Student Leadership

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Listen Now

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

Resources Mentioned

Trent University Durham GTA

The Transcript

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

(Transcription from Rev)

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

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

Mark Chapin — Principal of Meyer Middle School

Mark Chapin — Principal of Meyer Middle School
About Mark Chapin

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

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

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

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

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

Connect with Mark Chapin: Email

Listen Now

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

Resources Mentioned

Meyer Middle School

School District of River Falls

Ellsworth Community School District

Bethel University

Alverno College

Wisconsin Character Education Partnership Advisory Committee

American Legion Post 121

The Transcript

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Mark Chapin
Wow.

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

Mark Chapin
Wow.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Sam Demma
Yeah.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Mark Chapin
You know, it’s funny too.

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

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

Sam Demma
Can’t wait.

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

Sam Demma
Talk soon.

Join the Educator Network & Connect with Mark Chapin

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

Shandi Andres — State Adviser for Kansas FCCLA

Shandi Andres — State Adviser for Kansas FCCLA
About Shandi Andres

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

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

Connect with Shandi Andres: Email | Instagram | Facebook

Listen Now

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

Resources Mentioned

Kansas FCCLA

Kansas State University

The Transcript

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

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

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

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

Shandi Andres
Yeah, thanks Sam for having me.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Sam Demma
Tell me about your first experience with FCCLA.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Sam Demma
Oh, wow.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Sam Demma
Oh, wow.

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

Sam Demma
Dark.

Shandi Andres
Dark.

Sam Demma
Yeah.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Join the Educator Network & Connect with Shandi Andres

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

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

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

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

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

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

Connect with Callie Sue Costello: Email | Instagram

Listen Now

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

Resources Mentioned

Centennial High School

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

Idaho FCCLA

Boise State University (BSU)

The Transcript

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Callie Sue
Of course.

Sam Demma
I’ll see you in Boise.

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

Join the Educator Network & Connect with Callie Sue Costello

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Listen Now

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

Resources Mentioned

Chetek-Weyerhaeuser High School/Middle School

Roselawn Elementary School

Barron County Restorative Justice

The Transcript

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

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

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

Janis Volker
Good morning, thank you for having me.

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

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

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

Sam Demma
What about psychology intrigued you?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Sam Demma
So I appreciate you sharing that.

Janis Volker
Yes, thank you.

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

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

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

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

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

Sam Demma
Awesome. Jan, just keep taking photos.

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

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

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

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

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

Janis Volker
Thanks, Sam.

Join the Educator Network & Connect with Janis Volker

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

Russ Sommerfeldt – Principal at the Magrath Junior/Senior High School

Russ Sommerfeldt – Principal at the Magrath Junior/Senior High School
About Russ Sommerfeldt

Russ Sommerfeldt is a dedicated educational leader with over a decade of experience in K-12 education. He is currently the principal of Magrath Junior/Senior High School, a role he has held for 3.5 years, where he oversees a student population of 430 students from grades 7-12. Russ has a strong background in educational leadership, having previously served as Vice Principal and Athletic Director at the same school.

In addition to his administrative roles, Russ has been actively involved in athletics. He served as the assistant coach for the Senior Varsity Zeniths basketball team, helping lead them to back-to-back zone championships in 2017 and 2018. His dedication to coaching and mentoring students instilled teamwork, discipline, and resilience in the athletes he worked with.

Throughout his career, Russ has demonstrated a passion for teaching and integrating technology into classrooms. He holds a Master of Education degree from Walden University, where he focused on the effective integration of technology in K-12 education. He also earned a Bachelor of Education/Bachelor of Management from the University of Lethbridge.

Russ has taught a variety of subjects, including social studies, science, and robotics. His interest in emerging technologies and their potential to enhance learning drives his approach to education. As a principal, Russ is committed to fostering a positive learning environment, supporting student success, and helping his staff grow as educators. He is also a devoted family man, finding joy in outdoor adventures with his wife and five children.

Connect with Russ Sommerfeldt: Email

Listen Now

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

Resources Mentioned

Magrath Junior/Senior High School

Walden University

University of Lethbridge

The Transcript

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

Sam Demma
Welcome back to another episode of the High Performing Educator Podcast. This is your host, Sam Demma, and today we are joined by Russ Sommerfeld. Russ is the principal of McGrath High School. We met a few months ago. I was telling him about a marathon that I was going to be running in October, and we have since ran the marathon.

Sam Demma
I’m still alive. The legs are still moving. He gave me some great advice because he’s run a few of them with his brother, from what I remember from our previous conversation. He’s passionate about education, passionate about athletics.

Sam Demma
Russ, thank you so much for taking the time to come on the show here today.

Russ Sommerfeldt
Hey Sam, I really appreciate it, it’s an honor.

Sam Demma
Tell us a little bit about how you got involved in education.

Russ Sommerfeldt
Yeah, so I actually, my father was an educator, so I followed in his footsteps. He started out as just an ordinary classroom teacher. He went on to become a guidance counselor. And then from there, worked his way into administration as a vice principal, and then eventually

Russ Sommerfeldt
as he ended his career as a superintendent. And so I’ve always looked up to my father. He’s been a role model in my life and he definitely inspired me to go into this field of work and showed me how rewarding it can be to help kids and to help them succeed.

Russ Sommerfeldt
And one of the greatest things he ever taught me was the greatest gift that you can give a kid is confidence and building their confidence. And so I’ve tried to keep that as a motto and remember that throughout my career thus far. Because I think it is key, the world in so many ways tries to pull people down and diminish who they are and what they can do. And we play an important role as educators to help kids believe in themselves and inspire them to think that, you know what, despite all that noise out there in the world, they really can do great things.

Sam Demma
My teacher, Mr. Loudfoot, gave me belief in myself and I still think it’s one of the greatest gifts he ever gave me as a student in this classroom. Now I also was given that gift from my parents, but I more so expected my parents to give it to me and when the teacher was just as certain that I should believe in myself as my own parents were it just, it took my belief in myself to a whole another level because I expected it from them,

Sam Demma
but didn’t really expect it from him. So I couldn’t agree more as a young person who’s closely removed from school and can still reflect on that experience pretty clearly. I think you’re so right. Did your dad also run marathons or are you and your brother the two athletic beasts in the family?

Russ Sommerfeldt
Yeah, you know, my dad isn’t necessarily a runner. My brother was the one that got into it and then he inspired me. It was actually just coming off of COVID, tail end of COVID. I happen to be visiting him. He lives down in Arizona and he said, you know what, I’m running this marathon, why don’t you start training? You got time, we’ve got six months till this thing happens. And so he says, there’s this app you can download and we can communicate, you know, you’re in Alberta, Canada, I’m in Phoenix, Arizona, and we can train together. And so I thought, oh, that does not sound like fun at all. But there was something about that conversation that day that kept coming back to me.

Russ Sommerfeldt
And so I did, I said, let’s do it. And the rest is history, I guess, in terms of me becoming a runner. Because I was not a distance runner in school growing up. Track and field, I would do the 100 meter and nothing longer. So I didn’t ever see myself as a distance runner, but now I would say that I am, and I really enjoy it.

Russ Sommerfeldt
Especially with a leadership position at the school, and I think all leaders could say the same thing. There’s a lot of things that happen in a day. There’s a lot of stresses and a lot of things on your mind and it’s a great outlet to let go of some of those things and to really take care of yourself for your own wellness.

Sam Demma
When you think about your journey through education, sounds like you were inspired by your dad and loved the idea of making a positive contribution in the lives of young kids. What was your first role? And take us through that journey that brought you to McGrath today.

Russ Sommerfeldt
Yeah, so it’s funny enough, but when I went through university, my last teaching internship before I became a full-fledged teacher was actually at McGrath High School. Oh, no way.

Russ Sommerfeldt
I just had an awesome experience. I loved the school so much. And so basically, after I graduated, they didn’t have a position right at that very moment, but I went and taught at the high school I attended when I was in high school for a semester, and I enjoyed every minute of that, but the teacher that I was filling in for was coming back. And then later on, six months later, four months later, they had an opening at McGrath and I was like, you gotta be kidding me, this is awesome. Like I can go back to the place that I love. And so I started out teaching social studies, science, and I started out as a classroom teacher here. Loved every minute of it. Got involved with athletics through coaching, predominantly coached some basketball. Started off at the grade eight level in junior high. Just tried to figure out where can I help out because a school does not run without a lot of volunteer hours from teachers and community members. And so I got to know a lot of people through that process. It’s also interesting how you get to know kids outside of the classroom too.

Russ Sommerfeldt
When you go on maybe a trip with them or at a practice, that influence that you can have have goes much deeper when you see them, and when they see you in a different light as well, not just someone talking at the front of a classroom or trying to teach them something, but the relationship that’s forged is way deeper when you can work with them in a few different ways. And so yeah, I mean, I fell in love with McGrath and then eventually some things opened up in terms of people retire and so on and so forth. And there was other opportunities that presented themselves as well at the school.

Sam Demma
When you think about folks who have helped you in your professional development as an educator, I mean, it does again sound like your dad played a really big role, but is there anyone else that’s top of mind that you think this person really changed the way I thought about certain things?

Russ Sommerfeldt
Yeah, there’s lots of people. And I feel like we live in a great… I feel like I live in a great area of Alberta where there’s a lot of really good educators. And so just the people that I would brush shoulders with in my…we used to call them a professional learning community. And we would meet every quarter or so, and just rubbing elbows with those teachers who were veteran teachers that would show me, hey, have you ever tried this? Or what about this? And those people really shaped the way I thought. On a professional level, like some of the books that I’ve read, I would say Todd Whitaker, his work is incredible, What Great Teachers Do Differently. His work really resonates with me a lot. And he actually came to our school division to start the year off this year, so we heard him speak to us in person, which was great. So I think his work’s been instrumental in kind of my thought process and some of the things that I’ve implemented in my own practices. Throughout my master’s I read a few books by a guy named Will Richardson who he was he’s a very innovative thinker. He talks a lot about how the traditional model of school is broken and how we need to change it and so that having that in my mind has has made me take some risks and try new things and try to figure out how we can better prepare these kids for the future because essentially the school system has been the same since the industrial era, right? It’s almost like the factory model of we’re mass producing kids, you know, and it doesn’t necessarily work.

Russ Sommerfeldt
And so we have to be creative in our thinking and in the way we do things in education now.

Sam Demma
When you think of students within the schools you’ve served, is there any that come to mind that were really struggling and over a period of time made some significant improvements in their own self-confidence? And if it’s a serious story, you could definitely change their name. The reason I bring it up is because a lot of educators don’t get physically thanked by the students themselves because maybe they don’t have the confidence to even walk up to the teacher and tell them how big of a difference they’ve made in their confidence, or they realize it 10 years after they graduate and have no way of getting back in touch with that individual. And so there’s an educator definitely listening to this right now who may be doubting the impact they’re creating and hearing about a story of how education or a teacher or even yourself had impacted a student might remind them what’s possible.

Russ Sommerfeldt
Yeah, and I probably don’t have any monumental stories right off the top of my head, but I’m reminded of one even this year. I had a student come into my office, has since graduated, and this particular student didn’t really like to attend school all that much. Attitude-wise, they were kind of, eh, I don’t know if school is important. But when they came back to my office this year, at the start of the school year, as a 23 or 24-year-old person that’s in university, they had a huge smile on their face, a whole bunch of energy around what they were doing. And they were currently in university, and they thanked me. And I was like, well, I don’t remember doing anything out of the ordinary other than being here every day. But I think the impact that we have on kids is way more than we know.

Russ Sommerfeldt
Even if it’s nothing specific that we did, it’s just believing in them each and every day and never giving up on them. And so, yeah, that comes to mind as one. But there’s a lot of kids out there, too, that, you know, some, they don’t have the support at home necessarily. And so they come, they walk through the doors here at school and the adults here are really the only champion that they have or so that they feel. And I’m sure that their parents are rooting for them as much as they can, but whatever, for whatever reason, the relationship isn’t quite what they would like it to be. And so we play a huge role that way too, just to, you know, listen to kids, be there for them and keep cheerleading.

Sam Demma
I think it’s so important too. There’s some situations where kids are coming to school looking specifically for learning and connections with other kids. And there’s other kids who are coming to school looking for a safe space and looking for food to eat and looking for a totally different set of needs than what other young people might be looking for. And it’s important to recognize that every kid is carrying a different backpack, that they all have different, they all have those different challenges.

Sam Demma
I think that education is one of the most important ways to shape the future, and you’re doing amazing work, and everyone at McGrath is as well, but it comes with its own set of challenges also. What do you think some of the challenges are in education these days?

Sam Demma
Well, I think I’ve noticed that student engagement is a really tough thing.

Russ Sommerfeldt
You know, kids, when they go home, they can learn what they want to learn instantaneously on YouTube or on TikTok. And it is so engaging that when they come to school and maybe the method or the model of that learning is different, it’s hard for them to really engage with what it is. And so I think just helping kids understand the value of what they’re learning and trying to make it applicable to their real life, because honestly, as a part, like with the work that Will Richardson did that I referenced a little bit earlier, a lot of people just learn on demand now. It’s not that they feel like they have to read a whole textbook to learn. No, they can, you can get specific and really good information on specific things that you’re interested in. So I think just helping kids see the importance of what we do here every day. And even when it’s not so engaging or interesting, I think the bigger lesson is learning how to stick to something, even when it’s really hard. Similar to what probably you learned and what I learned through this process of training for a marathon. There’s days when you think, man, this is tough, this is hard, why am I doing this?

Russ Sommerfeldt
And as you stick to that process, the end result is beautiful. And I think a lot of times kids won’t see that until after they’re gone. And that’s why we don’t always see the impact that we have as educators.

Sam Demma
And there’s also opportunities. Like there’s definitely challenges and I think being aware of them is important so we can think about ways to shift certain things, which it sounds like you are, which is amazing. What do you think some of the opportunities are each day in the school system right now? Oh, there’s so many.

Russ Sommerfeldt
I think that a school is kind of a mini society, so to speak, or a mini community. And so, you know, we have a really excellent extracurricular program, athletics program, and on any given night almost at our school, because we’re a seven through 12, we have 10 athletic teams that are playing, whether they’re playing here or elsewhere. But here in the school specifically, there’s a lot of opportunities for kids to get involved and to learn real life skills. So some of them, I know we have an entrepreneur class where kids are making yogurt, frozen yogurt for the game.

Russ Sommerfeldt
And then we sell them at the game to help support these programs that we offer. So they’re actually learning that skill. They could also come work in the concession where they’re taking people’s orders, communicating with them that way, giving that information to the people in prep and getting food out the door so that people can watch the game. We also try to make it a kind of a big production.

Russ Sommerfeldt
So I got kids that are working with our streaming and they’re learning the tech side of things. They’re learning how to do instant replays of a whole broadcast thing and that type of thing. from the behind the scenes stuff of people getting, you know, when we run a tournament, they’re building these, we call them either swag bags or a little care package for each of the players that come. So it’s pretty cool to see all the goings-ons in the building, and that’s just one example. Like, we have the same thing with drama and band and fine arts, where kids can get involved and do a lot of good that’s not academic necessarily, but as a hidden curriculum, it’s very valuable.

Sam Demma
When you think of your community, your mini society of this school, is there anything that you think is very unique or that your school does that may be very unique from other schools? And maybe you don’t even think it’s unique, but for a school in a different province, it could totally be something they’ve never tried or done before.

Sam Demma
Does anything come to mind that you think would be worth sharing?

Russ Sommerfeldt
Yeah, you bet. So we’re unique in the sense that we have kindergarten through grade 12 basically under the same roof. Wow. The elementary school, so K to six, is in its own part of the building.

Russ Sommerfeldt
It has its own administration, it’s its own school, so it’s run separately. And then over in my end, we have seven through 12. But from the moment these kids enter kindergarten, because of the proximity and because we’re such a small community and people know each other so well, they feel a part of the high school. They feel a part of this mini society right from the get go. Specifically with the extracurricular activities because the kindergarten kids, the grade one kids, they get read to by the senior varsity basketball players on occasion. They’re invited to our pep rallies. So they learn the cheers, they’re wearing their blue and gold, they’re decked out. We’ve even had alumni make trading cards of the kids and these little kids will be getting autographs of these players after the game. So it’s unique in a sense that high school sports is much bigger in a really small town than maybe even some of the larger centers because everybody in the whole community is behind it. And it’s really cool. At any one of our games, there may be a thousand people at these games.

Russ Sommerfeldt
And I’ve been to other high schools across the province and even in other provinces, and the crowds just aren’t that big. You’ll get the parents and maybe some family members, but people that aren’t even related to a single player on the court, they’re here because it’s the main event. There’s nothing else going on in the town, so they come, they support. And so in that sense, I think we’re unique, that the school community is basically the hub of the entire town.

Russ Sommerfeldt
And we do a lot of things here at school that spill over into other aspects of the community, which is really cool.

Sam Demma
More rural schools, more rural schools. That’s cool. I love that. Did you grow up in the same area as the school? Or are you from elsewhere?

Russ Sommerfeldt
Yeah, so I grew up in Carsten, which is about 30 minutes southwest of here, very similar culture, where small town and community involvement’s key. And so, yeah, it feels like home, even though it’s half hour away, right? So it’s very similar.

Sam Demma
A lot of other schools struggle to engage their parent communities. It sounds like the parents of these kids show up for things. Aside from the fact that there may be nothing else going on, do you think there’s other things that contribute to people in the community getting really involved in their kids’ school activities?

Russ Sommerfeldt
You know, I think a big part of it is building that relationship with parents and just asking them. I think we forget sometimes that people are willing if they are clear on what it is that is needed. And so figuring out a system and just turning it over sometimes to the parents. And you got to be a little bit careful, but with some planning and with some preparation, they can do a lot better job than I ever could. So I’m the type of leader who wants to engage and bring in as many other people as possible because me, myself could do it one way, but there’s a lot of other people that have lots of great ideas, probably much better than mine. And so I like to bring all those ideas to the table to make it the best possible experience for kids.

Sam Demma
And we only have two hands too, right? So every person brings two more and a brain. So you put it all together, you can move mountains and do some cool stuff. This has been a lovely conversation, the time’s flown by. I just wanna say thank you so much for investing the time into the show to talk a little bit about your educational journey and some of your beliefs around education. If there’s an educator listening to this and wants to reach out to you or get your training plan for running their first marathon, what would be the best way for them to get in touch?

Russ Sommerfeldt
Yeah, definitely send me an email. Russ.Sommerfeld at westwind.ab.ca. I’m sure you can link that into the notes. I won’t give my cell phone number out over a podcast, but my email for sure, or our school website, mcgrathhigh.ca, and they can find me there as well. Happy to talk to anybody who’s interested.

Sam Demma
Awesome, Russ, thank you so much for taking the time. Keep running, keep up the great work, and we’ll talk to you soon. and we’ll talk to you soon. Hey, thanks a bunch.

Join the Educator Network & Connect with Russ Sommerfeldt

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.

Sean Kenney – Director for the Nova Scotia International Student Program in the Tri-County Regional Centre for Education

Sean Kenney – Director for the Nova Scotia International Student Program in the Tri-County Regional Centre for Education
About Sean Kenney

Sean Kenney is the director for the Nova Scotia International Student Program in the Tri-County Regional Centre for Education and the Coordinator for Community Learning, International Services, and Family of School Supervisor. Previous to his current role, he has been a dynamic classroom teacher, vice principal, and principal spanning 30 years in Manitoba, Quebec, and his home province of Nova Scotia. Although desperately missing being in a school each day working with students, he is broadening his impact within his regional of 6200 students.

Sean has always engaged students in thoughtful and meaningful ways while having a sharp focus on equitable practices that are safe and inclusive of everyone in his school community. Each year he welcomes over 250 students from at least 20 different countries into his schools and communities while serving as their custodian and ensuring that they have a rich Nova Scotian experience. 

Connect with Sean Kenney: Email | Instagram

Listen Now

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

Resources Mentioned

Nova Scotia International Student Program

Tri-County Regional Centre for Education

The Transcript

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

Sam Demma
Welcome back to another episode of the High Performing Educator Podcast. This is your host, Sam Demma. Today we are joined by Sean Kenney, the Director for the Nova Scotia International Student Program in the Tri-County Regional Center for Education and the Coordinator for Community Living of International Services and Family of School Supervisor. But he’s been in education for a long time in Manitoba, in Quebec, in Nova Scotia. He works with international students from all over the world and I’m so grateful to have him on the show here today. Sean, thank you so much for taking the time to be here.

Sean Kenney
Thanks so much, Sam. I appreciate the invitation.

Sam Demma
Where in the world are you tuning in from today?

Sean Kenney
That’s a great question. Most of my work is centered in Southwest Nova Scotia, so my office is in Yarmouth, one of the small towns in the southwest portion of the province. That’s where I am right now. However, some of my work takes me different areas of the world, including different parts of Canada where I first met you at the CAPSI conference in Niagara Falls last spring. Yeah, recently for work purposes I’ve traveled to Thailand and Vietnam for a couple weeks meeting with prospective students, partners, and agencies through our international student program.

Sam Demma
When young people, aspiring educators, think about education, most of the time they think about teaching in the classroom or being a principal of a local school, not traveling the globe recruiting students to come to Canada and to provide them with a home away from home and a life-changing experience. At what point in your own educational journey did you uncover international education, and how did you get involved?

Sean Kenney
That’s a great question. Many moons ago, you alluded to the fact that I’ve been in different provinces. And I began education, oh, 34, 35 years ago now, when I went to teacher’s college. So it’s been some time.

Sean Kenney
And at that time, I was really passionate thinking, okay, I’m going to be the, you know, a great math teacher. And that was my singular focus. And truth be told, I’ve taught a number of other subjects other than math. Over those years, you know, I’ve held different roles as a teacher from grade seven through 12. There’s been math, there’s been science, industrial arts, leadership, outdoor ed, you name it. You kind of try some different things. But then being a teacher and vice principal, I was first acquainted with the International Student Program in that regard at one of my previous schools in Shelburne County, Barrington High. We’d have a number of students come in and that was my first introduction to that. So over the course of the last 15 to 20 years, I’ve had kind of an arm’s length support of the International Student Program. During that time, I’ve got to meet a number of great students from all over the world. And then, as we started to develop programs in schools where we’re able to create a bigger network of host families, we were able to welcome more students.

Sean Kenney
And in doing so, we were able to put in a number of different programs in place to help support those students. It was a few years ago, the opportunity came up where the previous director for the International Student Program in our region took a job change. And I thought, okay, I’ve been a leader from a number of different schools and I’ve always felt for me personally, kind of four to six years is that kind of window where it’s important for the organization and the person to seek new opportunities and change. It’s good for everyone that we continue growth through taking new opportunities. So I said, okay, let me give this a try. And Sam, my eyes were blown wide open because certainly from this lens and the supporting role that I’ve got, I didn’t realize all that was involved in the International Student Program, having been a teacher, vice principal, and principal. Certainly, it’s been very alarming and enlightening to see all that’s involved in welcoming all these students in our program. We’ve actually got one of the most esteemed public school, high school programs in Canada.

Sean Kenney
It’s certainly well respected across the country. We’ve welcomed over 25,000 students across 70 different schools in Nova Scotia. In my particular region, we normally bring 200-250 students. Some will be here for as short as four weeks and some will be here for the full year. Some actually begin in grade 7, 8, 9 and they’ll continue for three or four years to graduate. It’s really exciting, the opportunities. And certainly, as you get to travel and meet different agents and partners, you get to see how my starting role 35 years ago as a math teacher has certainly changed greatly. However, not losing sight of the fact that we’re providing great educational experiences, not just for our Canadian students, but also welcoming students from so many different countries.

Sam Demma
For an educator listening to this, who’s aspiring to get into a school, but has never thought or considered about international education as a way they could provide an exceptional experience for young people and also make a contribution in slightly different ways.

Sam Demma
What are some of those services you provide or things you do on a day-to-day basis to paint a little bit of a picture for the role?

Sean Kenney
Yeah, that’s a great question. So I see my role right now within our region as two, you know, it’s, it’s, there’s many different things on my platter of responsibilities. And one of them is really specific around our 150 international students that are part of our program. a more rural way of life. And then there’s a lot of people coming from other countries and immigrating and moving into our communities. So all of our teachers and staff in all schools

Sean Kenney
have been forced to think of things in a different way, as far as a culturally responsive approach in welcoming all of our students and all of the different cultures in our schools. Previous to COVID, quite honestly, a number of our schools would have had limited experience to people from other countries unless it was through the International Student Program. In our region and across the province, that has traditionally been from grades 7 to 12. So a lot of our elementary schools didn’t have those opportunities. So when we think of those best teaching practices and school practices and creating welcoming schools, they were often limited to junior and senior highs. eyes. So now within our region and across the province, and I would guess across the whole country, this has become a wider focus for every educator.

Sam Demma
When you think about your journey in education and international education, who comes to mind as mentors or folks that have helped you and supported you in your professional and personal development? Yeah, that’s a great question. So, the founder and forefather of the Nova Scotia International Student Program was by the name of Paul Millman, and he’s recently moved on over the last couple of years to take on new ventures. So, certainly I was introduced to him while I was still a vice principal about 12 years ago at a conference in a little town named DeBert. And at that time, they brought together a number of administrators. So watching him and his passion from a distance has certainly been incredible.

Sean Kenney
As I’ve become part of the program, I get to see his far-reaching impact and passion and how he’s instilled that on every single… People are living and breathing the program. I think sometimes we take for granted that, you know, a regular classroom, it ends at three o’clock. Well, the International Student Program, it’s a 24-7, 365-day gig where we’ve got the responsibility for that incredible school experience, but as well, we run our own homestead. So it’s creating a network of quality families that welcome students in for this intercultural exchange that’s so rich.

Sean Kenney
So within our program, I’ve been mentored by a friend and colleague, someone actually oddly enough I knew back at Teachers College 35 years ago, and he and I have had similar kind of lived experiences professionally where, you know, he left Teachers College in the mid-90s, became a teacher, moved, you know, different opportunities. Sometimes opportunities present themselves to you by suggestion. People are thinking, hey, there’s an opportunity here, and I think you might be able to fill this need right now. And I think that’s often how people might step into a leadership role in education, especially when it comes to that of a vice principal. I don’t know that many people go in education thinking, wow, one day I’d love to be a VP or a principal. It kind of happens out of curiosity and just different lived experience where you keep building on different things. So he’s been a wonderful mentor as well as our entire program with this particular journey over the past two and a half years.

Sam Demma
What did those folks do for you that had the greatest impact?

Sean Kenney
I think when you bring varied experiences to a new role and set of responsibilities, it’s around validating some of those curiosities, thinking, okay, is this kind of what’s expected? Am I heading in the right direction. He would provide a number of suggestions to me and he was always there for support when I needed.

Sean Kenney
There’s a lot of text messages and emails, hey, in this situation, it’s new for me but probably not for you. This is what I’m kind of talking through those. Because when you’re dealing with, you know, when you’re dealing with humans, man, there can be some high emotions, big emotions, and you definitely want to make sure you get things right. There’s no playbook that’s black and white. We live in the gray when we’re supporting our kids and families, right?

Sam Demma
I think the unique thing about having a mentor who’s been working in a similar field for such a long period of time, is like you mentioned, it may be new for you, but for them, it could be something they’ve experienced dozens or hundreds of times. And there’s a phenomenal book by a guy named Ray Dalio called Principles, and he talked about a mentor that he had in the book, and he would bring him his challenges, and the mentor would say, oh, it’s just another one of those.

Sam Demma
He categorized a lot of his challenges into buckets of things that his mentor had experienced in the past. And even if they haven’t experienced it based on the breadth of their whole experience, they can probably help make a good suggestion even if they’ve never faced something like that before themselves. You said that international education is 24-7.

Sam Demma
It doesn’t end at three o’clock. I think it takes a pretty special human to dedicate their life to supporting young people From 8 a.m. To 3 p.m. Let alone in a position where it seems like it never stops Did you have any experiences growing up that? Inspired you to want to help kids and work with young people or why did you choose this work? Well, it was the fame and fortune. I was looking for I think it’s a calling. People who want to help and be in a helping field, they find their way there. So for me, I think of a couple of pivotal moments and actually they both happened for me as a student when I moved schools. My family moved schools when I was in grade six. So in Nova Scotia, many of our elementary schools go until grade six. So it was kind of a big deal being the oldest of three boys. We ended up moving to this small rural community and I was like, wow, this is really different. Um, and the teacher there kind of, she saw things in me that I didn’t really see in myself at that time. Right. And then it happened again in grade 10 when I arrived at the high school, first year in a new school and kind of had a similar experience. So I thought, okay, these people, um, are suggesting that I might be a great in school one day. And for me, I found math easier than many of the other subjects.

Sean Kenney
So, between that and enjoying sports, certainly enjoyed sports playing as a child when I realized I was far from a pro ball player, I was never going to be a professional athlete. Later in high school, I can’t remember if it was, must have been the summer of grade 11, a friend, me and one of my friends, we ended up coaching a minor ball team and working with the little league kids at that time would have been five, six, seven. It was fun.

Sean Kenney
And I think that kind of was the hook. It’s one of those things that if you enjoy working with kids, you know, just one of those things. With working with kids, every day there’s something new. So you might get some of those moments, but there’s so many things like, wow, that’s different.

Sean Kenney
So I think always being curious, willing to learn and open to new opportunities, that’s what I love about working with kids. There’s never a dull moment. That’s in transitioning to this role, it’s a little different, right?

Sean Kenney
Having been a principal, I was there every day with 575 students every day. So you get to interact all day long, you know, and this one here, working more regionally based, it’s a little different as far as your impact and influence because you don’t get to see every student every day, which is something I had desperately missed, but I’m adjusting to, right? Finding other ways to kind of get to see them.

Sam Demma
There’s unique opportunities in every field, in every, I believe, in every vocation, every job. I think one of the unique opportunities in the work you’re doing now is you’re creating homes away from a home for lots of kids who these experiences could be life changing and and when you think about the students that you’ve served over the years in international education, is there a story of a student that might come to mind right now who was really nervous and shy and maybe even struggling at the start of their international experience but by the end, we’re emailing you, mister Kenny, you’re not gonna believe this. Yeah. And if there isn’t a specific email, that’s okay too. But if there’s a story, I would love for you to share it because there’s an educator listening to this that’s doubting if they’re making a difference. And I think it’s stories like that that really remind them to keep showing up.

Sean Kenney
Yeah, so having been a principal for a number of years, right? And I’ve had the luxury of working in grade primary to 12 schools. And I always shared with my staff, listen, different grade levels have different levels of gratitude.

Sean Kenney
Some are time delayed. Some are like that email that you’re going to delay send. So in elementary schools, gratitude is daily. You get hugs and kisses and snot on your pants from the hugs, right? So you feel that love every day. In high school, those major milestones, the proms, the graduations, when kids are leaving, you get a lot more gratitude. Middle school, it’s delayed, right? So some, you feel that love, right? And you know that you’re making that difference, but for some, they come back. So from my experiences, I’ve had a number of students that are like, man, I just want to talk to you. I really appreciate that you never gave up on me, even though I didn’t deserve that unconditional positive regard or love that you were given. Because sometimes at that time when I was in grade 7 or 8, I was 13, 14, I wasn’t nice. I wasn’t nice to you. I wasn’t nice to other people around me. I just wasn’t nice to myself. So it’s kind of keeping that in mind. With that said, it’s not lost on me the great responsibility that we have in making sure when our students come as directors, we all serve as the legal custodian. So I take them on as my kids. And one of the great responsibilities that I see is taking care of that homestay part, making sure that we vet the families in an appropriate way so that I’m convinced that if my kids were in another country, my own children, I’ve got two that are 17 and 19, am I comfortable with my kids staying in that home thousands of kilometers away? So we’ve been investing time and energy in making sure that all of our homestay families have a common vision of what it is to take care of our kids while they’re here in Nova Scotia. And unfortunately at times I’ve had to make tough decisions where we’ve had to part ways on that hosting relationship. And that’s really difficult to do because parents are sending their kids to Nova Scotia or Canada hoping for a certain experience and many of them will share. And the great thing is, Sam, I’m Sean now, I’m not Mr. Kenny, which is a great thing.

Sean Kenney
In the international community, I don’t have to be Mr. Kenney. I love it. So they come and they say, Sean, this is just like the Hollywood movies, right? When they think of high school, what’s high school like? Well, North American high school is very different than it is in Turkey or Germany or, you know, pick a country, Japan, South Korea, any of the countries that we host from. So, yeah, it’s that responsibility. And we do a great job making sure we transition the students in. So we have a big team of people, whether it’s our home state coordinators, our program managers, we have school ambassadors, which is a wonderful program. They’re Canadian students in every one of our high schools that are trained to help welcome students as they arrive and help them transition through all of their firsts that happen during their stay.

Sean Kenney
So yeah, there’s a lot of stories where kids come, they’re really scared, sometimes they experience culture shock. I’ve really enjoyed my travels with students when I pick them up from the airport and help kind of relieve their concerns. It’s a three, three and a half hour drive from Halifax Airport down to Yeremeth.

Sean Kenney
So if I’ve got three or four students brand new to Canada, we have nice chats coming back and forth.

Sam Demma
When you think about building relationships and having a positive impact in the life of a young person, have you gotten any advice that you think would be worth sharing with some of the educators that are listening right now that might just be starting to work with youth and wanna make a big difference. Like what advice would you share with them that you’ve received at points in your career that you thought were helpful?

Sean Kenney
There’s a lot of different ones. So one of my mentors as a school-based administrator, he was my principal while I was his vice principal for seven years together. And one of the piece of advice he shared was, no matter what the situation is, when you’re speaking with a child, speak to them as if their parents are sitting in the room with you. Show them the same care and concern you would. You can’t be two different people, and that’s really stuck with me.

Sean Kenney
And some of our CRP work in our region, Shrocky Holly, he talks about VABing, which is the validating, affirming, building, bridging. So, I mean, that’s all, it’s about outrageous love, right? So, that’s kind of the part that keeps us going as educators and relationships are everything.

Sean Kenney
Programs, they come and go. Those are kind of the what’s. The why’s and who’s are kind of that vision of purpose. What is your purpose? And who, who’s it all about? Getting to know those kids, getting to know your staff, getting to know your families and having relationships. Certainly there are some time obstacles and barriers, but that is by far the most important thing. And certainly when I think of some of the work that you share in your presentation, it’s around kind of getting to know those kids so that you can help them raise their ceiling of expectations or goals, dreaming big, think big, and then go for it daily with small, reasonable steps. And that’s certainly what resonated with me in the work that we do. And certainly, Sam, I’m looking forward to bringing you to the East Coast here, hopefully in the next school year, so that we can get you to help bring your message, because certainly I think it would resonate with all of our students.

Sam Demma
I appreciate it, Sean. And I’m so grateful that we were able to share some time on the podcast. I know there’s a lot of educators listening to this who have not even considered or thought about international education as a way they can make a difference and express their own passions for working with young people. I wish you nothing but success in all of your upcoming travels. And if there is someone listening to this that wants to touch base with you, reach out, share some delayed gratitude or ask a question, what would be the best way for them to touch base with you?

Sean Kenney
Yeah, so I’m sure on the bio of this podcast, you’ll share that, but my email is sean.kenney at tcrce.ca. Certainly they can look me up on LinkedIn, Facebook, or even Instagram, certainly, even WhatsApp. So I’m certainly willing and able to help answer any questions or even just chat with anyone who’s kind of curious about this because certainly I didn’t think that my educational journey that started 35 years ago would end up in international education right now. And it’s certainly a very wide field and certainly a niche part of public schools.

Sam Demma
Well, one thing, if you’re listening to this right now and you do want to reach out, just don’t call him Mr. Kenney, refer to him as Sean or else you’ll not get a response.

Sean Kenney
That’s definitely one of the top 20 great things about this new role.

Sam Demma
Sean, thank you so much for taking the time. This is awesome. Keep up the great work.

Sean Kenney
Appreciate it, Sam. Thanks.

Join the Educator Network & Connect with Sean Kenney

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.

Andrea Michelutti – Principal at Laurelwood Public School

Andrea Michelutti – Principal at Laurelwood Public School
About Andrea Michelutti

Andrea Michelutti is an experienced administrator with the Waterloo Region District School Board, where she has served communities since 2008. Over the years, she has worked in a variety of schools, gaining extensive experience and insight into the diverse needs of students, staff, and school communities. Andrea believes her role as an administrator is to “Uplift, Uphold, and Support” every person she serves. Guided by this philosophy, she fosters an inclusive and empowering environment where individuals are encouraged to thrive. Andrea is deeply committed to leveraging the strengths of her staff, enabling them to be their best selves while delivering excellence in education and care. With a passion for student success, Andrea inspires young people to reach and exceed their hopes, dreams, and goals. Her dedication to nurturing growth, resilience, and achievement has made her a respected leader and a source of inspiration for students, colleagues, and the broader school community alike.

Connect with Andrea Michelutti: Email | Linkedin | Twitter

Listen Now

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

Resources Mentioned

Waterloo Region District School Board
Laurelwood Public School

The Transcript

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

Sam Demma
Welcome back to another episode of the High Performing Educator Podcast. This is your host, Sam Demma, and today I am very excited. We have a special guest who is full of full of energy, Andrea McAloody from Laurelwood in Waterloo. I’m so excited to have you on the show to talk about all the amazing things going on at the school. Thank you so much for for coming on.

Andrea Michelutti
I appreciate it. Thank you so much, Sam.

Andrea Michelutti
I appreciate you coming to our school last year, and our students still talk about you. They talk about your red backpack. They talk about always being positive and thinking about what we can do better. So, thank you for this opportunity.

Sam Demma
Since I’ve been at the school, I hear there’s a 10-classroom addition that’s been built and that students are taking the initiative to make it a very hospitable experience, a new, beautiful space where every student feels welcome. Tell us a little bit about what’s going on in the school right now.

Andrea Michelutti
So we are very fortunate. We received ministry funding for a 10 classroom addition because our population keeps increasing. We’re over 700 students. And when it opened this year, we opened to fanfare. The architects really worked hard

Andrea Michelutti
so we have the consistent building, the consistent paint colors, the consistent floor. But what we noticed was that our students took a lot of pride in our building. Our students really focused on what’s on the walls, how are they seen, and what are those really great things that they can do.

Andrea Michelutti
They talked about having, you know, a class meeting and how the third environment is what is needed to make sure they feel successful.

Sam Demma
In addition to the addition on the school, tell me a little bit more about how this year has been so far.

Andrea Michelutti
This year has been absolutely incredible. We started this year with more students than we’ve ever expected, and our students have really been working on this idea of hospitality. It came from my conversations with some students in grade eight, and we focused on those opportunities

Andrea Michelutti
of what they can do every day to make others feel welcomed and accepted. So I always say to my students there’s three things that I need to do. I need to support all of our students. I need to uplift all of our students. And I need to uphold or uphold the high expectations, support all of our students, and uplift. So when we talk about uplifting, we’re talking about like greeting our students,

Andrea Michelutti
making a welcome environment. And I had a group of grade eight students come and say, we need to make sure all of our new students to Laurelwood also feel the same way.

Sam Demma
And was this a student-driven idea? Like they approached you and said, hey, we have to do this, or how did it all come about?

Andrea Michelutti
So when I first came to the school, I went to visit every class and I talked about uplift, uphold, support. And when I first arrived, there’d be days where I’d walk the halls. I was new, where students wouldn’t say hello to me. And I said, I expect you to say good morning to say hello. And at first I thought, oh, this is going to be a little silly. Nobody’s going to buy in. And they bought in. And so we’ve been doing that for about a year and a half. And this September,

Andrea Michelutti
our students came to me, a group of boys came and said, we need to make sure our new grade sevens and our new students also understand the importance of greeting each other. I also had some form where students come back and say they’re at new schools now and they don’t feel the same way. And they’ve also approached their teachers and principals to say, how come you don’t greet us at the door? What can you do different? So it’s that slow momentum. But listening to student voice, especially our grade eight students,

Andrea Michelutti
wanting that environment shows that we’re on the right track.

Sam Demma
It sounds like you’ve built quite the culture and community at the school. How do you build this culture of belonging in a school building?

Andrea Michelutti
That’s one of those tricky pieces. So a few schools back, we really focused on that idea of how do all students feel welcome? And so what we did at one of my staff meetings was I had all my teachers go around and take pictures of what the environment looked like

Andrea Michelutti
and how it created a welcoming environment. And so we put a slide show together, I thought it was great. But then we went to the next level and we had all of our students go around and do the same activity to see the adults in the building

Andrea Michelutti
seeing the same things the students are seeing in the building. And we realized there was some things that were the same, but the students really focused on relationships with teachers. They wanted to take pictures of adults

Andrea Michelutti
that they felt that they were safe with and that they can care that that felt cared about And that was most interesting So knowing that I did stumble with my few decisions before because we weren’t too sure where we were going When I came to the school, I really focused on that student voice and those relationships Why I think we’ve been very successful is because we’re talking openly about it and I’ll take student feedback, even the feedback that’s really hard, I listen to them and see what I can do to improve.

Sam Demma
One of the other programs I’ve heard the school has put a major focus on improving is with special education and the mental health of students. Can you tell me a little bit about that this year also?

Andrea Michelutti
So, being a former special education teacher and a former student where I was in a special education program. I know that many of our students always felt a little awkward because learning was hard for them. They had to learn differently. So with my special education team,

Andrea Michelutti
we really talked about what we can do differently to really target our students in kindergarten, grade one, and grade two to fill in those gaps. And we noticed that our students were feeling more successful.

Andrea Michelutti
We focused on their assets and how can they use their assets to improve their areas where they needed a little more improvement. So I’m thinking about a student in the primary grades. Reading is really difficult for her. And what we really focused on was her ability

Andrea Michelutti
to be an amazing dancer and amazing presenter. So we talked about those really strong strengths, and then we moved it into her reading, and she’s already made huge improvements in reading where now she comes to school every day. So by focusing on making students feel good

Andrea Michelutti
about themselves, really connecting on their strengths, one of the side effects, or one of the outcomes, is better attendance at school. We also changed our educational assisted model from being somebody who just jumps in to support kids, to being joy builders.

Andrea Michelutti
So when EAs come in, they are the ones who are there to bring joy to the classroom. So before, some kids would be like, oh, there’s an EA in the classroom. I hope they don’t take me to work with them. We now, our kids all want to work with the EAs because, again, they’re focusing on students’ strengths. And how can we just get that 1% better every day?

Sam Demma
It strikes me that you’re someone who’s been so passionate about education and serving young people and creating welcoming communities. Did you know when you were a student growing up that you wanted to work in education or what did this pathway look like for you?

Andrea Michelutti
When I was younger, I always wanted to be a teacher, but I also wanted to work in business and I wanted to have those, you know, two jobs combined and I never knew what I wanted to do. In high school and in university, I had a chance to work with two Ontario Hockey League teams. I worked with the Sudbury Wolves and the Peterborough Peets. And those were those opportunities that taught me that skills of hospitality, relationships and team building.

Andrea Michelutti
And then I was able to tie that into my passion for always being a teacher. When I became an administrator, it kind of fell in my lap. I was very new to education. I believe I was about seven years in, and unfortunately my vice, the vice principal at the school got sick,

Andrea Michelutti
and at that time there wasn’t many people interested in going into leadership. So my principal tapped me on the shoulder and said, would you be interested in doing this role for about two weeks? That’s it, two weeks.

Andrea Michelutti
Now I’m at 17 years, which is incredible.

Sam Demma
What has been foundational in your professional development as you’ve worked in schools for over 20 years? Have you had mentors or resources that have been helpful?

Sam Demma
And if so, who are those people

Sam Demma
and what did they do for you and what are some of those resources?

Andrea Michelutti
So every time, like once I started in education, I really looked to different mentors. One of my biggest mentors was Charlie Smith. He was my first principal in Markham. And he was an athlete. He was always in the school,

Andrea Michelutti
and what I learned from him was being visible in the building and building those really strong connections at the same time as having that academic excellence. Under his leadership at his school, our EQAO scores for grade three were very, very low. We were at the bottom of the school board, and within three years, we were fourth in the school board.

Andrea Michelutti
And what I learned from him was good teaching, good relationships, resulted in great outcomes. Another one of my great mentors was a principal named Kristen Phillips, and she really taught everyone the importance of being kind, being present, but really pushing student achievement. It was a school where our academic scores were very low. And again, under her leadership,

Andrea Michelutti
we really targeted small group instruction, finding student strengths and moving on. But my biggest mentor ever was the general manager of the Peterborough Peaks from 95 to 99. He was there much before me and much longer after me, but his name was Jeff Tuey. And I just saw how he always treated everybody with kindness

Andrea Michelutti
and respect. It didn’t matter if you were, you know, just a fan coming to the game or if you were a general manager from an NHL team. The way he treated people was with kindness, knew their names, knew things about them, knew their family, knew their passions, and just sitting there, being in my early 20s, seeing that interaction, I’ve tried to really carry that on.

Sam Demma
Do these individuals know the contribution they’ve made to your professional development and personal life? I think they do.

Andrea Michelutti
I’m still in contact with Jeff Tuey. It was funny, because last year, he was up in Sudbury at a hockey game. I no longer live in Sudbury, and he ran into my family. And we exchanged pictures and our cell phone numbers, and I always reach out to him.

Andrea Michelutti
He’s one of those people where I just thought he is able to make things work. And so that’s been really great connecting. And Charlie Smith and Kristen Phillips, we do every once in a while keep in contact over Facebook. They’re both long retired.

Andrea Michelutti
Those are the people who really made my life in a different trajectory.

Sam Demma
With education and any heart-centered vocation, you’re always pouring into others, your staff members, the students in the building, the families you serve, that sometimes we forget to pour into ourselves. When you’re not in the school building or thinking about work, which is probably never.

Sam Demma
But when you have your time to pour into your own cup, how do you do that? What are some of the activities that fill you back up so you can be your whole self at work?

Andrea Michelutti
I’m really fortunate. I have a great family who’s always around me. And whenever I want to do something silly or crazy, they always embrace it. And it could be something like, you know, we wake up early in the morning.

Sam Demma
It’s important to do.

Andrea Michelutti
But it’s those little small connections with friends, with family, and sometimes in our jobs it’s really busy, but I always make sure that I carve out time for family every day.

Sam Demma
That’s so important. Do you come from a family of educators?

Sam Demma
My family went to university.

Andrea Michelutti
So my family had businesses up in Sudbury and I learned the the value of hard work and how when things are going well, they’re going really well. But during economic slowdowns things are really tough. And so what my parents always taught me was to be very appreciative of what you had and make sure that people always feel valued and welcomed in your life.

Sam Demma
Oh, amazing. You said that you’ve been an administrator for I believe now 17 years? That’s correct. What would you say is the big difference between working in the classroom

Sam Demma
and working as an administrator?

Andrea Michelutti
The biggest difference is the impact you make. So in the classroom you work with 20 to 30 students every day, but in a school I’m serving 700 students and supporting 70 staff members and families. So just seeing how the growth from students from grade 1 to grade to grade 8 and seeing the the gain staff makes is very different from being in the classroom to being in a leadership role.

Andrea Michelutti
I do have a lot of opportunities to teach. So if I’m having a tough day, sometimes I’ll go to a classroom and be like, give me a small group, or let me take a group of students. And so this year, my staff has been really working on how to improve their literacy skills, their math skills, and special education. We’re doing everything this year.

Andrea Michelutti
And so when we do have guest speakers, I’ll often say, I’ll take all the students to the library, do a little teaching so the students can work together. But the biggest impact is who we’re serving.

Sam Demma
If you were to think back to your first year

Sam Demma
as an administrator, I’m sure there’s still unique challenges that you’re solving now, but that first year must have been, in some ways, a learning experience. What are some of the advice you would give based on your own past experiences to

Sam Demma
other teachers who might be becoming administrators as they’re listening to this podcast. The one there’s two

Andrea Michelutti
pieces of advice. One is always be kind to others and two is always be kind to yourself. So my first year, I was very aware of all the mistakes I was making and then when I talk to those teachers or those principals, they never notice my mistakes. So I’ve really adopted the model of, if I have a really tough day and I’ve made a bad decision,

Andrea Michelutti
I’ll say, wow, that principal made a really bad decision, but Andrew McAloody is still a really good person. And so I think it’s really focusing on being, forgive yourself when you make those difficult decisions. And I always say, there was never a bad decision, it might just have been bad communication,

Andrea Michelutti
and what can you do differently?

Sam Demma
We’re getting very close to the new year. And when folks listen to this, it might be January or into February. What are you excited about moving into 2025? What I’m most excited about is seeing where our students grow. There are some students that have

Andrea Michelutti
made some significant gains in their literacy and math skills. And they’re just at the point of it’s all coming together, so they’re going to soar. I’m also really excited about thinking about how we can engage our families in different ways. I’m very hopeful for 2025, and I know it’s going to be a great year. I always say this year is the best year, but it turns out next year is the best year, and

Andrea Michelutti
the next year is the best year. And so that’s the great part about being in education is every year it keeps getting better and better. So one of my hopes for 2025 is just to make sure everybody feels a sense of belonging, a sense of happiness, and a sense of welcoming.

Sam Demma
Awesome, Andrea, thank you so much for taking time out of the busy schedule to share some of your ideas on the podcast. I appreciate it. I wish you nothing but the most amount of success and happiness into the new year

Sam Demma
with the school, both professionally and in your personal life, and I hope to stay connected. If somebody is listening to this and wants to share a note of gratitude or reach out, what would be the best way for them to get in touch with you?

Andrea Michelutti
Send me an email or reach out to me on X. It’s always important to have those connections. And just briefly, I had a student come back to me. I only worked with him for three months in 2016, and I said to him, I expect you to graduate. And he was a student who really doubted his abilities, but I saw something in him. And when he came back four years later, he just surprised me at the school with his

Andrea Michelutti
high school diploma, we’ve taken a picture, and it’s one of those moments I just will always cherish. Because he said, you believed in me, and I had to make sure I kept up to your high expectations. So I love when students come back, when families reach out, because it really makes those connections just that little stronger.

Sam Demma
I love that. Is the picture posted on your social media by any chance?

Andrea Michelutti
It is. I’ll send it to you. It’s one of those great things. And he actually did a video about our relationship. So that was one of those most important pieces, something I cherish.

Sam Demma
Oh, amazing. And what would your ex account profile be if someone did want to touch base?

Andrea Michelutti
It’s at Mickeludi A. So my last name followed by my first initial. So M-I-C-H-E-L-U-T-T-I-A.

Sam Demma
Andrea, thank you so much. This is a big pleasure.

Andrea Michelutti
Thank you so much, Sam, and keep doing the great work you’re doing. and keep doing the great work you’re doing. You’re changing the lives of many people.

Join the Educator Network & Connect with Andrea Michelutti

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.

Jeff Armour – Chief Operating Officer (COO) for the University Students’ Council (USC) at Western University

Jeff Armour – Chief Operating Officer (COO) for the University Students’ Council (USC) at Western University
About Jeff Armour

Jeff Armour is the Chief Operating Officer (COO) for the University Students’ Council (USC) at Western University.  Jeff graduated with a B.Sc. from Western University and after a few years of service overseeing the Wave and Spoke restaurant and bars on campus the USC encouraged Jeff to enroll in the Project Management program through Western’s Continuing Studies. Jeff was subsequently promoted to higher-level leadership position in the organization until ultimately landing at the COO role he currently holds.  Jeff also recently completed his EMBA at Ivey in July 2023.
 
Jeff has an extensive background in strategic planning, project management, operations restructuring and realignment, change management and financial strategy.
 
Jeff is married to Mindy and has three children, Kennedee, Ben and Brad.  He was born in BC but grew up in Peterborough, Jeff moved to London for school at Western and never left. 

Connect with Jeff Armour: Email | Linkedin | Twitter | Facebook

Listen Now

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

Resources Mentioned

University Students’ Council (USC)
Western University
Ivey

The Transcript

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

Sam Demma
Welcome back to another episode of the High Performing Educator Podcast. This is your host, Sam Demma. And today we are joined by Jeff Armour. Jeff and I, we met each other a few years ago and we’ve stayed in touch. Personally, I’m super inspired by the Student Union, the USC at Western that they operate and that Jeff organizes and supports.

Sam Demma
And they do incredible things in the post-secondary space. And I’m honored to have Jeff on the show again. Jeff, thank you so much for taking the time to be here.

Jeff Armour
Hey, thanks for inviting me. I guess the first one you can get lucky on, the second one means maybe I did something right. So that’s good.

Sam Demma
I really enjoyed the conversation. And I know this is gonna be just as valuable. There’s so many ways we could take this conversation and different things we could talk about. One of the things I’m most inspired about with your leadership at the USC is every team member seems like the most phenomenal human being. I have some of the most memorable experiences working with you and your staff. Where do you find these amazing human beings? How, like, where do they come from?

Jeff Armour
Wow, there’s two different answers there, I think. The one that’s like maybe the romantic answer is, I think setting a culture and having a purpose-driven organization attracts certain people. That, you know, the old adage at McDonald’s where they say there were smiles on the menu and those were free, and they were selling burgers and fries, but what they were really selling was smiles. I think people come here because they know we’re selling smiles to students. So although they might be a great accountant or a great productions person or a great clubs facilitator or even the people in HR, I think everybody rallies behind the idea that we’re trying to make students smile and enhance the educational experience, which is our mission statement.

Jeff Armour
So that’s the cheesy, super inspirational, like “I’ve got it all figured out” answer. The more, maybe more real answer is, I think there’s a certain amount of luck there. There’s a certain amount of strong leadership about, you know, what type of behaviors and what type of people we want to have here, which obviously changes things a little bit. And then the final piece of that is, when you’ve got something good going on, people like to talk to their friends or the other people they work with, and it spreads pretty quickly. So that’s lovely to see when you’re bringing other people into the fold of what you’re doing.

Sam Demma
I think when it comes to teams, the teams that operate really effectively have cohesion and they’re all unified by that single mission or purpose. And they voice their thoughts and their feelings and have these thoughtful disagreements so they can come up with the best ideas and move forward as a committed, I guess, team of people. How do you think about building that team and encouraging cohesion amongst members of the whole organization?

Jeff Armour
Yeah, well, I think you said it right at the outset, what is ultimately the goal? In a for-profit entity, you get a lot of infighting, I think, because the goal is making money. And sometimes to make money, you’ve got to step on some toes a little bit. And there’s some one-upmanship going on there in competition, which creates perhaps a better value or more profit when you have that sort of infighting.

Jeff Armour
When you’re centered on purpose, and as long as the leader can set a pretty clear goal of, I mean, I guess I just talked about putting smiles on students’ faces, everyone can get behind that. And the one-upmanship is not stepping on other people’s toes, but it’s more like improv: yes and, you know, as opposed to no, but maybe we could do something else. You get a lot of yes ands. “That’s a great idea. And you know what else would be good is this.” So it’s more like piling on in terms of contribution as opposed to ripping it down to try and one-up to make sure that, you know, you get the promotion or the bigger bonus.

Jeff Armour
That is definitely a major focus around here. Failure isn’t the negative. Not trying is the thing we don’t want to see. Just keep trying. You make a mistake, great, we won’t have to make that one again. That’s another one off the list. So it creates a good environment where everyone wants to jump in and see what other ideas they’ve got or, you know, kind of do the yes and.

Sam Demma
I was recently golfing with my godfather and he’s a big reader of books, and he told me to check out this book called Principles by Ray Dalio. And it was all about his life and work principles that he had operated on for a long time. And one of them was, “We celebrate mistakes but don’t tolerate not learning from them.” They had this software in his organization called the issue log. And every time you made a mistake, it was your responsibility to log it and to share it.

Sam Demma
So you put the date and the time and the mistake you made, and the next sync with the whole team, you would talk about it openly so that everyone could learn from the same mistake that just one person made, and then talk about how to avoid it moving forward. And when you’re talking about celebrating mistakes, that whole idea came to mind. How did you build that culture of celebrating mistakes? Is it something similar? Or like, what did you do?

Jeff Armour
It’s just funny because when I took on this role as the COO, formerly the general manager, we were very, very siloed. So no one wanted to talk about their mistakes, right? Despite the immense amount of value. And so because of that, there was no history written. And because of that, we were destined to make the same mistakes over and over again, which is exactly what we were doing. Which was creating a lot of frustration in people that wanted to be here and improve on it and build towards those smiles and great experiences.

Jeff Armour
It was like, “But why are we… like I get it, but why are we… like I’ll try. You’re paying me. Why are we doing the same thing again? I have this other idea. If we could have just turned that one thing and made it better.” And I’m kind of blowing it here, but when I first took on the role, there’s many things that I did, starting with, like, I reintroduced myself to the team. Like literally did a PowerPoint and said, like, “You’ve known me because I was here for probably 15 years before that and reintroduced myself to the team, my senior management team, and basically said, so, you know Jeff, but you don’t, you don’t know Jeff.”

Jeff Armour
The next thing I did was quietly without labeling it—because I like that—what did you call it? A log of…

Sam Demma
They called it the issues log.

Jeff Armour
Issues log. So I was regularly having meetings as I started to do some change management on the culture of our team—not change management like we’re getting into new products or whatever—it was more of culture change. And I would strategically every other meeting or every, you know, I tried to make it not rhythmic so people started to pick up on it. But I talk about, like, one of the mistakes I made early on. Like, “Oh, coming in this job, I know I, and I made this, I did this thing or whatever.” And what started to happen was they would laugh along with me. But not only that, contribute to ideas of how we could avoid that in the future.

Jeff Armour
And I say I’m kind of letting the lid off this because some of them will, if they hear this, will be like, “Wait, you were doing that on purpose?” Like, I don’t want to make it seem like it was contrived, but really, we weren’t talking about our failures. And when I say failures, I mean, like, it’s a chance to learn or otherwise. So instead, what we would do is someone who you would think would have no opinion on an item—let’s say it was something that we made a mistake in budget—and then someone who’s nowhere near the budget process would be like, “Why didn’t you just ask us about what we were going to… like, that would have helped you avoid that mistake three months later.”

Jeff Armour
And I was like, “Oh, that’s… you know, write it down. Then you make sure you follow up.” Then you start to… and suddenly people can see that change and improvement on mistakes. But not only that, subconsciously, they’re thinking, it’s OK if I bring up a mistake I made. Maybe other people have good ideas because no one’s ever asked me about the budget thing. And now I was able to contribute to a positive outcome, right? It’s like teaching. It’s like a learned behavior that you’re not explicitly teaching them about. Because if I came out and said, “We’re going to…,” they’d be like, “Oh, great. He’s read some books, and he’s trying to… whatever.” Instead, it was like mimicking the behaviors I wanted to see the entire corporation do, like everybody, right down to the person who’s cutting the bagel being like, “Why do we cut the bagels before the person orders it? Like, it takes three seconds, and if we had one of these little machines, we could just…” Great, let’s hear about that.

Jeff Armour
And no one should have their feelings hurt. You should have your feelings hurt if you’re not listening, or you continue to not learn from it—not by not trying, right? It’s just the effort that counts. So the reason I was smiling when you asked the question is because it’s like, “Oh, I’m going to have to tell them the truth, and it’s going to probably be a little whistleblower here on my behaviors,” but yeah.

Sam Demma
Well, I think at the end of the day, it also gives other people permission, like you said, to voice their mistakes. Like you’re actually, as the leader, leading with vulnerability by saying, “Here’s a mistake I made.” And that vulnerability you’re leading with is allowing other people at the table to say, “Hey, it’s OK to be vulnerable.”

Sam Demma
Because if Jeff’s leading us and Jeff’s being vulnerable, so can I. Do you think it’s really important that you did that first? Like if you didn’t share, do you think other people would have shared, or would it have taken a much longer time for that to unfold?

Jeff Armour
I think, yeah, it definitely would have taken longer for it to unfold. Yeah, that’s… I think that’s fair to say. I think I’ve also always just been a person that, like, if I’m going to ask you to do it, I better do it first. Like literally in, like, physical actions. Like if I’m telling you to move that pile of dirt over there, I better be the first person to put the shovel in the ground and, like, to help move the dirt. And then, you know, I always prefer when people that I’m working with or that, you know, are trying to buy into something to be like, “Hey, I’ve got this dirt thing. Why don’t you go over there and start to build that wall so then I can come over and paint,” you know, or otherwise.

Jeff Armour
Like once they can see why they’re doing something and how they fit into the bigger picture, to start to push leadership or someone who’s helping them into where they should be is way better than saying, “I’m in leadership. Do as I say and, like, figure it out on your own.” I don’t know, it just feels like that’s… I don’t know, yucky, kind of condescending, or I don’t know, more like a boss, right?

Sam Demma
Do you trust your intuition and gut on a lot of the decisions you make, or do you have principles or, like, certain guardrails that you think about before you make a decision?

Jeff Armour
Yeah. I’m learning to trust that more.

Sam Demma
Yeah.

Jeff Armour
Here I am at my age now, where I’m at in my career. And we actually, just last week, did StrengthsFinder with the senior leadership team here, the senior managers we’ve got. And my strengths, which make me uncomfortable—and I don’t think I’m sharing that out of turn—they make me uncomfortable because they’re kind of like traditional, hard strengths I’m not super comfortable with.

Jeff Armour
However, because of that, I haven’t really trusted it in the past, which I think has made me more of an authentic leader. Like that kind of… Are you familiar with the Gallup StrengthsFinder stuff?

Sam Demma
I don’t know too much about it, other than it’s like similar to other personality tests to figure out how people can deal with one another, understand how they operate. That’s why—but I could be wrong.

Jeff Armour
No, no, that’s basically it. I mean, the only real big difference is it’s a Gallup-founded test, which means there’s like a hundred billion data points that Gallup has because they do surveys all the time. So it’s like really… And it’s shocking how close it is. It’s amazing insights. So yeah, to get back to the question of, like, do I trust it? I don’t, but I think that’s actually what makes me good.

Jeff Armour
I’m naturally a pessimist with a very strong optimistic outlook. I can see the negative side, but I’m always like, there’s this terrible thing that could happen, but you know what? It’s going to be awesome. So I’m literally built to prepare for the worst and plan for the best. Like it’s ingrained in my DNA to actually do that. So yeah, I don’t really trust… I really trust the people that are around me. If I’m half-hearted into something or they’re not sure if I’m sure, they’ll either give me the resolve or push me a little bit to get to that solid place because I think they trust my instincts more than I trust my own.

Sam Demma
It’s probably not a good answer, but I mean, that’s the truth—is I’m a little cautious with my gut.

Jeff Armour
I think that that’s so important. I think it’s one of the reasons why the organization, the USC, succeeds because if you do just consistently put your eggs in one basket and you feel like, “This is the best decision ever, we’re doing the right thing,” and you don’t ever think, “Well, what if we could be wrong?” you might have some blind spots, and you overcommit too many times. Things can fall apart. Who do you ask, or, like, how do you ask when you have those thoughts?

Jeff Armour
I think the best part about it now, where we’re at, initially I had sort of a small group of people that knew me and knew who I was that I could be not just vulnerable with, but, like, weak. Quite literally just be like, “This is tough.” And early on in the job, there were several things that tested my resolve. And then, you know, middle of the bell curve was COVID, which again, tested things.

Jeff Armour
And in the first chat we had, we talked about my decision to bring everybody back in full. There was no hybrid, which now, I guess, it’s been two years since we did that podcast, I think, or a year or whatever. It’s just showing in droves how great the culture is here. And there’s no group at home and group at work and all of that. Great for… we’re really, like, for the listeners here, we’re really an in-person impact. Like the student walks into your office and says, “Hey, I need some help.” Really hard to schedule a Zoom with people when they’re just walking in. You know, you can’t predict when it’s going to happen. It’s kind of like, you know…

Jeff Armour
So yeah, that’s sort of when I started to realize that my gut instinct was probably pretty strong because I ask a lot of questions. I’m, I think, a good listener. I know where we want to go to. And so what happens is every interaction I have, whether it’s just walking through the halls or otherwise, goes into my brain, unfortunately. It doesn’t add stress to me, but it adds data points. And those data points help me formulate an opinion that makes my gut call a little bit stronger.

Jeff Armour
And this is all stuff that I’ve learned over the last, probably even like last two months as we’ve really gotten into the StrengthsFinder stuff and realized that that is the way I operate. I used to be afraid of it because I didn’t understand it. I didn’t understand where that gut… like, nobody just has gut instincts like that. The gut instinct comes from like listening and actively challenging, but also being a pessimist and looking out for the worst, but also hoping for the best. So all those things come together to make it, yeah, what I use.

Jeff Armour
Small group initially, and now I don’t even have to ask for opinions when I’m looking at making a decision or there’s something that’s challenging the group. Everyone feels very comfortable walking into my door and just being like, “Hey, I know this is a problem we’ve got, and I wonder if this would help. I found this article, and here you go. Do you want to read it?” And then you can go even deeper, like, “Oh, interesting, what kind of triggered you? Like, what made you resonate with this challenge that we’re facing?” And it’s like, “Well, I think it’s really important because I see every single day X, Y, and Z.” More data points to go in for the analytical, more information, more comfort with talking to what, in a traditional model, would be like the leadership.

Jeff Armour
And I use that loosely. Because I don’t necessarily believe in, like, there’s got to be one boss. I believe, like, the hive mind works to a certain extent, but at some point, someone has to make a decision, and I get that, right? So I really encourage that. And I think the open-door policy and willingness to listen, and not being afraid that someone has a different opinion than I do, and that means I’m not going to make a decision because they differ with it. I’m great with that because it’s just more data points, right?

Sam Demma
I mean, you’re sharing principles with me right now, like, you know, plan for the worst, but expect the best. The open-door policy, gather information, you know, be a good listener to make the best-informed decision. If I was to chat with members of the USC, other people on the team, and sit them down and say, “What does Jeff say to you most often?” Like, if you were to tell me, “These are Jeff’s, like, maybe not just Jeff’s, but these are the USC’s values or principles and things that we hear over and over and over again,” what are a few of those things or some that stick out in your mind that you think they’d share with me?

Jeff Armour
Yeah, well, some are very USC-specific, that were student-led. Yep. Which, that’s a value we hold—that at the end of the day, there should be a student at the table. I’m not just talking about the president—obviously, the president—but like a student. So if you’re making decisions around clubs, there should be members from the club system involved in making that decision, right? Because they know better than we do.

Jeff Armour
That’s the best way to protect against aging out in an organization that essentially—we’re vampire keepers. The vampires stay 22, 20 years old, and we get older and older, and they stay the same age, right? So the best way to insulate against that is to get as many of them around the table to make the decisions and help you with it. So that’s a big principle that used to scare us. Any student association, I think, would be scared because it’s like, “Wow, I personally am getting out of touch with what that generation wants.” Right? I don’t know what skibbity bathwater means. I don’t understand. Like, it was a couple of years ago.

Jeff Armour
But I don’t have to keep up with that. And the reason I know those words is because there are students around me all the time who are open to sharing with me, just like the clubs’ decision, just like if there’s something that’s going on around designing our menu. Don’t ask someone who’s 45 what they want on the menu because they want nachos and chicken wings, which I definitely want. But maybe the bowls are really hot, or maybe having halal chicken is really important to a large chunk of our… So all those things—students around the table. That’s the USC sort of thing—is that we’re student-led, OK?

Jeff Armour
For me personally, there are two things that are very important, and that is trying. I want to see people trying all the time because I believe that’s where the good stuff happens. Keep trying. I’ve already said it to you earlier on in the interview. You can see that they will hear that. And then from the management leadership realm, it’s delegate, right? Great. You’re great at that. Delegate it. Because I’ve got other stuff that I want to delegate to you. Delegate, delegate.

Sam Demma
And what would be the fear with delegating?

Jeff Armour
That they’re not going to do a good job, or it’s going to get done wrong.

Sam Demma
I still feel it. How do you—like, tell me more.

Jeff Armour
And so then they’re going to… Not just you making mistakes, you’re afraid to try, the people you’re delegating to are going to make a mistake, and you’re going to have to talk to them about that mistake. And not a lot of people have that type of ability to have a restorative, generative conversation with someone who’s made a mistake because they’re feeling bad, right?

Sam Demma
Yep.

Jeff Armour
You feel like you missed a step because you said they did fail. But changing the paradigm of that into a conversation where it’s like, “What did we learn?” And going back to the thing I did on, like, the second week, where I talked about the thing that I failed on—try and mimic that. Like, “Let’s get better together.” That’s a hard thing for people in general to—I mean, it sounds really easy here. I’m, you know, 20 minutes into the podcast or whatever, but like, it’s not easy to do.

Jeff Armour
Those are the conversations. That’s the good stuff in there—is when you can get someone, I think, like I’m trying to do, to press upon people, like, you know, go ahead and make mistakes, and then go and encourage the people that report to you to make mistakes, and then support them in it, right? Those are probably the two things that, like, is a Jeff-ism. And then the one thing is the USC thing—it’s like student-led is a big, important thing.

Sam Demma
That’s awesome. The idea of delegation is something that’s very real for me right now. And I’m sure a lot of the school divisions that I serve and support, their leadership teams delegate a lot. And I’ve been working with an assistant for a little while, and I’ve struggled with the delegation situation.

Sam Demma
And I have the best friggin’ team in the world. When things are going great, it’s her. She’s rocking it, you know, and things are not going great, it’s because I’m in my head, and I’m like not sitting in my best position and being a good leader. How did you build that skill yourself? Was it just the repetition of those types of conversations, or what did you find helpful?

Jeff Armour
I think… geez, that’s a great question. I don’t know where that started or when I started to do that. It might have been—we talked about it in the first one, I’m sorry if I’m repeating a little bit—the construction realm.

Sam Demma
Yes.

Jeff Armour
Right, where I had a high expectation of quality, right? And so then what I would do is—funny story, during COVID, we’re at home, and I quickly realized that the school was okay. Everybody was doing the best they could, just homeschooling and all the rest, but the kids weren’t getting the stimulation necessarily at the level that at least my children needed, which was like, “What am I learning that’s new, and how am I interacting with someone getting immediate feedback on whether it’s going well or not?”

Jeff Armour
So for each child, I had a different little thing that I would do with them. Like my youngest, for example, I taught him literally how to make coffee. Like we have a brewer at home where he would put the grind in. So he’s seven years old, eight years old—which is… that’s it. There’s hot water. You got to fill the water up, you got to hit the right buttons, and, you know, make sure it’s not coming out too hard, you know, too stiff or otherwise, it’s the right mix. Taught him how to do it, taught him where the cream was, and to put a little bit of this in and that sort of thing.

Jeff Armour
And so I would just go down, turn my Zoom on at 9:00 a.m., 8:00 a.m., whenever the meeting was, and get into it. And so people started to see this seven, eight-year-old bringing me a coffee. And to them, it was like, “What the… what are you doing to him?” He still talks about it today. He still talks about being trusted to do something for Dad, learning how to do it.

Jeff Armour
And he started to get better at it, right? And started to measure the sugar as opposed to just pouring in the sugar and starting to whatever, and then reinforcing that with feedback right away. “That might have been your best one yet. Surprising, because I normally like a lot of cream, but there wasn’t as much, and I didn’t put as much in this time,” right? And the reward that comes from delegation and feedback, positive or negative, and how that fills up the human spirit to continue to try—there’s that word again—I think is an algorithm, a formula that feeds the human soul that makes them want to even do more and more and more, right?

Jeff Armour
Because then the next question was, you know, “Do you want some eggs? Do you want to do this?” And suddenly it starts to grow. And, you know, some people may look at it like, “I was just happy my kid was getting through the day. This was a terrible time for everyone.” I’m like, “Here’s a chance for them—for me—to engage with them as their parent, but also for them to learn and get confident doing things that they wouldn’t normally ever do.” Same principles apply at work. Same thing applied at the construction job.

Jeff Armour
I think that delegation gives the opportunity to fail safely, grow as a team, and, on top of that, have good conversations about what the ultimate why is. Like, where are we going here? Why does Dad want a coffee in the morning? He has a coffee every morning, and if I can do that for him, he can get to work and get on the Zoom later. He might be able to spend more time with me in the morning doing whatever. And those conversations as well. There’s so much good stuff that comes from delegating, in my opinion.

Jeff Armour
It’s scary though, right? Like you’re experiencing it, to your point of, like, “Okay, well…” And also there’s the—I don’t know if you feel guilt about it as well, delegating a little bit.

Sam Demma
I do sometimes feel like it’s irresponsible of me to say, “You do that, not you do this, but can you please help with this?” And it makes me feel… it does make me feel a little guilty, yeah.

Jeff Armour
Because, well, from a selfish perspective, the time it took you to ask, “Hey, I want to move that one o’clock to a two o’clock,” you could have just done it, right? And then you think about how that person is that sees you move it and does it. And suddenly that person has committed their working life to you and being good for you. And suddenly it’s like, “Oh, like, maybe I did that wrong.” And maybe you didn’t catch it because you did it in a moment.

Jeff Armour
But the negative side of not delegating and making sure that that person’s feeling like they’re reaffirmed can also be super damaging. Like it goes both ways. And we don’t think about it that way because we don’t want to bother anyone. I don’t know if that’s Canadian or if that’s just general—the entire world can’t be the Mad Men series where it’s like, “Get me a sandwich.” But there’s some value in actual delegation of a task with some feedback, and I think it’s super important.

Sam Demma
When you are delegating a task, are you front-loading the conversation with “Here’s why”? Like, you know, when you give the example of your son making the coffee, that conversation around “Here’s why we do this” is very helpful because when someone knows why you’re giving them a task and why it matters and it’s important, it’s going to encourage them to feel good about the work they’re doing because it’s serving the greater purpose. But when do you have those conversations in the delegation process?

Jeff Armour
Well, if it’s not obvious, like at the outset—which has become more prevalent here anyways—people will see an opportunity, and often they’re like, “Hey, wouldn’t it be great if I could just do this thing for you, and then you wouldn’t be tied up with it, and we can… you could do that.” That’s happening more and more. But if that isn’t the case, and I’m like, “Hey, so I’ve been thinking about something, and one thing I noticed, you’re way more organized than I am in terms of getting in quicker to do this and that. What’s your bandwidth like right now? Because I think if you can do this thing, that would help me do that thing, and then the two of us would have a much better day. But let’s talk about it,” because getting them to opt into doing the thing is always better.

Jeff Armour
That being said, I think there’s enough understanding and trust in the tank right now that if I was like, “Hey, can you send me those things, and can you do this and this,” people would be like, “100%,” right? Because they know it’s not just because I’m randomly doing whatever. So there’s the two sides of it. It’s like them opting into it but also then building the trust that you’re not asking them to do something that is just, you know, flippant, I guess, is the word. That comes from, like, following up and saying, “Hey, I know I asked you really quickly about putting it in there. Thank you so much because I was running that meeting, and when I got there, I could just open it up and it was there, and it made me better prepared. So I appreciate it.”

Sam Demma
That’s amazing, Jeff. I love this whole conversation. I think we could go on for hours, but I want to respect your time. Thank you so much for your wisdom, your vulnerability, and just sharing your thoughts on leadership, delegation, and the culture you’ve built at the USC. It’s inspiring. I can’t wait to share this conversation with others, and I look forward to doing it again. Maybe we’ll have a yearly tradition.

Jeff Armour
Thanks so much, Sam. It’s always a pleasure to chat. These conversations challenge my thinking a little bit because sometimes I don’t know why I do things, but I love what I do, and I love making a difference in other people’s lives through sort of giving bits of myself and the opportunity for them to be the best selves that they can be. It’s super rewarding.

Sam Demma
Well, you’re doing it, so keep it up.

Jeff Armour
Thanks.

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Kristan McTernan – Vice Principal at the Toronto Catholic District School

Kristan McTernan – Vice Principal at the Toronto Catholic District School
About Kristan McTernan

Kristan McTernan is a Vice Principal with the Toronto Catholic District School. Prior to becoming a vice principal, she was a teacher for over a decade specializing in teaching English, Special Education and ESL. Highlights of her teaching career include leading the team that won a 2022 TCDSB Exemplary Practice Award for expanding the House System and establishing a mentorship program at Brebeuf College School. In the same year, she was awarded the Toronto Secondary Unit’s Status of Women Committee Exceptional Teacher Award for her efforts both inside and outside the classroom. Forming relationships with staff and students through various extracurricular activities, from coaching swimming, and moderating Student Council to organizing Grade 9 Orientation and Grade 12 Graduation make up some of the most memorable experiences of her teaching career.  As a high school administrator, Kristan is passionate about supporting all students by thinking creatively about “outside the bell”  solutions to address challenges to student success. She credits her willingness to think “outside the bell” with the fact that all her experiences in high schools thus far have been in specialized learning environments. Not only is she a Mary Ward Catholic Secondary School Centre for Self-Directed Learning alum, but she also taught at Brebeuf College, a single-gendered all-boys school, and is now a vice principal at Cardinal Carter Academy for the Arts.  Throughout her career, Kristan has developed a passion for equity in education, with a focus on BIPOC representation in leadership. She is currently a mentor and one of the committee members of the TCDSB’s Racialized Administrators Mentorship Program. The goal of the program is to provide information, guidance and mentorship to BIPOC educators who may be interested in becoming an administrator. At both the board and school level, she continues to share her experiences as a black woman, black educator and immigrant to Canada proudly raised in Scarborough to further the positive impact of the TCDSB’s robust Equity Plan on the lives of students and their families.   Outside of school, Kristan is a proud mother of two boys aged 7 and 10. She raises her sons with her husband who is also a TCDSB administrator, which makes for colourful discussions at the dinner table. Formula 1 Racing rounds out the top three things Kristan is passionate about, just below her family and her school community.

Connect with Kristan McTernan: Email

Listen Now

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Resources Mentioned

Toronto Catholic District School
Mary Ward Catholic Secondary School Centre
Brebeuf College
Cardinal Carter Academy for the Arts

The Transcript

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

Sam Demma
Welcome back to another episode of the High Performing Educator podcast. This is your host, Sam Demma. And today we’re joined with a very special guest. Kristan Mcternan is a vice principal with the Toronto Catholic District School Board. She and I met less than a year ago, collaborating on an event. And I’m so honored to have her on the show today.

Sam Demma
Kristan, please take a moment to introduce yourself.

Kristan McTernan
Yeah, so that’s pretty much me in a nutshell right there. I’m Vice Principal of the Toronto Catholic District School Board. I have the pleasure of being the Vice Principal of Cardinal Carter Academy for the Arts. I have been a Vice Principal for about two years, going into my third year. Before that, I was a teacher at Braybuff College for 14 and a half glorious years. And so, yeah, now I come to Cardinal Carter as a vice principal and just embracing what this role brings.

Sam Demma
Did you know you wanted to work in education, or what did your own pathway look like as a student?

Kristan McTernan
Education, yeah, I knew because I think it was in my blood. The path really started with my parents. Both my parents are educators. My dad retired. My mom is still a special education teacher. But when we moved here from Trinidad when I was five, I really watched them fight to get back to the classroom. They needed to get recertified and get some things in order, and that took a while. While they were working and transitioning into being Canadian citizens with two young children, they were also studying and getting themselves certified. I saw that passion they had for teaching, and when they finally got back into the classroom, it really resonated with me.

In the meantime, I was that kid who would line up all my teddy bears, give them little handouts, and decorate a wall in my room as a bulletin board. I’d change it up every so often to reflect themes or different seasons because I really wanted to emulate my parents and their love for education. That carried me to high school, where I had great teachers in both elementary and high school. At Holy Spirit in Scarborough, I was a student from JK to grade eight, and then I went to Mary Ward, which gave me a unique perspective on education because it’s a self-directed learning center.

Kristan McTernan
And while I was doing that, I got involved in working with Toronto Parks and Recreation, now called Toronto Parks, Recreation, and Culture, in the camps. That sparked it for me. I knew I wanted to be a teacher as soon as I got there. Before, I felt it, but when I started working with kids through camps, working my way up from an assistant leader to an area coordinator managing a group of camps, I fell in love. So, when I went to university, I took a psychology course, focusing on education. I did a double major in English and Criminology and a minor in History. I thought for a hot second that maybe I wanted to do law.

Kristan McTernan
But a teacher told me, “You want to work with youth. Do you want to work with them after they’re in the system, or do you want to reach them before they enter the system?” I said, “No, I want to work with them before.” And that was it. I did Teachers College and all the good things that led to this point. So, yeah, I think it was in my blood, starting with my parents.

Sam Demma
Cardinal Carter has one of the best art programs and facilities in the board. Is there a connection to arts in your own life that inspired you to be at this school, or was it luck of the draw that you ended up here?

Kristan McTernan
Well, it’s luck of the draw. Even though I had a brief foray as a saxophonist in elementary and high school, I wouldn’t say I have a musical background or a background in the arts. That allows me to be the biggest fangirl of all the arts in our school. I’m loving the drama, music, dance, and visual arts. I’m loving all of it. I can just be an amazing fan for the students because I don’t come to it with my own background in the arts.

Sam Demma
I was blown away by the amount of student art on the walls and just the energy of the students. It was such a welcoming space. What are the values that you and your team and the staff try to instill in the students? What is the culture you’re striving to build? Because it’s very apparent that when you walk in, it has a really welcoming feeling.

Kristan McTernan
Oh, it’s amazing to know that it’s coming across to visitors in our school. We are very much working with artists, and as a staff, we’ve talked a lot about the unique struggles for students who are artists, who have this creative mindset. Instead of focusing on expectations and being creative, they already come with that. What we strive to do is help them have balance—to celebrate their successes, to understand that failure is only part of the journey, and to provide them with a counter perspective than what they come with.

Kristan McTernan
That’s what we do at our school—to build community among the different art areas and bring students together across the art areas to embrace the experience of being a student. Balance in life, mental health, and well-being are just as important as creativity and being the best you can be. Our students tend to come with that, and we just provide the other perspectives to help them live a really balanced life and be their own best selves.

Sam Demma
When it comes to building connections or relationships with students, building rapport, how do you go about doing that as an adult?

Kristan McTernan
Once, when I was a teacher, someone came to me and said, “You have this way of joking around, but you’re not messing around.” I’ve tried to embody that. I want students to see me as a person, someone who cares about them first and foremost. Yes, there are things I need to enforce, but beyond all that, I care about their growth. I’m willing to break down my own walls, share my own experiences, and even share my own mistakes with them.

Kristan McTernan
I tell them, “I’ve been a student longer than I’ve been a teacher or an educator. I’m telling you this because I want the best for you.” When students see that, it’s the easiest way to build that relationship because they know I’m genuine. They’re willing to share their successes and fears, struggles and triumphs. That’s been the key to building those relationships as a teacher and now as a vice principal.

Sam Demma
That phrase, “I’m joking around, but I’m not messing around”—that’s gold right there.

Kristan McTernan
Well, I have to give credit to the person who said it first. His name’s Dave. Early in my career, he said that, and I ran with it.

Sam Demma
When you think about interactions you have with young people that have left them better than you found them, do any stories of impact come to mind? I ask because a lot of educators got into this field to make a difference, but sometimes they don’t hear about their impact until years later when a student bumps into them at the grocery store and says, “Miss, you changed my life.”

Kristan McTernan
I see it every day. At any given moment, I have students who need me. Even their growth from when I got to the school to now has been amazing. For example, attendance is a big piece. When a student says, “Miss, I didn’t skip today,” that’s a badge of honor. And I’m like, “Yes, amazing!” Celebrating those accomplishments with them is huge.

Kristan McTernan
As a teacher, I’ve had impactful moments too. I had a student who sent me pictures of his newborn son. When students come back and want to interact with you in their adult life, you know you’ve done something right. Those are the moments I carry with me—every time a student comes back to visit and tells me what’s happening in their in their lives is amazing.

Sam Demma
Who have been some of the impactful mentors in your own life or people that support you as a vice principal, as a teacher, that without them, you know, you think, gosh, life or the way I approach things would have been very different.

Kristan McTernan
I have, I’m like going, thinking about my journey of getting to education, I can name them as we go from stage to stage. As I said, my parents, first and foremost, and see, like, I would say, my mom is one of the most incredible educators I’ve ever met. I’ve seen kids that have been written off and my mom’s like, in her Trinidadian accent, no, we’re gonna work with this kid today, like that is happening.

That persistent attitude, that determination that no kid is going to be left behind, and every kid is worthy of growth and accomplishment, I get from her. When I was in elementary school, I had two amazing teachers, Ms. Bailey and Ms. Kudo, who showed me what it was for a teacher to care about a kid outside of the classroom.

When my parents dropped me off early in the morning, and it was really cold—we’re from Trinidad, I wasn’t used to this—Ms. Bailey took me to her class and allowed me to stay there. She would help me with my work. She had high standards, but she was willing to help me reach them and to care about me and my family.

She actually was a person I turned to when I was becoming a teacher to help me with the interview process and all that. She’s never given up on me. At Mary Ward, we have something called a teacher advisor. They are a teacher who actually doesn’t teach you—or they may teach you, but they don’t have to—that sees you every single day of your high school career. They see you in the morning, at lunch, and in the afternoon, tracking your progress and talking with your parents.

For me, it was Miss Earl. She was an amazing example of how a teacher goes beyond curriculum. A teacher cares about kids. She cared about me and kept me on the straight and narrow. My mom did it at home, and I knew Miss Earl would do it at school.

I also had a teacher named Mr. Wetzel who taught me that teaching is about helping students see the curriculum and engage in it beyond just the right answer. It was about what I could prove was the right answer, and that’s why I got into English.

Right now, I have a current mentor, my principal, Linton Soares. Yes, you met him when you came over. He’s a great mentor. He’s helping me take those values I had as a teacher, align them with his values, and bring that forward into this role. He helps me stay true to why I got into this in the first place, so it doesn’t get lost in the everyday tasks of running a school.

Sam Demma
It’s awesome that you can name these people one by one based on the stages of your life. I’m fortunate that I’ve had so many mentors myself, and I think about it all the time, like, thank God for putting these people in my life because they all seem to come at the perfect times when I needed them most.

We met in the most weird, coincidental ways. And I just know that if I didn’t have those people, my own values and the way I show up and the decisions I made would have likely been very different. So it’s nice to pay homage to some of those people. And if they listen to this, y’all just know that Kristan and I appreciate you big time.

Sam Demma
The start of the school year is no joke for a lot of educators because they just finished this two-month break. They’re excited, but sometimes they jump in, and it’s like, whoa, super overwhelming—there’s so much going on. How do you make that transition every year from summertime to another school year?

Is there any rituals that you have? Or like, you know, as a soccer player, I would always have these pregame routines, and I feel like the last week of August is pregame. What does your pregame look like?

Kristan McTernan
My pregame looks like first hanging on to every minute of the summer that I can before I have to let go. Just savoring every single minute of it so that I know when it’s time to get back into it, I’m ready. I think of it as Happy New Year.

Everybody celebrates January 1st, but Happy New Year for educators is the Tuesday after Labor Day. That comes with resolutions: self-reflection, what do I want to do differently this year? What were my successes last year? What do I need to do differently? What do I need to put in place to make that happen?

Every year, I go into it with the goal of finishing the way I started, finishing with the energy and perspectives I had at the beginning. Whatever I put in place to revise my practices leads to an even more successful outcome.

The job can be very draining—we put so much of ourselves into it. So, I want to create balance and be effective. My resolutions are often about that. I know my weaknesses, like organization. Sometimes I have to fake it till I make it, and it usually involves a lot of Amazon purchases, like a new agenda book. I can’t take my old habits into the new year!

A few new wardrobe pieces also help me feel ready to tackle a new year. I want to make sure that by the end of the year, I’ve done everything I set out to accomplish and made the most of the time with my family.

Sam Demma
I think that’s such a key reminder to be present wherever you are. Jim Rohn, a speaker who’s been very influential for me, said, “When you work, work. When you play, play. Don’t be at the beach thinking about work, and don’t be at work thinking about the beach.”

You ruin both experiences that way. When you’re at the beach, be at the beach. When you’re at work, be at work. That’s the sentiment you just shared. It’s something I need to hear right now because I’m always living in the future or thinking about the past, forgetting about the moment we have—right now.

Kristan McTernan
Exactly. There are only a finite number of summer days in my life, but there are also only a finite number of days in my career. So, I’m going to maximize all of it for what it is.

Sam Demma
Thank you so much for taking the time to come on the show today.

Kristan McTernan
Thank you so much for having me. This was a blast!

Sam Demma
I hope the academic year this year is phenomenal, and I look forward to crossing paths again soon.

Kristan McTernan
Thank you so much.

Join the Educator Network & Connect with Kristan McTernan

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.