we are with our student government program and also come back and retool our leadership program, where it just gives students the opportunity to create or learn more skill sets that they can then apply because they, a lot of times have the desire. They want to make a difference. They just, they don’t have as much life experience. I think adults have done too much for them as we have. They’ve been growing up and they have some pretty good skill sets maybe when it comes to English and math and science and history, but just some of the leadership stuff that we need to see from them as is painful. Watson, try to grow wings there. Yeah.


Sam Demma (20:52):
I love that. That’s awesome. It sounds like such a rewarding class. How many students are roughly in there? Is this a large group, a small group? Like what does it look like?


Brent Mattix (21:01):
So our, our traditional student government program, which is the student leaders that get elected. So we have four ASB officers that are elected by the student body and then for each class. And we’re a nine through 12th grade high school frees class. They have three officers that are elected. The other students that are in the class for student government get in through an application process. And so we are generally it ebbs and flows, but generally the numbers there between 45 and 55. Yes. And I continually say, Hey, I’ll take a hundred. If we have students that are engaged in taking care of business, then we’ll take as many as we can get in. We we only have so much space in the physical classroom we’re in right now. So that kind of dictates a little bit just the functionality of the room.


Brent Mattix (21:58):
And then our leadership class is an elective. And that traditionally is right around 40 students. And those students that are in the class are it’s a wide spectrum. So I’d say I ended up with about 40% freshmen, 40%, maybe 35% sophomores. And then the other group would be juniors and seniors, and anywhere from students that are super motivated and want to take the course so that they can learn some more skills to get into student government, to students that are behavior issues on campus and a counselor or an administrator said, man, we got to get them in the leadership class. And that’s what I love because we have just across the gamut and when we do our group work and when we’re in our committees and working together, there’s so many different ideas because we have so many different walks of life involved in that class.


Brent Mattix (22:53):
Sometimes I say we’re a little incestuous in the student government program in the sense that the same type of students attract their friends who want to be in the program. And so that can be a good thing. It’s a double double-edged sword to some degree because you get into that group think sometimes, and it’s hard to break outside that mold. So that’s something we’ve been challenging students with. Now that we’ve kind of changed at our school, changed the, the culture of the student government program, where it’s more about the school than just the students are in the classroom. It’s a matter of, okay, now we got to get out to our stakeholders and make sure we’re understanding what their needs are and what their desires are and give them a voice and get them a more, more involved that way.


Sam Demma (23:39):
And which of the seven habits have you integrated in the classroom that you think has been the most impactful on the students and why?


Brent Mattix (23:50):
That’s a great question. You know, I, I tell the students in my leadership class, but we’re going through a particular topic or habit. I say, Hey, this is the most important day. And then I tell them, okay, I know I’m always saying that. So it’s, it’s difficult. I’ll tell you the, the habits and the concepts. I think that are probably, I, I see that are most powerful is one of them is, and it’s not particularly a habit, but it’s the circle of control and no control. And I asked students, I don’t say anything about the circle of control, but I asked students about a time that somebody made him really upset. And I tried to get a few volunteers that will share a story with the class. And my goal is, and that interaction to get that person upset and reliving the experience.


Brent Mattix (24:43):
And a lot of times it gets to that point. And usually it’s something with a friend or sometimes a parent. And to the point where sometimes, I mean, they’re, they’re yelling, they’re fleshing in the face and at the end of them telling their stories, I tell them, now, wait a minute. I asked you guys to share a story about a time where somebody made you mad and you guys all lied to me. And then they get more upset at me when I tell them that I did not lie to you, Mr. Maddox, and they go, go and go. And then we start talking about the circle of control and no control. And the goal is for them to understand that somebody didn’t make them mad. They allow themselves to become mad and that they are empowered and they need to they need to really control that and understand there’s very few things in life that they can control.


Brent Mattix (25:31):
And when that sinks in, you see some students that really kind of have an awakening because they’ve had crap in their background in their life. And they understand that, Hey, I, that was outside of my control and I can’t get upset and emotional about it. Or if I do, I got to have some tools to back down from it and, and take back my control, take back that power. So that’s my favorite lesson plans. I think that the just creating habits to begin with and that habit number one is be proactive and getting them. And that’s where the, the control piece comes in and get them to understand that how they respond to everything that’s coming at them is so important. And having some tools that they’re at their experience and disposal to be able to utilize and pushing pause, and maybe not reacting is just outstanding.


Brent Mattix (26:31):
I feel for these kiddos with how bombarded they are with everything technology. I tell a story where I was a sophomore and we had lockers back when I was a sophomore. We don’t have lockers at the school anymore. And so I get to school and I go to open a lock my locker, and right as I open it, this piece of paper falls out. So I bent down to pick it up. And as I’m bending down to pick it up, I’m realizing that there’s in the row, there’s like five or six other students that are picking up this kind of same piece of paper. So I look at it and it was a letter that one of my fellow students had written about his girlfriend. They had just broken up and the most worst message, disgusting comments. Her secrets were on this sheet of paper that were typed out.


Brent Mattix (27:19):
And I mean, they were horrific. I didn’t know that young lady, but that young lady was gone that day. We did not see her back at the high school again. And I don’t know what happens her. She transferred schools and went elsewhere. And so I juxtapose that with, we had a student that was incoming and it was from tech. He was coming in from Texas. And some kids were talking about him coming to the school and they were talking about the baggage. He was bringing from an incident in Texas. And I just had this realization that, I mean, these kids can’t escape the negativity sometimes and, and heartbreaks for that a little bit. It, it breaks for the kids that have stuff. That’s just a constant reminder of things that they feel are inefficiencies or challenges or, or bad stuff in their life.


Brent Mattix (28:11):
And so back to trying to empower them where they can take control and, and reprogram themselves and be proactive, come up with a plan is just really, really important. So the first three habits focus on what’s called the private victory. And so I teach leadership in that. You’ve got to, you’ve got to teach yourself, you’ve got to control yourself. You’ve got to your beer best you before you work with others. And so then the public victory where we transition into working with others habit four is think win-win. And so that’s really trying to empower them with some tools and how they can work well with others. And come up with ideas that are bigger than themselves, right? It’s about what they want, it’s about what others want and how they’re gonna work well together. And then my favorite habit is habit six, which is synergy and synergizing and working well with others.


Brent Mattix (29:08):
And to me, that’s what LIFE life is all about. And bringing us full circle back to athletics. There is nothing more powerful than when you’re working with a group of people that have the same mission, and you’re just hitting stride and in the flow and, and winning and winning doesn’t mean you got the highest score. Winning just means that you’re working well together and make a magic happen. So I love seeing that. I love it when students create those types of events on our campus and when they have that same experience in the classroom. So I got end with saying that you know, I’m super Pollyanna and positive all the time, but going back to that circle of control, I say, now, you know, the reality is you’re going to get awesome times. And when I get frustrated and I’m at home and my wife and I are in a disagreement, or I’m having a challenge with one of my kiddos and I feel my blood come up and I’m just starting to shake a little bit you know, I’ve got to back myself down. So it’s one thing in theory, it’s another thing to actually put it into practice. And so that’s the, that’s the toughest part. And, and trying to model that for the students is really important for me as well. Yes.


Sam Demma (30:21):
Oh, such an important book. I was, I was lucky enough to stumble across the seven habits of highly effective teens back when I was a freshmen in grade nine.


Brent Mattix (30:33):
Good for you.


Sam Demma (30:34):
Yeah, because I was a, I mean, you didn’t mention sharpening the saw or the, the, the square, the four places where you could spend your time, the time charger. But yeah. I know those are, it’s such a good book and I think it’s so cool that you’re teaching it in class. If you could, if you said you’ve been teaching now, how many years?

Brent Mattix (30:54):
Well, I started my student teaching in 1998. So what’s that, I’m not a math teacher. So 23 years, somewhere 24, I don’t know.

Sam Demma (31:04):
Yeah. So if you could go back to year one with the experience and understanding that you have now, what advice would you give your younger self? Because there might be an educator listening. Who’s just getting into education and might be willing or able to learn from something you’ve experienced. Sure.


Brent Mattix (31:23):
So you, you talked about sharpen, the saw, which is habit seven in the book, and this is by the way, I don’t get any royalties from FranklinCovey foundation. The sharpen, the saw is probably where I’ve most struggled and sharpen the size just about reenergizing yourself, taking care of yourself. And, you know, I feel for educators, we get emotional here was setting boundaries because our profession is a passion. It’s a calling. And I really think that a strong majority of educators are in this to make a difference for our kids difference for our community. And education has evolved where it’s not just about teaching the content that we were trained, that when we got our master’s or whatnot in we’re teaching the whole student, and there are so many things that come at us with working with special education students and working with English language learners and working with behavioral issues, I can go on and on and on.


Brent Mattix (32:25):
And I think I struggle with this. And how do you set healthy boundaries? Because we all care. We want to make a difference. That’s why we chose a profession. And I don’t know. I don’t know what the advice is. I haven’t done yet, but trying to set up those healthy boundaries where you take care of yourself and, you know, Hey, I’m in a good place. I I’m healthy. I’m happy with my job. I work my butt off and it’s a constant struggle to keep up. I don’t know what I could have done earlier, except maybe downsize what I was doing, mess the job.


Sam Demma (33:09):
No, I appreciate you sharing that. And you know, all the students that, and parents that haven’t told you, you know, you’re making a huge difference and not only you Brent, but everyone listening, you know, it’s a, it’s a profession where sometimes you plant the seed in and then someone else watches it grow. So it’s a, yeah, it’s a great way for y’all doing


Brent Mattix (33:29):
Well. Okay. So one of my, one of my good friends, I’m a name drop here, Phil boyte, who has a company called learning for living. And he’s the gentleman who started the link crew program. I had an opportunity for him to mentor me for awhile. And he, and I think I brought up setting healthy boundaries and he said, Brent, you know, what I’ve found is you’re juggling a lot of balls to use an analogy. And those balls are all up in the air. And if you drop them, I’ve found that most of them you’re going to find are made of rubber. They’re going to bounce back up. You’re going to be able to get them back in the game. The two balls that are made of glass are your health and your family.

Sam Demma (34:12):
Boom. We just dropped the mic there and call it a day.


Brent Mattix (34:17):
Well, you know, that’s why he’s got a company. He’s a smarter guy than I am, but I it’s like talking to Yoda.


Sam Demma (34:23):
That’s awesome, man. So cool. I’ve seen Phyllis speak at some conferences, which is phenomenal. But thank you so much for taking some time to share some of your stories and experiences. I really appreciate you coming on the show. Yeah. Keep up the great work. If another educator is listening and wants to reach out to you and have a conversation, what would be the best way for them to do so?


Brent Mattix (34:42):
Sure. Well, I’m setting healthy boundaries, so don’t call, I’m just teasing. We’re all in this together. And so my emails, my to-do task lists, that’s what I keep coming back to. So my email address is bmattix@rjuhsd.us


Sam Demma (35:09):
Yeah, I’m going to put it in the show notes as well.


Brent Mattix (35:12):
Emails that email’s the best way. And Hey, if I can make a difference and share anything with anybody, happy to do that because you know that old metaphor or analogy or whatever it is is I am an English teacher of the pebble and the pond is so true. And, and we’re in this together. Keep doing good stuff for kids because they truly are our future and deserve everything.


Sam Demma (35:38):
Awesome. Brent, thank you so much for coming on the show. Really appreciate it again, keep it up and we’ll stay in touch. My pleasure, Sam, and there you have it. Another amazing guest and amazing interview on the high-performing educator podcast. As always, if you enjoy these episodes, please consider leaving a rating and review. So other educators like yourself can find this content and benefit from it. And here’s an exclusive opportunity that I mentioned at the start of the show. If you want to meet the guest on today’s episode, if you want to 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.

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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.

October 24, 2021 by Student Activity Director Student Leadership Teachers 0

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