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Student Success

Kristina Willing – 38-year teaching veteran (Lessons Learned)

Kristina Willing - 38-year teaching veteran (Lessons Learned)
About Kristina Willing

Kristina (@wewilling7) is a retired teacher/administrator in the beautiful Bulkley Valley of Northern British Columbia. In her 38 joy-filled years as an educator, she has taught in BC, Alberta and Manitoba in almost all subject areas from Kindergarten to Grade 12; she loves helping kids reach for their goals and dreams.

In her “retirement”, Kristina is the team lead on Northern School District and Rotary District committees to bring excellent Leadership opportunities to BC students.

As well, she continues her 30 yr. passion for making the world a smaller place by organizing student and family tours to various worldwide destinations, including New York, Japan, Costa Rica, Scotland-Ireland, and multiple European countries.

Connect with Kristina: Email | Instagram | Linkedin | Twitter

Listen Now

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

Resources Mentioned

Rotary International

What is a TTOC?

Bulkley Valley SD54 School District Website

Leadership Studies at University of Victoria

Bachelors of Education at University of British Columbia

The Transcript

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

Sam Demma (00:00):
Welcome back to another episode of the High Performing Educator podcast. This is your host and youth speaker Sam Demma. I’m so excited to bring you today’s interview. Our guest today is Kristina Willing. She is a retired educator and she’s done a ton of work related to service. She has a demonstrated history of working in education management, strong professional skills in word Excel, PowerPoint textiles.


Sam Demma (01:04):
She’s been heavily involved in student leadership, taught social studies and history, is passionate about teaching and, and lesson planning. The things that were very intriguing to me though, was her work that she did in Africa. And you’ll hear about a bunch of it, not only in Africa, but a ton of different countries and the work that she’s done in Kenya and the work that she’s done with rotary international and the work that she’s done in, in launching leadership events, around her province and internationally there’s, there’s just so much that Kristina and I get into here today that I, I know you will love, and I know you will learn from, so enjoy this conversation and I will see you on the other side. Kristina, thank you so much for coming on the High Performing Educator podcast. Huge pleasure to have you on the show. Why don’t you start by introducing yourself and sharing a little bit about the reason behind why you got involved in education?


Kristina Willing (01:59):
Oh, in education okay. My name is Kristina Willing and I have been a teacher since 1982, so I don’t know, 38 years, something like that. And I actually started teaching the little kids around our neighborhood when I was about seven years old. So my mother said she knew I was gonna be a teacher. You then , but it’s, I’ve just always loved it. I, when I was seven, I was teaching the three and four year olds, their colors and numbers and, and yeah. And then as I got older, I would help out in the library and help out in the lower classes. And when I was in high school, I would tutor the younger kids. And so it’s always, it’s been part of me. I love working with youth.


Sam Demma (02:47):
Hmm. That’s so awesome. And when you look back, like, I mean, working with youth, you’ve done it in so many different capacities, whether it’s training teachers in rural Kenya or doing work with rotary or doing work in the classroom what made you decide to get into formal education and work as a teacher? Did you have a teacher in your life who really inspired you and, and motivated you and pushed you, or like what exactly led to the direction of the, the direction or the decision to being a teacher?


Kristina Willing (03:16):
That’s a really good question. Actually. One of the reasons was because of a, a teacher that trying to figure out how to word it, that wasn’t necessarily didn’t handle things the best way. And, and traumatized me when I was in this teach classroom when I was in primary school. Wow. And I thought if I’m ever gonna be a teacher, I’m never gonna be that kind of a teacher so, yeah. So it’s, it’s funny that, you know, you say, what was the motivation, but and I don’t know, maybe that’s, that’s one of the reasons why I became the kind of teacher that I was. Mm. I had some for ally dynamic teachers over the years, and I, every time that I would be in a classroom or be working with a teacher that had qualities that I admired, and I tried to exemplify that later in my own teaching.


Sam Demma (04:16):
Hmm. No, that’s awesome. And the, throughout your journey as a teacher you did so many different projects and you’ve done so many different things even outside of the classroom. What inspired you to take your, your passion for teaching outside of the walls of a, of a school?


Kristina Willing (04:35):
Well, within the walls of the school, you’re, you’re restricted to the parameters of the subject. UT teach. You can teach it in many different ways so that you can open opportunities up for kids, but I wanted to give kids more opportunities than what is available in the classroom. And I wanted to show them that there’s things out there that if they have a passion for, there was ways to go forward with that passion. And if I could help them in any way, then was it, I did a rotary exchange when I was 15. Wow. And that really, really opened my eyes up to the opportunities that were there for youth. Yeah. I turned 16 in Australia and lived with 10 different families and just, it was just one of the most exquisite experience is that I’ve ever had in my life. Hmm. It really helped me to not only just to grow up, but to see the world differently. And so I just wanted that opportunity for my students. And I figured that one of the ways of doing it was to expand outside the classroom. I actually take students on still to this day, take students on excursions around the world and will continue doing that. And as long as I feel able to , mm-hmm.


Sam Demma (05:50):
That’s so awesome. Can you tell me more about how that experience of living with the exchange families really impacted you as the young person? Cause I wanna understand where your passion comes from for giving students those similar opportunities. Okay.


Kristina Willing (06:06):
well, when I first got to Australia and I was with the rotary club I went to the first meeting and I was put into the family of the home. That would, was my kind of guardian for the, for the year. And then they sat down with me and they said, well, we have quite a few families who would like to host you. So really you can choose between three and no more than 10 of those families. And I said, okay, how about 10 ? And they said 10. And I said, yeah, I said, that’ll give me more opportunity to get to know people and, and, you know, have have a bigger, bigger cultural experience for me. Hmm. So I, I lived with 10 different families in 12 years and every single one of those families were different from each other. So I lived with, I lived with families that had quite a few kids and I lived with families, a couple families that had no children.


Kristina Willing (07:03):
I lived with a pastor and his wife and his aging mother. And and that was, that was just amazing. I got, he, he was one of those pastors that traveled to different churches every single Sunday. And I think he had three or four different churches. So, wow. I went on a, on a few of those as well with him. I live with with a family that owned a tobacco plantation and, and had a they had a, a tragedy where a couple of their silos where intentionally arsoned and I was living with them at the time and they kept me through that. Like they said, you know what, we’re going through a family, you know, sort of a financial crisis. And that’s okay. Like, if you’re, if you would like to stay with us, then you can also learn how to go through a financial crisis in your future in a different way. So like all of the, those different experiences. Oh, sorry. My children, I have that’s have people living with me, so no worries. I’m just going to I’m just gonna let them know that I’m on a conference on my room with my door shut. Oh, sorry, sorry, sorry. Sorry.


Sam Demma (08:15):
it’s okay. It’s okay.


Kristina Willing (08:17):
So yeah, there, no, I love having my family lived with me into this that’s okay. So yeah. So living with the different families I, I loved every different aspect of it and they were all very different and I mean, truthfully, some were easier than others and, and you learn all sorts of different experiences by going through stuff where you, you get along really super well instantly with other people and other with others, you need to learn adaptations and you need to learn empathy and you need to learn another person’s perspective and you need to not give up.


Sam Demma (08:59):
Yeah. So true. And I was fascinated that you said you went on a rotary trip when you were in the middle of your teens. I think that service, education and service learning is so important. And it sounds like you’re someone who wholeheartedly believes in the power of exp learning and being of service to others. Why do you think those types of experiences are important even today?


Kristina Willing (09:23):
You mean the service?


Sam Demma (09:25):
Ones? Yeah, the service aspect of them.


Kristina Willing (09:28):
Oh, because I think that to become a whole person, you, it’s good for you to understand another person’s perspective and, or even another culture’s perspective or it’s easy. It, it’s better for you if you learn how to see both sides and you do that by giving. I think that’s my, my feeling anyways. Also that’s awesome. Giving has also always been something that completes me. Like it’s, it’s a part of my nature. I’ve actually had to learn how to not give so much that I don’t have anything , But that that’s another story in itself, right.


Sam Demma (10:13):
Yeah, no, that’s awesome. And you did do a trip to Kenya to teach teachers. Can you tell me more about that and what sparked the interest in doing it?


Kristina Willing (10:23):
Oh my gosh. That, that is just, it’s an amazing, and, and we still are, actually are in contact with, with the teachers to this day. So it’s only a year and a bit, but well, when we got the notification from our school district that teachers could apply for this the vocational training with rotary, I took a look at it and thought, oh my gosh, like it’s got everything I love, I love the rotary aspect. I love the working with with other teachers who are working with children. I love the helping aspect, I, the travel aspect. So everything sort of fit together. And then I put my application in and was just ecstatic when I was chosen. And it just, it, again, it opened up another door to, to helping others, but also to growing myself, like I’m, when you work with people from a completely different culture you have to come at it from where they are.


Kristina Willing (11:28):
So that was one of the things that our team, when we were first trying to figure out what is the best way that we can help these teachers help the students they work with. And we all stepped back and said, where are they now? And what could we do to help them get further? Not necessarily help them get where we are because we, you know our education system is, is quite a bit different. Mm. And then we also realized that once we got down there, we might be altering on the spot, which is exactly what happened. We would walk into a school and there’s, there’s no running water and there’s pit toilets and there’s there’s classrooms that have playing brick walls with absolutely nothing on it and dirt floors. And the kids were carrying their chairs from their room to the, to the meeting area where we would have a big group thing going on with, with the whole school.


Kristina Willing (12:28):
Like it’s just a totally different experience. So being able to help the teachers come from where they are and have them, and, and a lot of the learning in Kenya, not so long ago was really wrote mm-hmm, , they don’t have a lot of textbooks, so wrote, worked really well. But for, for all of the new stuff for the kids to be kind of part of where the rest of the world is, they needed to have, they need to have some of those other skills. And it’s those teachers that need those skills to give it to the kids. And they’re just leaps and bounds ahead of where they were. Even, and like a year or two ago, they’ve been working with other people as well as the vocational training team. But the rotary international grant brought technology with us as well that we left with the schools and then taught them how to use that technology and continued to use it. Wow.

Sam Demma (13:34):
That’s so cool. And, and, and you strive to bring students on experiences similar, I guess when we’re not in a global pandemic


Kristina Willing (13:44):
Yep. I love, I love taking kids all over the world.


Sam Demma (13:47):
And where have some of those trips taken you with students?


Kristina Willing (13:51):
Oh my gosh. Okay. So with students, I’ve gone to Japan a couple of times,


Sam Demma (13:59):
New York, New York. Tell me about why, like, what was the, tell me about it.


Kristina Willing (14:03):
Well, well, the Japan one actually started when I was younger because my family took in exchange students through rotary as well as through other areas. And we Siri is, which is where I grew up and went to school. Siri had a teacher who had taught in Japan and had created the, sort of like a sister city with Goma. So, so Siri and Goma, which they’re both, both, almost the same size actually, they, they formed this bond with this teacher who used to work over there, who taught for, so he started an exchange program. I went over the year I graduated for a few weeks on the exchange with students from all over Siri. And I can’t remember how many high schools, but all of us were from different high schools. And we lived with host families over there.


Kristina Willing (14:52):
And I ended up living with with an English teacher for a while. I, I lived with the girl that stayed with me, but she was in the middle of exams. So I moved in with the English teacher. Hmm. And we were totally immersed in school. And and I ended up actually working in the English teachers class classroom all the time, instead of going to all the classes and helping him with his classes. And then I got the opportunity when I started teaching for Siri to to join the students who were going on exactly the same exchange that I went on over to Japan, but now I’m going as a teacher mm-hmm and that was in 2001. So two of my own children actually came on that particular exchange, but I went as a teacher with another teacher and I was able to have the kids again, they hosted with students there and I was able to meet up with Mr.


Kristina Willing (15:49):
Waa, who was the teacher that I stayed with when I went there in 1977 and met up with him who he was now a principal, and that was exciting. And then went back again a few years later, again, met up with him. But but this time I went over with other teachers and it just, Japan has always been such a nice place, but that 1977 was the one where I realized this is really cool. And the next opportunity I had to take students overseas was in 2001. And it was basically kids from all over Siri. Exactly the same exchange that many years later. And that just opened the door from then on. I started trying to figure out places I could take students.


Sam Demma (16:35):
Wow. So cool. So Japan, where else you don’t have to dive into the rest of the stories, but I’m curious to know where else have you gone.


Kristina Willing (16:43):
so I’ve gone to, I’ve taken students to, or like on, on places to Japan, New York France, Denmark Belgium, Italy, Costa Rica. I know there’s more, I love Costa Rica. Yeah. I love Costa Rica.


Sam Demma (17:09):
That was the, the culture. The people are so kind, pura vida, right?


Kristina Willing (17:13):
Pura vida. Yeah. Yeah. And the really cool thing about the Costa Rica one was we worked in some service stuff, so we did two things. Okay. One of the things my students did was help plant trees. Cool. Cause that’s a big thing we’re doing in Costa Rica is replanting. So we went to a, a place where we got a bunch of different native trees for that area. We went into the side of a hill that didn’t have many trees and my students planted trees. And the other thing was I requested that we get to go to an orphanage or, or some kind of a school site with my students. And both times we went, one time we went to a school and one time we went to an orphanage and we brought things for them like that we had put together. So my students had collected books and papers and, and art supplies and all sorts of different things that we left behind with the school and with the orphanage. And I just think it gives the students that opportunity to help. Yeah. So yeah, that’s pretty cool. It’s to the Vimy 100th anniversary of the of the, of the, the Vimy battle. Yeah. Who went to that, that was eye opening for everybody that went and that on that one, that was that actually, when I, when my tours transitioned a little bit, because I had quite a few parents on that one and the kids loved traveling with their parents. So now all of my tours involve family members as well.


Sam Demma (18:39):
Wow. That’s so cool. You know, speaking about opportunities, I think travel is a huge opportunity to learn, although right now it’s, it’s, it’s more to difficult unless you have VR headsets yeah. And virtual reality technology, but speaking of opportunities, what do you think are some of the opportunities that exist in education today that right. Like right now it might not be travel, but what do you think are some of the, the opportunities that exist right now?


Kristina Willing (19:07):
In a way it is travel because now you can do the virtual thing. Right. Mm-hmm and that we didn’t, we didn’t know how to utilize the virtual to the best. And I think when the COVID hit, everyone went, oh my gosh, where are we going with this? Right. And I think we’ve actually turned it into something fairly wonderfully positive. And having it done, having students be able to meet other students virtually is, is a good thing. Like for an example, this opportunities conference it we’re having students be able to meet each other from all over the north. And like we’ve got, we’re gonna have kids up in DS and Atlan meeting up with kids in prince Rupert and, and Kimma and Smithers. And like that might not have been able to happen any other way. Yeah. Because of cost or travel or whatever. Right. Yeah. And so I think that’s really opened the door up for that. Hmm. Like, you know, making a good out of a bad thing.


Sam Demma (20:17):
Yeah. It’s so true. Sometimes it’s, it’s a lot about perspective O of the challenge, right? Sometimes if you look at it from a different angle, you see something very different, something that might even be positive, like you’re saying which is so awesome. Now what comes with education hand in hand is seeing young people grow, change, evolve, and transform. And I think one of the reasons, and I’m, I’m not a teacher myself, although I do work with a lot of young people in schools, but I think one of the main reasons why people are so drawn to education is the, the ability to impact and the possibility that you can, you know, not be solely responsible for someone’s success, but be someone who waters the seed or plants the seed, or nudges the student in a specific direction. And I’m curious to know over all your years of education and, and just working with young people in general, do you have any stories that stick out where students have transformed or, you know per se, if they were a plant started to grow because of an educator who was watering them and if it’s a very serious story, you can change the student’s name for privacy reasons.


Sam Demma (21:26):
But the reason I’m asking is because someone listening might be burnt out and forgetting why they got into education and working with young people. And one of your stories might remind them why it’s so important to keep doing what they’re doing. The world needs it now more than ever.


Kristina Willing (21:40):
Well, the one that jumps out at me is fairly serious. And I had, I don’t know if you, if some of my background came up, but I’m I also have taught and, and have been involved in theater for decades. I, I started in theater 50 years ago and I just, I love that aspect of it as well. And so in one of the schools that I was at, we, we would put on these huge shows. And one of the shows that we put on was sometimes I would do a musical and sometimes it wasn’t, and, and in this one show, and I’m not gonna say the show or anything because it’ll kind of pinpoint it more. Yeah. But I had, I had cast the play and we were doing the rehearsals. And the night before opening night, I had a student come up to me and say I just need to know how much you impacted me.


Kristina Willing (22:36):
And I’m like, well, thank you very much. And this student said, I was, when we were auditioning for this show, I was at my absolute lowest, and I didn’t even wanna live anymore. Mm. And then you cast me and and the student said that I believed in this student, it says, you believed in me to the point where, like I got, I got a, a lead role, one of the lead roles. And one of the things you’ve been telling us is that, you know, we are an ensemble and everybody’s challenges. We can help each other out, but we all make the show happen. And this student said that that’s what kept me going, because you had said, the show must go on and you trusted me. Mm-Hmm . And I did not go home and do what I was going to do the next night or the night after that.


Kristina Willing (23:29):
And I’m, I’m looking at this student and I went pardoned me. And they said that they actually had considered committing suicide. Wow. And changed their mind. And yeah. So that’s the biggest one. There’s been many, but that’s the one that you realize you don’t know when you’re impacting students negatively, you’re positively. So really you should try and make it positive. And I’ll tell you, sometimes you feel so burnt out. In my 38 years of teaching, I have had moments where I’ve thought, why am I doing it would be so much easier to do something else easier for me to do something else. And, and I know one time I was kind of, I felt like I was stagnating. I’d been teaching the same thing. And I actually went to the principal and I said, can you change up my assignment next year? Cuz I just need, I need something new.


Kristina Willing (24:24):
I need to I need to look differently at things. And so vice or the principal changed my assignment. And that was actually before I got back into to teaching theater. But yeah. So anyways, that’s the most impactful and every day AF before that and after that, but more so after that, I thought, I wonder if what I’ve said has in impacted a kid in a way that is a good way. And I’ve had students years later that have run into me on the street and said, oh my gosh, Mrs. Willie, like, look at, I have three kids now. And they’re just so excited to share their life with me. That says a lot. Cause I know that or I feel that if I wasn’t a teacher that had made some kind of a positive impact, they would probably cross the street. Yeah.


Sam Demma (25:16):
Wow. It’s such a powerful story. I, I was talking to Sarah Dre, who’s a phenomenal teacher, a huge service education advocate. And she said, the reason I was so passionate about teaching and, and mentoring young people is because when I grow up, I don’t wanna be worried if they’re my neighbor. And I thought, what a, what a cool like perspective she’s like, I wanna make sure that they know that they should always be helping others and being kind to others and being a good neighbor. Even if it means helping your, you know, your neighbors shoveled their driveway or carry their lawn, their, their groceries or like yourself, if you see them on the street, you can have a beautiful conversation. Such a good story.


Kristina Willing (26:00):
Yeah. One of things that we have to remember as instructors that like, I know we say we need to take care of ourselves and I, I haven’t all always done that well. Mm. But it, when you start taking care of yourself, then you have the strength to continue helping some of those really tough, tough ones. Like yeah. Not tough kids, tough cases. Like when I look at a kid that’s struggling, I don’t see the, the negative. I don’t, well, it’s hard to say. I, I see I see pain and trauma and and a desire to maybe change, but not know how, or maybe not. I mean, even when, even when students have looked at me in the face and sworn at me cuz I, I did teach in like alternate programs and stuff. Mm-Hmm stuff like that. I’ve had kids throw things.


Kristina Willing (26:54):
I’ve had kids like, you know, be violent and stuff outside of my room. And you have to be able to see what’s under, underneath all that. Yeah. And that’s tough. And that’s where you need to look after yourself so that you can be able to look after other people. I love that. So taking the time, you know, taking the time to have a quiet space I started reading again. I stopped reading for a long time. Once I started just that’s one of my passions is reading. So I’ll it’s it gives you whatever it is that gives you that solace and that way to rejuvenate yourself, take the time to do that for yourself.


Sam Demma (27:35):
Hmm. I love that.


Kristina Willing (27:36):
And then there’s and then there’s more of you, right. Then there’s then you are able to help others.


Sam Demma (27:42):
It’s the whole idea. Not get better. Yeah. The whole idea that you can’t pour from an empty cup, right?


Kristina Willing (27:48):
Yeah. Even though you think you can.


Sam Demma (27:52):
Hmm.


Kristina Willing (27:52):
I love that. I had a, I had a principal who once said to me I was having when I was having one of my children and I was having some challenges during the pregnancy and I, I went into the, into the office and I said, I don’t know what I’m gonna do here. And I explained some of the things and the, and the principal said, you need to go home. And I said, what and she said, you need to go home and put your feet up. And she said, you know, I can get another teacher to look after your classroom. I can’t get another person to look after that baby. Mm. And I thought, oh my gosh, like that really open my eyes to, you have to take care of yourself or you can’t take care of others.


Sam Demma (28:29):
That’s such an empowering and powerful feedback. And it leads me to my next question. I was gonna ask you, if you could go back in time and give your younger self advice, knowing what you know now, what would you say? Like what, what wisdom would I part on, on younger on your younger self?


Kristina Willing (28:50):
Hmm. Wow. That’s a really good one. I’m not a back that I, I, would’ve learned to take like care of yourself. Yeah. Take care of myself and learn some of those things earlier. But I don’t know if I still would’ve done it. I’m thinking, listen to my mother said, if somebody says something about you and they don’t know you, but they’re calling you down or whatever, that’s not your problem. That’s theirs. Mm. But if someone says something about you and they know you well, and they think that they could help you, that’s your problem. If you don’t take their mm. And, and I think my best thing is to find people you trust that can give you that advice and mentor you through it. And then allow that. So maybe that’s taking care of yourself.


Sam Demma (29:46):
Yeah, no, that’s awesome.


Kristina Willing (29:47):
Be, be open to the people in your life and the, and the lessons in your life that you like, the people that you respect and the lessons that might help and not all of them are gonna be kind and fun lessons. Yeah. But every lesson is a lesson. And I use the example of, you know, one particular teacher in my early, early primary years that that really made it tough. For me to it, it just was not a good situation. And years later, I was, I realized I was able to take that situation and say, that’s the kind of teacher I’m not gonna be. Mm. Right. Rather than have that, this stuff that was happening. Devastate me.


Sam Demma (30:33):
I love that. Yeah. I think everyone around us is an example or a warning. Right. and your story makes it just ring so true to that. And you know, I think about, I was talking to a gentleman named Allen Stein the other day. And he, he was fortunate to work with some of the best basketball players in the world, Kobe Bryant, Steph Curry, like these big names in basketball. And he said, you know, Steph Curry, wouldn’t just take basketball, shooting advice from a random stranger. But if it was someone that he knew that could really help him and, and give him advice, he’d be the first person to tell that person, Hey, please give me advice. Please hold me accountable. So I think what you said about not, you know, not taking advice from people who don’t know you and who, who are just saying maybe negative things about you, but when it’s someone who does know you, who can help you, who, who is maybe even close with you, then yeah. You, you should probably give that person an opportunity to share.


Kristina Willing (31:33):
Yeah. And sometimes it might not be things you wanna hear. Mm. Like, you know, sometimes for an example, if it was my mom and my mom said something to me that my, my name with my family is Chrisy. So she said, Chrisy, you know, if you kind of looked at this a little bit differently, your life might go a little easier. I would listen because my mom loved me. And you know, that the only person like she wanted me to be was my best. Hm. So, but if it was somebody, you know, somebody else has said, you know what? You suck, you did this, or you did that. Then I might look at that and say, this is, this is coming from a different perspective. Yeah. And that, that person’s opinion doesn’t really matter to me because what they’re saying is more from their perspective then from what would make me better.


Sam Demma (32:26):
Hmm. Love that. So good. That’s so awesome. And if someone’s listening to this and has been inspired by any part of the conversation and just wants to get in touch and have a conversation with you, what would be the best way for them to reach out?


Kristina Willing (32:39):
Well, probably through through the email. I mean II work at the school district 54 Bulkley valley. So people could like email me through that.


Sam Demma (32:56):
Email yeah. Email, email works the best. I’ll make sure to include it in the show notes of the episode. And yeah. If anyone wants to reach out, they can definitely do so, thank you so much again, for taking the time to chat and share some of your traveling stories and immense amounts of wisdom from so many years of teaching. I know that educators will listen to this and be inspired and learn a ton. So I just wanted to say, thank you again for taking the time to, to come on here and chat today.


Kristina Willing (33:22):
Yeah, you’re welcome. And if there is any other educators, especially the young ones that you know, would like to bounce some things around, I’m more than willing to maybe that’s the next area. I’m retired now from full-time teaching. So maybe that’s the next area I’m going to, although I’m now working with youth in conferences and stuff outside of the school, and still doing the traveling. Nice. But I would love to mentor other teachers if they’re, if they’re needing that.


Sam Demma (33:45):
Cool. All right, Kristina, thank you so much. And I will stay in touch with you and keep up the awesome work. Talk soon.


Kristina Willing (33:51):
Sam, it was good to talk to you.


Sam Demma (33:53):
And there you have it. Another amazing guest and amazing interview on the High Performing Educator podcast. And as always, if you enjoy these episodes, please consider leaving a rating in review so other educators like yourself can find this content and benefit from it. And here’s an exclusive opportunity that I mentioned at the start of the show. If you wanna meet the guest on today’s episode, if you wanna meet any of the guests that we have interviewed, consider going to www.highperformingeducator.com and signing up to join the exclusive network. You’ll have access to networking events throughout 2021 and other special opportunities. And I promise I will not fill your inbox. Talk to you soon. I’ll see you on the next episode.

Join the Educator Network & Connect with Kristina Willing

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.

January 30, 2022 by Experiential Learning Principals Student Success Teachers 0

Jennifer Lemieux – Teacher, Guidance Counselor and Student Leadership Advisor

Jennifer Lemieux - Teacher, Guidance Counselor and Student Leadership Advisor
About Jennifer Lemieux

Jenn Lemieux (@misslemieux) feels blessed to serve the staff and students at St. Peter’s Catholic Secondary School in Barrie, Ontario (SMCDSB). She has been a teacher, guidance counselor, and a student leadership advisor. As an educator for the past 22 years she continues to be inspired by the students and staff she works with.  

Her favourite quote is by John Quincy Adams, “If your actions inspire others to dream more, learn more, do more, and become more, you are a leader.”  The actions of educators have a large impact on the lives of students, families, colleagues, and the community.  As educators, we are gifted with many opportunities to be able to inspire others to dream, learn, and become more. It is one of the most amazing jobs in the world!

Connect with Jennifer: Email | Instagram | Linkedin | Twitter

Listen Now

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

Resources Mentioned

St. Peter’s Catholic Secondary School

Ontario Student Leadership Conference (OSLC)

Youth Leadership Camps Canada (YLCC)

Canadian Student Leadership Association (CSLA)

Canadian Student Leadership Conference (CSLC)

Thinkertoys: A Handbook of Creative-Thinking Techniques

The Transcript

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

Sam Demma (00:00):
Welcome back to another episode of the High Performing Educator podcast. This is your host and youth speaker Sam Demma. Today’s guest is Jennifer Lemieux . I met her a couple years ago, presenting at a conference in Ontario, known as the Ontario student leadership conference. She was one of the teachers that were in my breakout room and we stayed connected and I thought it’d be really awesome to have her on the show.


Sam Demma (01:00):
She has such a diverse experience in teaching. She’s a teacher, a guidance counselor, and a student leadership advisor, and also an Ontario director of the Canadian student leadership association. Her teaching roles occur at St. Peter’s Catholic secondary. She lives out in Barrie and she’s a part of the Simcoe Muskoka Catholic District School Board. I have an awesome conversation with Jennifer on today’s episode about so many different topics and her philosophies about teaching and education. And I hope you truly get a lot out of this interview and reach out to her towards the end when I, when I give you her email address. So without further ado, enjoy this interview with Jen and I will see you on the other side. Jenn, thank you so much for coming on the high performing educator podcast. Huge pleasure to have you on the show. Why don’t you start by introducing yourself and sharing the reason behind why you got on why you got into education?


Jennifer Lemieux (01:56):
Well, thanks for having me. It’s an honour to be here. You’re doing amazing things, so that’s pretty awesome. I just got noticed that my internet actually is unstable so that’s how this goes. Why I got into education? Well, when I was young, my mom was a teacher, so that’s sort of where some of it, I guess would’ve begun. She taught elementary school. So we’ve had our share of being in classrooms; helping mom out. In high school of my history teacher, Mr. Adia, he was one of my inspirations in becoming a teacher. He was just an amazing individual who could inspire us to do awesome things with history and I actually majored in history and then ended up, it was either law school or education. Those were my two sort of goals. And after three years of school I was liked, I really wanted more and education was calling my name and so that’s where I begun. And I’ve been at the same school, this is going on 22 years. I haven’t had to leave and so it’s been a pretty awesome experience.


Sam Demma (03:06):
That’s awesome. And at what point in your own career journey, did you know that you were gonna be a teacher? Like, was there like people who pushed you in this direction? Did you know it since you were a little kid or how, how did you make the decision that it was gonna be education?


Jennifer Lemieux (03:25):
I don’t think, I mean, I just loved always. I mean, coaching when I was young doing thing with youth and, you know, it was just part of a natural habit to, to want, to help people. And though I think, you know, having the inspiration of, of course my mom and Mr. OIA was, was lovely to have and just wanting to be able to make a difference in the lives of people. So that was that I think was my go to.


Sam Demma (03:53):
I love that. And if you could pinpoint what the things were that Mr. O did that had a huge insignificant impact on you? Like, what would you say was it that he tried to get to know his students and build relationships? Or what was the main thing he did that made you feel? So, you know, stern, a scene heard and appreciated and inspired you so much so that you wanted to get into education yourself.


Jennifer Lemieux (04:20):
He was definitely human first teacher second. Right. So, so you could see those connections. He tried to make, I’m also from a fairly small town in Northwestern, Ontario, and he was also my driving instructor. nice. And he taught me how to drive . So he just, you know, sometimes people, he didn’t coach me he did coach golf where we were from. But he was just, just authentic and human and he cared and he challenged our thinking. And so it just was a great relationship we had.


Sam Demma (04:54):
Hmm. That’s amazing. And funny enough. He was also your, your driver’s teacher, you were saying, it sounds like he was a teacher in all aspects of life.


Jennifer Lemieux (05:03):
You betcha.


Sam Demma (05:04):
That’s awesome. Very cool. And so then you grew up do you still stay in touch with him today? Do you still talk to him?


Jennifer Lemieux (05:13):
I’ve seen him because I still have family in the small town we were from actually just saw him. Last time I was home in the grocery store and just had a little convers and with him, you know, in the aisles of the grocery store, I mean, that’s not a, a constant communication, but he knows he was pivotal.


Sam Demma (05:30):
Yeah, no, that’s cool. I was gonna say sometimes teachers see the impact that they, that they’ve created. Sometimes they, they don’t see it. Sometimes it takes 25 years for a student to turn around and, and let the teacher know. And I’m sure you of that, I’m sure you’ve, you know, had stories of transformation and maybe some that are, you know, 10, 15 years out of school and then they come back and they, they speak to you and tell you about the impact you had. I’m curious though out of all the students that you’ve seen transform due to education, maybe not directly in your class, maybe in your class or on your sporting teams do you have any stories that really stick out that were really inspiring? And the reason I ask is because another educator might be listening, being a little burnt out for getting why they got into education in the first place. And I think at the heart of most educators it’s students, right. They really care about young people and the youth. And so do you have any of those stories of transformation that you’ve seen that really inspired you? And if it’s a, if it’s a very personal story or serious story, you can, you know, give the student a fake name. just to keep it private.


Jennifer Lemieux (06:35):
Well, I mean, there’s, there’s many in instances. I mean, I wear two hats right now. I still teach classes, but I’m also a guidance counselor. Nice. so you have, you have two sort of different things to look at. I mean, as a teacher, you work with your students and, and I just love to see them gain their confidence and grow. I mean, I taught history. Then I went in and taught psychology G and so I say, I teach the life courses. My husband says I don’t teach the real courses of math and science. So I like to think leadership is life and psychology is life. Yeah. And just watching some of the students, especially in the leadership classes that they come in and they’re not really there. Some are make it, and they don’t know why they’re there and just a watch their confidence grow throughout the time you have with them.


Jennifer Lemieux (07:22):
I mean, we’re in the business of human connections. Yeah. I struggle sometimes to really think about, you know, I’m a, a task person and I like to do my tasks. And, and so I really have to consciously think sometimes people first tasks later same with, I think all teachers, we need to think students first curriculum later, mm-hmm . And I know a lot of my colleagues probably agree with that as well. But it’s really hard to do that sometimes. And so, I mean, I’ve watched students who have passions in their high school career go in, I mean, I’ve got one student working at Google in Cal now. Wow. So he’s working, he’s working there in high school. He was that kid who created websites, created videos for the school. Nice. So, you know, you have these kids who have their passions and to foster them and provide those opportunities and let them grow.


Jennifer Lemieux (08:14):
Those are some big transformations you see in kids. And then you also have the kids that, you know, have no family support and no, you know, they rely on the caring adults in the school to be their family to speak and to help push them to grow. Right. And you have those kids too, that have a lack of confidence or are the introverts who join your classes and you give them opportunity to try to shine, even though they don’t wanna do those presentations, you know, you provide some safe parameters and boom, off they go. So, you know, to say that there’s one specific, there’s a lot in the very many categories, if that makes sense. Yeah. That we can, you know, providing, I like to think we provide opportunities for students to grow. Yeah. In the very different capacities that we have. Right. And I, you know, kids come back and say, thank you so much, like you did this. And I’m like, all I did was provide the opportunity. You took it. Yeah. And you lost them. Right. So that’s sort of where I like to think we have the huge responsibility and opportunity for, to provide opportunities for our students to, to flourish and blossom.


Sam Demma (09:28):
What does and support them. Yeah. No, I agree. What, what does providing the opportunities look like? Is it a, to cap on the shoulder? Is it an encouraging, you know, word? Like what does that actually look like from a teacher’s perspective?


Jennifer Lemieux (09:42):
Well, it varies from giving them opportunities to attend conferences, right. To actually plan and execute and deliver a full event from start to finish, to provide them your full trust that you believe in them that they’re going to be able to do. Right. I mean, I had one student, we have a massive event in our school called clash of the colors and it’s a big, loud, crazy event. That’s four extroverts. And this one student had entered my grade 11 class and was like, but I’ve her bin. And I’m like, that’s okay. Right. Mm-hmm so how do we make you go? And so she was like, well, I don’t know, like maybe a board game room. And so we were like, okay, let’s create a board game room. And so we created this board game room and, you know, we ended up having kids that we never had and she then felt included.


Jennifer Lemieux (10:37):
Right. So she, she spoke up, had the courage to say, yeah, well, you know, I’m in this class and here we’re planning this thing I’ve never attended. Right. And I also had the flip where I had a brand new student come in last year or two years ago cuz COVID he came in and has no idea what our school culture is about and he’s lumped into a leadership class. Right. And he’s just like, yeah. Okay. And he ends up leading an entire assembly when he really knew nothing that was going on. Wow. You know, and I’ve had an ESL kid come in who couldn’t speak English. So basically they were put in my class for socialization and just to watch the, the student engagement and the support and students helping each other. I mean, those are the opportunities we get to provide for them to build confidence.


Sam Demma (11:28):
If that makes sense. Yeah. No, a hundred percent. You’re you are the person that provides the opportunity for growth, whether it’s the planning of an event, whether it creating inclusive opportunities where everyone, whether introvert or extrovert feels included and can use their specific gifts to make a difference in the school. That makes a lot of sense. And I, I appreciate hearing a little bit more about your philosophies. I, if we wanna call them that, you know, I think that everyone builds their own personal philosophies based off their experiences. And it sounds like one of the philosophies you have around education is that, you know, humans first curriculum, second, like you were saying, and I’m curious to know, what other philosophies do you have around education? Or what other things do you believe, you know, over the last 22 years of, of teaching that you think might be beneficial to reflect on personally, but also to impart upon another educator listening right now?


Jennifer Lemieux (12:23):
Well, one of my biggest flus, I have a few that are speakers. So Mark Sharon Brock, he used a quote that I order forget to leave things better than you found them. Mm. Right. So he uses it cuz that’s apparently how we use leave camp sites is better than how you found them. Nice. Right. So I heard him say that in a speech one time and I was so excited to actually see him at an Ontario student leadership. One like conference one year I was as like a kid, like meeting their idol anyway, nice. I use that now even with, with the kids at school and and just as a philosophy in general, to always try to get them to leave our school better than they fit as well as people. Right. So to just try to leave the people and places better than you found them. And that is something we, I do try to impart when I meet people is to try to do that. Right. So that’s, I mean, not a huge philosophy per se, but it, it was a line from him that I won’t ever forget that has stuck with me and is now in my day to day living.


Sam Demma (13:38):
Yeah. I love that. I it’s so funny. You mentioned Mark Sharon Brock a few months ago. I just picked up my phone and called him and his wife. Wow. Yeah. His wife answered the phone and she’s like, hi, and I can’t her name now, but it was on his website on the contact page. She was holding up a Phish on the contact page and we had a beautiful conversation. And I, I said, you know, you know, would it be crazy to think that mark might talk to a young guy who’s 21 years old who just has some questions? And she’s like, let me check. And she put me on hold and she called his office and he answered the phone and, and gave me his time. He gave me 30 minutes of his time, answered a bunch of questions. And I just remember thinking to myself like, wow, this is someone who owes me, nothing who doesn’t know who I am, who just took 30 minutes out of their very busy day to just share some wisdom. And I, I, I sent them a handwritten thank you note for, for, for giving me some time. But I think that that relates also to education that when we give students time to, to make them feel seen, heard, and appreciated when we go out of our way to show them that we care. Despite the fact that we all have our own busy lives, it, it makes a huge difference and a huge impact. I’m curious though, it’s


Jennifer Lemieux (14:55):
A nice bike story right there.


Sam Demma (14:57):
So for everyone who doesn’t know what that is, you wanna summarize it?


Jennifer Lemieux (15:03):
Oh, mark. always talks about nice bike. How he was at a big bike, I guess, convention, I guess. Yeah. And all you have to do is, you know, come up to big Burley guys who drive bikes and say nice bike and they kind of don’t seem so intimidating anymore. Yeah. it was a nice bike story.


Sam Demma (15:23):
That’s awesome. I like it. it’s so true. Right? A little, a little compliment, a little, a little appreciation, I think goes a, a really long way for an educator who’s listening right now and might be in their first year of teaching. right. During this crazy time, knowing what you know about education and about teaching and the wisdom you’ve gained over the past 22 years, like, what would you tell, like, imagine it was your yourself. Imagine if you just started teaching now, but you knew everything, you know, what would you tell your younger self as some advice?


Jennifer Lemieux (16:01):
Well, it’s interesting. Cause I remember being in teachers college and they like to tell you, you know, to set that stage when you enter that room and don’t smile until Christmas and all of those sort of things. And I would yes. Agree that there needs to be structure and parameter in a classroom and boundaries. But I also think it’s okay to be you and be your authentic self. I remember teaching an ancient history course and I never studied ancient history. I mean, I had, you know, American history, Canadian history and they plunked me into one of those and I was struggling in this grade 11 course knowing nothing. And I had to not lie to them. Right. Like it was like, okay, we’re gonna learn this together. We’re going to be okay. You know, because they’re going to see through you. So if you, you can be your authentic self.


Jennifer Lemieux (16:57):
I think sometimes we’re scared to let students see we’re human. And one of the first things I always try to remind them on the first day of school is yes, I’m your teacher, but I’m a human being. Right. And I have two rules in my classroom about respect and honesty and just, just be you because we just need to be us and be our authentic selves as scary as that is. Right. Yes. Again, we have boundaries. Like we don’t talk about what we do outside of school and you know, our lives to an extent, but for your, your personality and what you’re comfortable with. I think it’s fair to, to share some of those things with students and be okay doing that. It’s not about don’t smile until Christmas, at least in my world now. Right. When it, you know, when I first started, I think I was a bit scared and to lean on lean on your peers, like lean on people that have been there a while that are willing to help. Because it’s a pretty, pretty powerful thing. If, if you can be mentored, had huge mentorship in my career. I look at like St. Saunders, Phil Boyt one of my old athletic director partners I mean, they’ve all mentored me, right? Dave troupe was a huge mentor of mine, Dave Conlan. So they’re, they’ve all gotten me to be a better person and a better educator. And you want to be able to rely on those things and not be afraid to be you.


Sam Demma (18:30):
Hmm. That’s awesome advice. That’s such, such great advice. You mentioned that you created two rules in your classroom. Can you share exactly what they are and when you, when did you create those? Was that something that you started right when you first started teaching or did that, was that created some years in?


Jennifer Lemieux (18:46):
Oh, when I first started teaching, I of course had every rule they tell you to do. Right? Yeah. And like, and sign this contract. And then later as I developed, it was, I mean, honesty that was rule number one, be honest to yourself, me and everybody else. And if you know, your homework’s not done because you were too tired to do it, or you just didn’t get it done. Or it was a bad night. Don’t lie to me. I don’t wanna be lied to. Mm. Just tell me life is happening or something’s going on, you know, don’t have your parents write me a note. That’s not telling the truth, you know, try to just be, be real. And of course, to me, respect encompasses everything being prepared as a student. So again, I’ve remind them to respect themselves, to respect others. And of course it’s a mutual respect between all of us and, and we’ll get along.


Jennifer Lemieux (19:40):
Right. And sometimes you have to have those tough conversations with kids. I remember where a uniform school and I remember one student didn’t really love wearing her uniform. And so we butted heads a lot. Mm. Right. Because I was following the rules and that was not, that happens sometimes. And so often when that happens, students think you’re targeting them or you’re after them. And I always try to remind them, it’s the behavior. I’m not impressed with. It’s not their personality. It’s not them. Right. It’s their behavior. That’s not driving with me. And so I ended up having a tough conversation with that kid and we ended up figuring out a way to, to exist and coexist and be okay. Right. Because it’s not the behavior. It’s, I mean, it’s not the person, it’s always the behavior. I usually, you know, don’t, don’t like, so if you can separate that with students too, I find that’s helpful.


Sam Demma (20:33):
Right now there’s a ton of challenges. But in the spirit of leadership, we always try and focus on the opportunities. And I’m curious to know, from your opinion and perspective, what do you think some of the biggest opportunities are right now in education?


Jennifer Lemieux (20:51):
Well, in trying to stay positive, I think some of the biggest opportunities we have right now is challenging our creativity. We are being forced to, to change the, the things that we know to be right. So our course is how we deliver them. When I speak to many staff, they’re, they’re a bit challenged and discouraged that they’re having to destroy their big, awesome courses because they just can’t do the same in person activities and things just aren’t the same. And so we have an opportunity as educators to use different tools jam boards Google interactive, Google slides with para deck. So we’re using a lot more technology and having to force ourselves to be a bit more creative than we’ve ever been when it comes to teaching the things we love to teach. And of course, we’re, you know, challenged to keep our, our person surveillance up and just to keep plugging away. But I think we have to look at, you know, while we’re facing all of these challenges, now we are still growing. And we have the opportunity to become better differently. Yeah. If that makes sense?


Sam Demma (22:04):
It does. It makes a lot of sense. And I love that. And the piece about creativity D is so true. I actually, right now I’m reading a book, it’s a handbook that helps you become more creative. It’s called thinker toys. And the whole book is about different strategies and techniques to bring creativity out of you. The author believes that creativity isn’t something that you, you are born with, but it’s something you can create within yourself. So it’s an interesting book and I think it’s so true. Everything’s changing. The world is changing, which is bringing out so many different ideas and so many different innovations and I think education is at the forefront of a lot of it. Awesome. This has been a phenomenal conversation. If someone wants to read out to you, ask you a question, have a phone call, bounce, some ideas around what would be the best way for somebody to get in touch with you?


Jennifer Lemieux (22:59):
Well, I’m not really active on Twitter, but I have a Twitter @misslemieux but my school email is probably the most frequently thing I access. So that’s jlemieux@smcdsb.on.ca, it’s for the SIM Muskoka Catholic district school board. That’s what the SMCDSB stands for. Yeah, I don’t know if it’s been helpful, but that’s, that’s who I am and how I roll.


Sam Demma (23:32):
Thanks, Jen. Really appreciate it, you did a phenomenal job.


Jennifer Lemieux (23:35):
Thank you for the opportunity.


Sam Demma (23:37):
And there you have it. Another amazing guest, an amazing interview on the High Performing Educator Podcast. As always, if you enjoy these episodes, please consider leaving a rating and review so other educators like yourself can find this content and benefit from it. And here’s an exclusive opportunity that I mentioned at the start of the show. If you wanna meet the guest on today’s episode, if you wanna meet any of the guests that we have interviewed, consider going to www.highperformingeducator.com and signing up to join the exclusive network, you’ll have access to networking events throughout 2021 and other special opportunities. And I promise I will not fill your inbox. Talk to you soon. I’ll see you on the next episode.

Join the Educator Network & Connect with Jennifer Lemieux

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.

January 29, 2022 by Association Director Guidance Counsellors School Counsellor Student Leadership Student Success Teachers Teaching Tips 0

Tania Vincent – Chaplain at St. Michael Catholic Secondary School

Tania Vincent - Chaplain at St. Michael Catholic Secondary School
About Tania Vincent

Tania Vincent (@stmchaplaincy) is the Chaplain at St. Michael Catholic Secondary School.  She is good friends with Angelo Minardi, a past guest on this show, and both of them share a very obvious passion for giving young people the best opportunities for future success.  

Connect with Tania: Email | Instagram | Twitter

Listen Now

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

Resources Mentioned

St.Micheal Catholic Secondary School

What does a Chaplain Leader do?

Role of retreats

The Transcript

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

Sam Demma (00:00):
Welcome back to another episode of the High Performing Educator podcast. This is your host and youth speaker, Sam Demma. Today’s guest is Tania Vincent. She is the Chaplain or the Chaplaincy leader of St. Michael Catholic Secondary School. She was someone who was also introduced to me by another past guest on the podcast. If you go back to the early days, this show was launched, I interviewed a good friend of mine.


Sam Demma (00:59):
His name is Angelo Minardi, and he gave Tania, Tania’s name as somebody that he thought I should speak to. And I’m so glad that I did because we had such a passion filled conversation. You can feel the authenticity and the genuine desire to impact her students in Tanya’s voice. And she shares so much amazing wisdom and advice from her own past experiences and for what she thinks the future might look like in education. I hope you enjoy this interview as much as I enjoyed speaking to Tanya to create it and I will see you on the other side. Tanya, welcome to the High Performing Educator podcast. It is a huge pleasure to have you on the show. Why don’t you start by sharing with the audience who you are and how you got into the work that you do with young people today?


Tania Vincent (01:47):
Sure. So thanks. First of all, Sam, thanks for having me. So my name is Tania Vincent, and I’m currently the Chaplaincy leader at a high school in Bolton, Ontario called St. Michael Catholic Secondary School. Before I was a Chaplaincy leader, I was a high school teacher for about nine years and I I taught religion at a few different schools in Brampton. How did I get into this? I studied religion in University. And who in the world does that? And what do you do with that after you study religion and university? Well, I had no idea and I ended up going to teachers college and it turned out that I really, really loved the idea and loved the actual work with students, particularly with teenagers. And here we find ourselves today, you know, still doing it, still going at it, still trying to do it. And it’s been, it’s been great.


Sam Demma (02:42):
That’s awesome. At what point in your educational journey did you know, you know, yes, chaplaincy leader, that’s what it’s gonna be. Was there a defining moment for you or a progression?


Tania Vincent (02:54):
So I when I started teaching, I I just come outta teachers college and I worked with someone who kind of inspired me to go on to do some graduate work that I had never really thought about before. And so I started doing that and then I realized that this role that I have now in chaplaincy, that there was such an opportunity there to connect with to, with, to, to connect with young people in a very different way. It’s one thing when you’re a classroom teacher and you’re delivering curriculum, but you form a very different kind of relationship and rapport with students when you’re a chop and sea leader. And when you’re, you know, trying to encourage and help students kind of find their way in their journey of faith, even in adults in that matter. So that’s kind of how I ended up where I am today and what kind of inspired me to do. So


Sam Demma (03:43):
That’s cool. And I’m sure when you first started in this role it definitely looks different this year, as it does for anyone working in a school. What are the current challenges your school is facing? And there might be similar challenges in all schools and maybe what are some of the ways some of those challenges have been overcome, that’s working for you guys and you think might be valuable for other educators to hear?


Tania Vincent (04:07):
So I think first and foremost, the biggest challenge that I’m finding is that, or that I’m noticing in our school anyways, is student engagement because, you know, right now the way the model works in our school board in different field is students. It’s a hybrid model. Some students have chosen to stay home and, you know, be totally virtual a hundred percent. But for those that are in a hybrid model, they come to school for about two and a half hours in the morning. You know, they, they go straight to class and then they leave and there’s no, you know, you, there’s no, you know, leaving class to, you know, wander the hallway for 30 seconds or five minutes or whatever. There’s no there’s, there’s no opportunity to interact with other staff, with other students. You just come to go to your class and leave.


Tania Vincent (04:57):
And so students don’t feel engaged. They feel disengaged because it’s really become a building. You know, schools are, are these kind of great places for communities to develop, whether it’s because of co-curriculars or sports or athletics, all of these things, none of those things are very few of those things are happening right now. So we have a problem with keeping students engaged in anything beyond education. And even when it comes the educational piece, you know, we, and, you know, the, the, the adults in the building, if you will, are still figuring out how to do some of the same things that we would normally have done when we were physically all together in a school. And so I think, I guess, you know, the challenge really is how do we now continue to move forward and continue to learn and, you know, try to keep these students engaged, not only in the academic part, but in the other kind of stuff that happens at school.


Tania Vincent (05:52):
So like me being a child, for example, I, my role is to try to continue to keep students engaged in the faith aspect of school and of, you know, and of their lives. And that’s been its own challenge. But one of the things that I’m seeing is working is I know for, for me, and even in speaking with other colleagues is a willingness on our part as the educators to really kind of do things and step beyond our own comfort zones when it comes to being virtual, when it comes to being accessible in a virtual platform. So even something like, you know, I used to run retreats, for example. So how do you now, how do I now run retreats when I can’t physically take students out of the building, or I can’t necessarily see them face to face? Well, now I, I deliver retreats.


Tania Vincent (06:39):
I lead retreats virtually. It’s not, it’s not amazing. But it’s, it seems to be working. And I think it’s something that, you know, I can continue to build on. And the same thing goes for, you know, class for teachers in their virtual classrooms. You know, initially I think a lot of teachers were, you we’re there and they were, you know, sharing PowerPoints and all this kind of stuff. And, you know, again, this issue of student engagement, but as we become more comfortable as the adults with the technology, then we’re able to kind of infiltrate a few more ways to, you know, maybe make students more involved in their own learning processes. But that’s something, you know, we have to work on too, right. Because we’re not, you know, like you said, you know, a lot of, a lot of things have changed since March and we need to be willing to move past what we’re used to doing. That’s the thing, right. Everybody wants to kind of mimic what we did before, what we did in person. And I think part of the challenge is recognizing that we can’t necessarily mirror or mimic what, what we did before, but we need to look at other ways to still keep students engaged and still remind them that we are a school community.


Sam Demma (07:47):
Yeah. That’s so true. And the community piece is huge. You know, how do we ensure as educators, as people that work in the school that the students still feel appreciated and heard. And I know that’s a big part of chaplaincy as well, because you’re almost like, you know, an extra guidance counselor that they might come to before going to a guidance office. You know, yeah. How do we make sure the students still feel appreciated? So I think,


Tania Vincent (08:15):
So I think, you know, I think first and foremost, I think they need to recognize a real, I should say that we are still accessible so that even though, you know, they can’t leave class to come and see me in my office, for example, or they can’t leave class to go and talk to a guidance counselor. That doesn’t mean that, that they’re still not able to contact me or contact, you know, a guidance counselor or whatever. So, you know, if I’ve kind of found more creative ways for them to do that. But I, I really think it’s really important that I continue, at least what I’ve been doing is I try to make, make sure that they realize that I’m available even virtually, you know, my DMS are open on Instagram, for example. Right. So I know it, it sounds kind of funny, like to hear someone say that , but it’s true because a lot of people, a lot of students will reach out to me that way as, Hey, miss, can I come and talk to you about something?


Tania Vincent (09:06):
Absolutely. And then, you know, you can use that that’s, you know, just an opening door for them, but letting them know that they’re still, their, their voice is still being heard. Their concerns are still being heard and addressed, and we wanna hear their concerns. I think that’s part of it too. Right. We, they need to know that not only are we accessible, but we wanna hear what they have to say. I know when I, when I meet with students, when I meet with a, you know, a small group of students once a week, I always kind of ask them, it’s not even, you know, I asked them, what is it I can do for you that maybe I’m not doing or something that I did before when we were, you know, in total lockdown that you really appreciated that I can maybe bring back that I haven’t been doing, but what is it that you wanna see as students in our school to, you know, to ensure that you feel appreciated because students are a huge part of our school be community.


Sam Demma (09:57):
Yeah. I would argue almost the whole part , but yeah, without the, without the teachers and educators, but and you guys play a huge role in organizing the community and keep it moving along and transforming the community. I think a huge part of school is also, you know, helping students become self com confident in their abilities, because a lot of the time they don’t know what they’re doing. We don’t know what we’re doing. We have to learn as we go, you know, a student gets a new assignment, they have to learn the, the barrier is for them to say, I believe in myself enough to find the information, to figure this out. And I think, you know, that transformation is a, a huge part of, of school and of education. Do you have any stories of transformation that you’ve seen as a direct result of education in your school? And the reason I ask is because another educator might be a little burnt out right now thinking like, I don’t know what’s going on this year. You know, maybe this is their first year teaching and they’re like, what the heck am I doing here? And those stories might motivate them to remember this work is so important.


Tania Vincent (10:59):
Yeah, I think, you know, in my, in my own personal experience, one of the things that I do every day, one of my jobs, if you will, is to lead the school in prayer every morning. Mm. And so what I do with my, so I write these reflections and you know, on a very personal level, they become all was therapeutic, I guess, or they’ve allowed me to kind of exercise a muscle that I haven’t exercised in a while, but I digress. And so I, you know, I see them every morning at school, but we have a large, you know, number of students that aren’t in the building. So I also post them on Instagram. Hmm. And, you know, I, I spoke before about making sure that students know that I’m accessible. And so one of the things that I’ve had happen a lot, whether we were, it happened when we were sort of in lockdown and schools first shut down and it continues to happen now is me, you know posting these reflections and they’re about all kinds of things.


Tania Vincent (11:53):
And I try to make them kind of relevant to, you know, to students and to, to younger people, to young people. But sometimes they kind of trigger something or, you know, you say something or I write something, I should say that somebody needs to hear that day. And they send me a message. They send me a D and that says, Hey, you wrote something to today. This kind of really, I really appreciated that. And it starts a conversation mm-hmm . And I think that whether you are like me and have to, you know, lead people in prayer every morning, or whether you are just starting off a class online that day I think it’s really important to try to say something that’s not necessarily even curriculum based, even if it’s just, Hey, how’s it going today, everybody, right. How are you feeling? What, you know, one thing I do when I meet with my group weekly is I ask them to give me their highs and the low, their lows for the week.


Tania Vincent (12:47):
And, you know, it’s amazing to know sometimes their highs are really great. Sometimes it’s like, Hey, you know, I did well on a quiz today. Something that might not seem so important in the grand scheme of things, but it gives a student an opportunity to, to think about something positive. And it also gives ’em the opportunity to share something that’s maybe not going so great. And as the adults, as the educator, you know, you get a, you get some insight into your students that you might not otherwise get. Right. Instead of being so curriculum focused, you’re so focused on getting things done. You know, the thing I feel like we’re so worried about making sure we get everything done, because we’re trying to mimic what we would normally do. And we, we have to, we have to try as a collective, I guess, I don’t even know, but we have to try to move past not, and remember that right now. I think the, the importance of relationship and building relationship with our students, I think that is paramount over everything else because everybody’s finding it, tough adults, kids, administration, we’re all finding this challenging. But if we realize that we’re all in this together, and if we just vocalize that with our students, I feel like that really can breed some really great things.


Sam Demma (14:02):
That’s amazing insight. And I’ve had so many other guests give such similar advice on relationships and building relationships. And I think that’s so powerful because when someone trusts you, they, they’re more open to tell you things. And that comes through a strong relationship that you build with them over time. You shed some great advice on the fact that we can’t continually focus on education, being something that we have to solely focus on shoving curriculum, you know, through the day and making sure we finish it but adjusting and allowing the students to speak or, you know, slightly adjusting to what they might need that day. If there’s an educator listening who’s in their first year, and maybe they got into a role where they took on that mentality of here’s the outline here’s what has to get done. What other advice would you give them, maybe even to your younger self when you first started?


Tania Vincent (14:55):
First take a breath that would be the first thing to take a breath and be open to trying new things, and don’t be afraid to, to fail. And I guess at the end of it all, really, what is, I guess, what I’m getting at is be patient with yourself. Mm. Cause I’m finding that even now, because we’re all trying new things and we’re all kind of figuring out this new mode of, you know, delivering education and building community, be patient with yourself. And if something doesn’t work oh, well, so it doesn’t work. So you don’t do it again. You know we have to be willing to kind of make mistakes and giving, granting ourselves a little bit of grace and patience when some of those things don’t work, but it’s gonna get easier. You know, that’s what I would tell them. That’s what I would tell my my first year self is it’s gonna get easier and in, you know, enjoy your students or enjoy your time with your students while, while you have there, because you can learn so much from them too. And you’re all experiencing this together. Like, you know, I said that already, but you, we’re all kind of figuring this out together. Don’t be afraid to make those mistakes and be patient with yourself when you do.


Sam Demma (16:05):
I love that. That’s such a great piece of advice. And if another educator is listening and wants to hit you up in the DMS or, you know, get in touch and just bounce some ideas around what would be the best way for them to do so?


Tania Vincent (16:20):
It’d either be on Instagram or on Twitter and you can find me there @stmchaplaincy.


Sam Demma (16:26):
Okay. Perfect. Awesome. Tania, thank you so much for making some time I chat on the show. It’s been a huge pleasure doing this, and I look forward to seeing all the work you continue to do in the school.


Tania Vincent (16:36):
Thanks so much for having me.


Sam Demma (16:38):
And there you have it. Another amazing guest, an amazing interview on the High Performing Educator podcast. As always, if you enjoy these episodes, please consider leaving a rating and review so other educators like yourself can find this content and benefit from it. And here’s an exclusive opportunity that I mentioned at the start of the show. If you wanna meet the guest on today’s episode, if you wanna meet any of the guests that we have interviewed, consider going to www.highperformingeducator.com and signing up to join the exclusive network. You’ll have access to networking events throughout 2021 and other special opportunities. And I promise, I will not fill your inbox. Talk to you soon. I’ll see you on the next episode.

Join the Educator Network & Connect with Tania Vincent

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.

January 29, 2022 by Student Leadership Student Success Teachers Teaching Tips 0

Natasha Daniel – Program Coordinator at MCG Careers Inc and Certified Career Development Practitioner

Natasha Daniel - Program Coordinator at MCG Careers Inc and Certified Career Development Practitioner
About Natasha Daniel

Natasha Daniel is a bilingual (French and English) project manager in the Youth Skills and Employment Program at MCG Careers.  A Certified Career Development Practitioner, Certified Work-Life Balance Coach, Certified Strengthening Families Coach and a Trained Trauma-Informed Community Facilitator with a strong passion for community and working with people.

Her passion for empowering others began while working as a Trainer and Restaurant Manager for Burger King Canada, working as an Educator in an Adult High School and working in Human Services managing programs. 

In 2013, after several years of gaining expertise in Program Management, Career Development, Family and Youth advocacy in Montreal, her family relocated to Edmonton. Joining MCG Careers in 2013 with a wealth of knowledge she believes her career has further evolved in program management and process managing while empowering youth to increase their strengths, become more resilient and accomplish goals through the REBRAND PROGRAM.

She is motivated and driven to excel by incorporating a hands-on approach. This allows her to focus on the needs of others and their potential which results in stronger engagement, trust and stronger relations with stakeholders and the community. She loves bringing awareness and educating individuals in areas related to career and employment, mental health and any aspect to enhance one’s wellbeing.

Passionate about human relations and volunteering, she is instrumental in bringing strategies and resources to Non for Profits by serving on different boards and volunteering on Youth projects.  Natasha enjoys learning and is constantly broadening her knowledge through training and certifications. Natasha spends time honing her creative skills by writing poems and loves working around fun people.

Connect with Natasha:  Email  |  Linkedin |  Twitter

Listen Now

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

Join the Educator Network & Connect with Natasha Daniel
Resources Mentioned

MCG Careers Website

The REBRAND Youth Development Program

Small Consistent Actions TEDx Talk

The Transcript

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

Sam Demma (00:02):
Natasha welcome to the High Performing Educator podcast. Huge pleasure to have you on the show here today. Please start by introducing yourself and sharing a little bit about the journey that brought you to where you are today.


Natasha Daniel (00:13):
Thank you Sam, for having me. So my name is Natasha Daniel and I work at a wonderful company called MCG Carrer as an employment center. And I am the youth program coordinator for our program called rebrand. And by the name rebrand, it gives youth an opportunity to rebrand themselves to really change their lives. And it’s a great journey to be on working with youth, supporting them and encouraging them to really be the best that they can be, and really be empowered to realize that, you know, the world is out there, that they can conquer. So that’s called REBRAND. So what led me to the journey of wanting to work with youth and when we say youth, the, the category of the clients that I’m working with there are between the ages of 17 to 30. So that’s the federal go? My definition of youth.


Natasha Daniel (01:03):
And you know, I started working with you very early in my career as a trainer and manager for burger king several years ago. And I had the opportunity to really hire and, and train youth to just maybe in their part-time jobs as they were accomplishing their ed educational goals. And I moved further from there into working in an adult high school, again with youth who are trying to accomplish a high school certification and stuff like that. And, and really seeing that youths need support and that youths are smart. They are innovative, they’re creative and they’re open to challenges and experiences. So that really empowered me to wanna continue working with youth then fostering an opportunity to support them into their career and employment journey.


Sam Demma (01:52):
That’s awesome. So bridge the gap between burger king and MCG careers for us, what was the journey in between that brought you to MCG?


Natasha Daniel (02:01):
So burger, I was my first career, my first employment opportunity in Canada. So I started off with cashier, but I have the passion for learning and I always wanted to be a teacher when I was younger from since elementary school, because I had a wonderful male elementary school teacher, nice. And my passion for learning and reading and all of that. So when I was burger king, I took time to learn everything on the job. So which within two years with working in a company, I was a shift supervisor because I really learned everything that they had to do like managers did and on the operation of the business. And then I just worked my way up into becoming a restaurant manager. So having an opportunity to hire youth more, also youth to wanna work in a fast food you know, in a fast food restaurant, I want, want to get that opportunity to have extra money while they’re studying so high school youth or post secondary youths.


Natasha Daniel (02:55):
And then from hiring, then I started training as a corporate trainer for burger king. So Alberta was one of my places I came to for a couple months to train people. So that’s kind of my part in terms of with youth and then going into when, when I, whilst I was studying for my post-secondary, I went into adult. So working again in the, in the education facility where you are helping people to learn and helping people to get their educational goals and stuff like that. And then I transitioned into community. I used to be a big brother, big sister at, for boys and girls club for many years. Nice. And being a big sister all also really empowered me and, and, and helped me to really understand that younger people need some additional support. And I taught about what can I bring from my experience?


Natasha Daniel (03:49):
What can I bring from my background? What are the values that they have that also Correl to my values and how could I empower them? So always working the community and working families. I had the opportunity to work with families and interventions in the school and child and family services and stuff like that. So again, I saw that, you know, sometimes as a child you mightn’t get the foundation that you need, but when you get into your youthful age, you’ll still require some of those foundational skills to help youth get into a stronger adulthood and life management. And that’s how I’m here at rebrand right now.


Sam Demma (04:29):
I know it makes you upset when people don’t treat youth with the same respect and I guess, general treatment as they might another adult. and I think what’s really awesome is you explained earlier that you, weren’t only focused on people getting jobs and working shifts at burger king, but you were also making sure they focused on their education. Can you tell me a little bit more about that?


Natasha Daniel (04:55):
Yes. And I, I think sometimes in society older, you know, adults, so people in general, sometimes we underestimate the power that a youth have. And we also, there are a lot of biases against young people also, you know in society. And I believe that how could you just be open to learning about a youth and learning that a charity that they come from and how they can contribute to society and how you can support them? So, one of the things I know that was imperative for me was I work at burger king, as education is very fundamental or at least acquire high school education on the first level is important to, you know, looking at a career path possibility or helping you with your learning goals. But I, when I worked at burger king, I wanted to make sure a part-time job wasn’t, you know, the main focus for everyone, you will have to have that life balance.


Natasha Daniel (05:50):
So I believed in life balance from really early. So I supported the students who were to get that life balance by, you can make your money part-time or full-time work, but you can also go to school. So in the, at burger king, we had a lot of post-secondary college students, and I would have them, we kind of opened a little tutor session within our diet, within our our work employee room. And they were free to bring their assignments. And I kind of them with another worker who in college could help so that they can get support and help with their assignments as they were going through high school. And that’s just because also some of the youth, they didn’t have that support at home. It’s very difficult when your parents are just trying to make money to put food on the table. And especially if it’s an immigrant parent also, they really sometimes don’t understand the whole structure of the Canadian system. So their goal is just that I need to feed you. I need to keep the house going, but what about all of the other needs and needs? And looking at the challenges that your, your child might have. And a lot of them didn’t have that knowledge and didn’t have that skillset. So that’s where I kinda stepped in from that early, early times, being in burger king and moved on into community and stuff like that.


Sam Demma (07:03):
Your experiences in burger king, in different community organizations and clubs has all led to the perspective that you have in working with students in rebrand. Can you talk a little bit more about the rebrand program, why it’s so close to your heart and what’s compelled you to continue working on it for the past eight years?


Natasha Daniel (07:25):
So rebrand again, you know, be why is it so close to my head when I came from Montreal to Edmonton and got a job at MCG, they had this beautiful program and it’s so really one of the foundational programs and I, that MTG offers. And I think it’s about 15 years in ENCE in the, in our current employment center. So there’s a great knowledge about the program in Edmonton is a program that a lot of agencies and support workers and stuff they know about because of the strength of the program and how the program helps you. So with looking at rebrand and going through many cohorts and many you know, participants with different challenges and experiences and background, you understand that really youth, they need the support and they need to really be allowed to have the resiliency. And they need that part where they see that there’s more to life in the world, or there’s more to what I could accomplish.


Natasha Daniel (08:24):
And I always say to my youth, like, how do you define accomplishment? Not don’t define accomplishment by society’s, you know, definition of accomplishment, because what did, what have you done? It doesn’t have to be that you’ve gotten a trophy, or you was, you, you were in the, you know, the football team or you had a scholarship and many of them do, you know, they had those, but what other accomplishment, how, what, how do you see accomplishment from your, your perspective and how can you think out of the box and bring those skillset to your life? So with rebrand because rebrand, we allow them to have many experiences in the program by having a mixture of, of training that they don’t get in school. So we focus on the life management and with the life when it comes with the basic things about budgeting, the basic things about, you know, those communication skills, the basic things about being more self aware.


Natasha Daniel (09:22):
So, you know, who are you and what can you bring to the table and how, you know, what part, what are your goals that you wanna accomplish? So we focus on those great ma life management skills now at COVID and a lot of youth, they go through mental health challenges, and sometimes they’ve gone through those challenges from early childhood and, you know, not having the right supports, the challenges, the mental health challenges increase and increase and increase. Yeah. So really getting them to understand that, yes, you can have a mental health challenge, but what is the best strategy that you are going to incorporate? And what supports do you need to really cope with your mental health challenge? Because not everybody who, you know, you do have coping skills when you have mental health and sometimes society label, you, you have mental health, you depressed, but with that, the, you can still achieve something as long as you have the, the right strategies.


Natasha Daniel (10:21):
And as long as you have the support, so rebrand provides all of that to the participants. And then we fo we help them to focus on employment. What skills can you bring to an employer what’s out there that you would like to learn on the job? You know, what are some of, of the values that you have that another employer might, you know, wanna bring into take you on because that value kind of meshes with their work value. And then what are your long term goals? So what are your current goals? So what are your employment goals, or, you know, so what do you wanna go back to school? What would you like to do? So helping them to really have a broad rate of experiences through training, through you know, sessions like having a good motivat speaker, like you, you know, through financial literacy programs first aid, computer programs, computer training, and volunteer experiences, and just basic, you know, everything their experiences an adult might have, or have had to bring them to a successful journey. That’s what we brand helps them. And then we support them in all aspect, as they’re, you know, being trained and gaining more of self and becoming, you know, looking at the path that, oh, I needed this to help rebrand my life to start a new journey.


Sam Demma (11:39):
The name is so appropriate for the purpose of the program, which is so cool. And I’m honored to have been a part of a few of them. And another one this week, I’m always super excited. One thing that I love about the program is the diversity. It seems like the students all come from very different cultures, different walks of life. How do you get through to students, you know, from the get go and make sure that they understand it’s a safe place where they can be themselves and share the truth. Even if it’s one that’s a uncomfortable to talk about.


Natasha Daniel (12:14):
I, I, I believe for myself, it’s just, I’m open. And, and I, I say, you know what being open is the first time. So I’m no longer youth, but I was a youth at one point in time. And I know some of the experiences that they might have might have be maybe a similar experience that I had, or also by my dive first experience in working community, working, you know, with intervention services and all of that, all of the prior work that I’ve done, you know, I let them know that it’s okay. That as a youth, that everything wouldn’t be smooth it’s okay. That you are gonna make challenges. It’s okay. That because you didn’t critically think about the consequences that, you know, like hitting someone in the head, you didn’t critically think about it, and then you gotta arrest for that.


Natasha Daniel (12:58):
And then you got a criminal record is okay. You know, and because of the challenges that you have, it doesn’t mean that your life stops right there. What it is is that, how can you cha take those challenges and make them into opportunities? So when they, when I connect with a youth, you know, it’s just to see I’m here to support you. And let’s have that open dialogue. Let’s talk about, just be upfront, put it on the table, lay on the table. I’ve heard it all. Like I tell him, I’ve heard it all. There’s nothing. I think that you would come and tell me that like might be a shocker with working with youth you know, from the different backgrounds and different challenges. I had a youth who came to Canada from from a, from the con African continent. And this kid was so resilient.


Natasha Daniel (13:46):
And when he had a story of this kid, he was a war soldier at 13 years old. And they him to kill someone and he didn’t want to. And he ran away. He ran from two weeks, no shoes on his feet, in the jungle for two weeks. Wow. To get to the border of another country for safe Haven. Wow. And this kid came into the program, was really resilient, you know, new immigrants. So he had to learn a lot, but he took to the supports and that, that, you know, everything that the program was offering, he got employment. He got a hand of learning how to understand money because his things that I need to work as I had to money for my mom, I need to take care of my family. And then, you know, two, three weeks into the program, he had one of those days where, you know, he was himself and I’m like, what’s up, he’s always a child.


Natasha Daniel (14:46):
He’s like, you know, I just got worried. One of my best friend got killed, trying to escape and trying to leave, you know, the, the world off that they grew up in with all of the hardship and he felt really guilty. And I says, you know what? It’s okay. It’s okay. Because he felt that I got freedom, my friend didn’t. Mm. And I says, you know what? Take a mental health day. It’s okay. You can go home. You can probably go, just call your mom or talk to the people that you need to support from culturally. And when you feel better, come back tomorrow. And so some of these are just some of the small things that allows, because when you give them those kind of supports, then they’re able to start planning the next step forward. And he moved on into employment. And a couple weeks ago I was outside and he is like, Natasha, Natasha.


Natasha Daniel (15:34):
I’m like, who is that is me? Like, what are you doing? He was doing skip the dish, but he’s a university student. Oh, wow. he is a university student. And he was just doing, skip the dish to make extra cash. So that’s just kind of some of the, the, the people that we experience in rebrand. And one of the things that I can say that learning working with youth is youth are so open. There’s never judgment in my classroom. They never judge. There’s so much support from one youth to the other, even though life experiences are different. They are one of the most open, hated group, I should say, within our society that a lot of people don’t know. A lot of people think that they’re lazy. A lot of people think that you’re paying for your games all day long.


Natasha Daniel (16:22):
And a lot of people think that, you know what, they, they just don’t wanna do anything. They just wanna BU around and all of that stuff. I don’t think they use the word bumming anymore. you’re showing your age, be careful. yeah. I don’t think I don’t that they would like, you know, and the thing about working with you, sometimes I say a word and like, like the other lady they said in my classroom, I’m like, what social media? Do you guys, you know apps and stuff, do you guys think that I have, and like, yeah, Natasha, we know you only have Facebook and one of them she’s like, and because you’re from the Caribbean, I know Caribbean, people love to talk to their family members and they only do WhatsApp and like, like yeah, know that, you know, on Instagram, you and I was, and I was like, whatever guys, whatever, , that’s so funny.


Natasha Daniel (17:22):
Yeah. And, and that’s to take, and, and even the fact that sometimes I said, sometimes in rebrand, I said, okay, tell me some of the I’m like, okay, well, let’s just, just, just, just, just write it down a little bit. You guys write some of the words that you say that we probably, that I probably wouldn’t know of, you know? And then they make me a whole list of kind of the, the, the, the pop culture words, and some of the regular words that they use now, so that I can be on the same lingo with them. yeah. , you know, and I think, so these are some of the things that, so for me, it’s just being open with them and making them, letting them know that you know, I’m not here to judge you. I want you, so I never forget that I was a huge, and I know we gonna all, sometimes we messed up.


Natasha Daniel (18:06):
Sometimes we make mistakes. And sometimes we, I says, you know what? I know. I know the days where, when I was in university, cuz I lived in Montreal and New York was right there, leave Montreal on a Friday, go club in Friday, Saturday sat up until Sunday night, you drive back into Montreal, you go to Tim Horton’s bathroom, wash up, you run to class. And then when school is finish on a Monday evening, you crash I’m like, and they were like, what? I’m like, those are some of the experiences, but how do you do things positively? You know, you can still experience live, but how do you do it in a positive way that it can help you increase your life management and become more aware of the part that you wanna go? You know? And every journey is a different journey. There’s so many, you know, youth and rebrand mental health, as I say you know, one of my rebrand pats was actually just from 2019 and this came, he came through the foster care system.


Natasha Daniel (19:09):
And when he came into rebrand, a smart kid, oh my gosh, like, cuz he has all, one of my, one of my coworkers say he reminds of Scooby duke because he was like, you know, bigger than my parents. But he was so he is such a smart kid and he would be there in the classroom. You teach him and is part of his ADHD and all of this FST and everything. But he’s there, he’s probably building a website, but he can tell you everything that you just said. And he wanted to go when we were part of the coach is looking at where do you wanna go? He says, you know, I really wanna do physio, arts. I wanna become a pilot, but I can’t afford it. And I says, but do know that there’s a program here in Alberta because you were in care, they can pay, you know, they can help you with your supports for education. I got him connected. We get to, we apply, we did the forms, we did everything. And he went forward into doing his assessments and everything to go to school as a pilot. So this is 2019 two weeks ago, cuz I’m not on Instagram again. he sent my other coworker, a video on Instagram to give to me, he was crossly he was flying cross Canada. Wow. yeah. And she came and she’s like, look at this. I’m like, what is that? And she’s like your student gauge. I’m like what? She’s like. Yeah.


Natasha Daniel (20:40):
He’s I on Instagram. And he was, he got yeah. And is accomplishing his goal of becoming a pilot. Wow. And this was 2019. Wow.


Sam Demma (20:54):
It, it sounds like the program really helps students lay the foundation for future success.


Natasha Daniel (21:01):
It does. And, and, and, and there, and no there’s by no means I wouldn’t say some of them drop out, but with me I am a high achiever. So from the get go, I, you know, they know that they have all of the supports that I said to them. Like, you know, I’m not working for you. We are working together. Yeah. And that’s my mantra when they come in, like I’m not working for you, we are working together. So with that, we, we have I used to have 12 for, for every four and a half months now I have 10. And for the most part I have eight, eight successful achievers all the time. Nice that they would go through the program, they would go into employment and figure their life part. And the thing about rebrand, because some of them who’s not completed high school cuz there’s a percentage of non high school completers.


Natasha Daniel (21:48):
They probably in school had negative experiences. Yeah. But coming into rebrand, it gives a different shift. Hmm. And then they, so, so for many of them, and I remember one of my UT said, you know what? After being in rebrand, I realized that I can go back to school now. Ah, because they have a lot of assignments that they’re given. There’s still some of the written work and the teamwork where you have to collaborate to the team and come up with ideas and, and you know, and also your critical thinking, what do you bring to this case study? So they do have work. That’s not structured like school, but they do have some work together increasing their knowledge and to get them to really articulate on pair with, you know, on the computers or whatever, what they’ve learned or how they would approach something.


Natasha Daniel (22:36):
And that helps someone who probably had a lot of challenges in school, realize that, you know, what, if I really am motivated and I can recommit myself, I can go back and complete my high school. So that’s one of the things that I know of, of a couple people who struggled in school and coming through rebrand and they realized that, oh, okay. And one of the things they always said, why did we learn this at school? Why did we learn this at school? And I says, you know what, sometimes school doesn’t, but you have the opportunity where you are here to, to, to get supports. And when we talk about what we are looking at now, we have mental health counseling that they can, you know, that we have a counseling session services that that we, the program pays for. They have also supports when they get employment.


Natasha Daniel (23:26):
So everything to remove the barriers from, you know, to keep them out of work. So they have so support for clothing to get them into employment. They have supports, they get bus tickets and stuff like that to help with the transportation. So every little thing that might become a barrier for a youth to not get in a job or not faking a job, the program tried to decrease those barriers. And then another, the other bigger support for them is that in comparison to a youth who has a job search on their own, we help with some of the employment connection. So if you are in the pro, if you are my participant in the program and I’ve seen your computer skills, I get a test, your time management. I know that you ha you have great communication skills. I know that you have a lot of leadership skills.


Natasha Daniel (24:10):
I, when we are looking for employment for them, I would market you to an employer and say, you know, this is such and such. I remember one of my UAN, she had some trauma was going to post secondary. And she stopped because of you know, being a domestic father and relationship. But then after she bounces back with con and all of that, and she she got with one of the employer connections I made. And he left her after three weeks to manage his driving school and insurance business. Wow. Because she had the skills. Yep. But its just that she didn’t know how to really formulate those skills into the language and then demonstrate them in the workplace by having that opportunity. And she excelled at her at her job and she’s still there today, you know? So that’s one of the things that we do with Reba when we have employers who we know, and especially when it’s an employer who have a hat for community, it makes it so much better and so much easier to really support a you to say you could accomplish all of this.


Natasha Daniel (25:15):
You know, I’ve had youth who came into the program and they got promoted from just being a regular employee to manager, warehousing manager. And so getting them to really become more self aware is one of the goals of the program. Because when they’re more self aware, we focus a lot on their strength. And that’s my thing. I wanna focus on your strength. I know you messed up a lot, Sam, but that’s not, that’s not who you are. You know? And my thing I also say to them fail means your first attempt in learning. Mm. So what did you learn from that? What did you learn from the jobs when you wouldn’t get up on time? What did you learn from, you know, and again, and I say to you, Dr. I know that when you don’t have anything to look forward to, you can go to bed at 2:00 AM in the morning, 3:00 AM in the morning.


Natasha Daniel (26:06):
When I try position from Montreal to Edmonton, that was my life. Cuz what, I didn’t have a job. I didn’t have to get up early to go anywhere. So I would stay up and I would be job searching at 2:00 AM, go to bed at three sleep all the way through, get up at 2:00 PM cuz I know my husband’s about to finish. And that’s how I, so it’s natural. And I think people have to admit to all of these things because it’s be, you know, adults do. I did it like I, them, I did it because I didn’t have any set schedule. I didn’t have any programs. I didn’t have anything to look forward to. Hmm. So I know that a you as a youth might do stuff like that, but how do you not stay in the moment? How do you not stay and dwelling it and look forward to something else?


Natasha Daniel (26:57):
And that’s what weand helps them to do. Look forward. I remember I had a tute rebrand. He was gonna have an assessment to join the program and he had finished full secondary doing graphic design. So website design and he forgot his appointment at 6:00 AM. He left me a message and he said, Hey Natasha this is Nicholas. I can’t remember what time is my appointment. But I’m now about to go to bed. Don’t call me during the day, cuz I’m going to bed at 6:00 AM, but you can text me and let me know what time is my appointment. Mm. So then I did call him later on in the day and I says to him, you got the oddity to tell me, don’t call you cuz you’re just going to bed. And, and that’s again, 6:00 AM. He’s going to bed because he’s still of all night playing for your game.


Natasha Daniel (27:49):
And I said to him, you know what, if you want to be in rebrand, you have to change the sleeping habits. Mm. The program is about to sat in two weeks. You’re gonna be in the program. I need you to start going to bed at a regular time. Yeah. So you can be in class by eight 30. Yeah. And you know what? He did it. Then he got his job as a first, as a, as a graphic designer. We got him this job, the kid was so happy and he called me a couple. I think it was last year. And he’s like, I missed you. I’m like, no, no, no, no, no. Don’t miss me. Stay on the job. and him, he, he was so happy to get because after he graduated from post secondary, for two years, he had, was doing nothing, playing for games.


Natasha Daniel (28:32):
He was so happy and was driving well in the job that he moved closer. So he to the employment. So he would have a for time. And I would say, I says, no, don’t call me. Don’t miss me at all. Don’t miss me, me stay on the job. And that’s just some of the small changes that’s required for you. So me saying to him, we adjust your sleep in habit. Because again, if you’re going into employment, I don’t think you’re gonna start. You know, you have to be depending on what way you wanna work, you have to be grounded to really be successful by just doing small, consistent action, which is one of your words. Yeah. Thank you. Consistent actions. Yeah. also a word that I like to tell him now and that small, consistent action is that adjusting my sleep in time. That’s all he needed. Yep.


Sam Demma (29:22):
Be successful. That’s awesome. I, we could talk for like two hours. Thank you so much for taking the time to share some of your stories. One last question. If you could speak to younger Natasha, not that you’re old, but if you could speak to, you know, first year working in the rebrand program, but with the knowledge and experience, you know, now what advice would you give your younger self?


Natasha Daniel (29:49):
What advice I would give my younger self and the advice I would give my younger self is from learning from the rebrand participants. I would tell myself right now, you know, take on more, get out of my comfort zone. Mm. Because I remember like I’m a personal even, you know, I, I get comfortable in my zone and then you know, that’s my zone. Oh. I would tell myself also shine myself, more shine, more like, you know, I write poems, I love writing and stuff like that. And everybody’s like, why don’t you? We didn’t know you. Right. We didn’t know you. Right. why don’t you publish a book and, and that’s just me just staying within my zone. Yeah. You know? And, and so I, soon as I write my poems and I share them more often, so that’s what I would tell myself, just be, get out of the comfort zone.


Natasha Daniel (30:37):
And, and, and this is what this generation of youths are teaching me how open they are and how open they are to new experiences. And not even just owning new experiences, how open they are to each other, like, you know, working with youths who are diverse cultural background, youth who are L G B T youths who have, you know you know, being maybe a criminal record history, two in a gang and they just embrace everybody and they just open to the experiences mm-hmm . So I would, that’s what I would tell myself as a younger, you know, back a youth back, you know, just younger again, like just be open, be more open. Now I became I’m open right now, but you know, if I, if it started back then, like, you know, the younger Natasha, I think I would’ve been like I would, I flourish. Well, I think I would just be like, Hmm That’s awesome. That’s what, and that is just all from, from the experience of working with youth and also you know, I, I, I tell them this now. And it’s just because from my experience was said, don’t let others define who you are. Don’t let others define who you are. You define who you are, because at the end of today, you would want, that has to live with you and not others.


Sam Demma (32:09):
Natasha, this has been a great conversation. Thank you again for taking the time to come on here. I really appreciate it. I look forward to future programs and working with you and the students keep up the great work, happy holidays. And we’ll talk soon.


Natasha Daniel (32:22):
Thank you, Sam. I do appreciate you. You know, I appreciate just, just the work that you’re doing to empower others and, and, and sharing your story. Like I was, you know, the other day when you sent me sent me the, the invite my son who’s nine. He was like, who’s the guy, like I’m gonna do a podcast. And so then he, I, I said, listen to his video, my son listened to one of your TED talks. Oh, wow. He’s into the he’s nine years old. He’s into stuff like this. And then he says to me, mommy on Saturday, he’s like, did you do the podcast?


Sam Demma (32:54):
That’s awesome.


Natasha Daniel (32:55):
And you know, and I, and then I, I was to him. Yeah. So Sam, you know, I think he used to, he used to play football and then my son, he corrects me, like he says, mommy, you know, he played soccer. was not football.


Sam Demma (33:11):
He’s attentive. That’s good.


Natasha Daniel (33:13):
yeah. Oh no, no. I, I was like, so I said to him, you know, like, so that’s just to show you, I don’t a nine year old kid is also empowered by what you do. Ah, thanks for sharing that. So I would just say, you know, keep up the good work and the fact that, I mean, coming from Reeb, right. Again, when you come and speak to our youths, a lot of you, they don’t see youths who can bring and shed light to a lot of what they go through. Mm. And this is what, from having you into rebrand from having a young computer instructor, we as MCG, make sure that we have, we get them to get that balance. Yeah. So that they’re not just learning from our experiences, but they also, so learning from people who are dear generation and people who can really identify to what their struggles and what their challenges are, you know, within living in the 21st century as a young person. Yeah. So thank you again for the good work that you’re doing. You too.


Sam Demma (34:19):
You too. And thanks for sharing those stories! We’ll talk soon.


Natasha Daniel (34:22):
No problem. Thank you.

Join the Educator Network & Connect with Natasha Daniel

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.

January 28, 2022 by Cooperative Education Education Consultant Experiential Learning Student Leadership Student Success 0

Larry Tomiyama – Consultant and Retired Administrator with 32 Years of Experience in Education

Larry Tomiyama - Consultant and Retired Administrator with 32 Years of Experience in Education
About Larry Tomiyama 

After spending over 30 years of his life as an administrator in the Calgary School system in Canada, Larry (@TomiyamaLarry) was gifted the opportunity to work with some of the most vulnerable and behavioural students in his school system.  Through that experience, Larry learned so much about trust, trauma-informed teaching, and how to build really deep relationships with kids.

He believes that his opportunity to work in this environment was a gift from God because it truly changed the way Larry understood education, leadership and life. He was so motivated to share his discoveries, he left the school district so he could speak with other educators and leaders about what he had learned.

Connect with Larry: Email | Website | Linkedin

Listen Now

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

Resources Mentioned

Robert Greenleaf’s book – Servant Leadership

Neuroteach: Brain Science and the Future of Education – Book

What is Trauma-Informed Teaching?

Calgary Board of Education

In Everything Give Thanks (website)

The Transcript

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

Sam Demma (00:01):
Larry welcome to the high performing educator podcast. Please introduce yourself and share a little bit about the work you do in education.


Larry Tomiyama (00:11):
Thanks. It’s a pleasure and privilege to be here, Sal. It was great to meet you the other month and I’m happy to be here today. So I’m a,, I guess a lifelong educator, if you count of when I was in school it would be 55 years almost that I’ve been in school as either a student a teacher, a university professor. And I guess even the speaking that I do right now and the everything that I get to do right now is due to the path that God provided the opportunities that he provided for me. And it all kind of culminated in the last two years of my K to 12 teaching career with the Calgary Catholic school district. And in those last two years, I got to work with, be the principal of a school that educated the most behavioral, the most vulnerable, the most volatile students in the city of Calgary.


Larry Tomiyama (01:19):
But those students and the staff that I got to work with taught me changed and transformed the way I think about education, about life and about leadership. And I believe it’s been my calling for the last five or six years to go share this information with anybody who wants to listen because it’s it, to me, it was, it just put everything into perspective. It made sense to everything, to that part of things. So I don’t know if you want to hear anything a little bit about my, how I grew up and things like that, but really everything is kind of culminated. And the purpose of, I think why I’m on earth is occurred in, in that little space of time. I’m in, in the last five years,


Sam Demma (02:06):
What a beautiful realization to have and to still be able to share and have the time to share these things, which is phenomenal. I think you’re doing an amazing job. Please take us back to when you were growing up, tell us a little bit about your upbringing and also what got you into education in the first place, or should I say made you never leave?


Larry Tomiyama (02:30):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely. So, my, parents were both, Japanese. My mom was born in Japan. My dad was born in, Canada and, so I grew up in a small Alberta town of Taber, Alberta. 5,000 people there. It was a fantastic place to grow up. Small town, you went to school there. My dad owned a service station in a town, just, just east of the city. my mom worked in a canning factory, canning vegetables when she wasn’t, at home chasing us around, I have two brothers and a sister and, get to hang out with them in Calgary. So that’s, it’s great. both my parents have passed at this at right now, but, certainly the work ethic and the example that they provided will live on. And I hope, and I know that, they’re in heaven right now and I’m happy with most of the stuff that I do.


Larry Tomiyama (03:34):
But I’m sure wanna criticize me as well, too. So I’m, I’m okay with that. I’m okay with that. I went played a lot of baseball and basketball as I grew up and sports is a big part of my life and was able to pass that on to our kids, my own kids as I grew up. So went to the university of Calgary, started my teaching career in Calgary and never left and had a really, really fulfilling career as a teacher, as a principal worked at the, our central office for a little while and then kind of only moved into the post-secondary world. But that’s been part of it, but really the again, things really culminated in basically 2015 to 2017. And in those two years that I got to work with those students. My wife was gonna kill me, as I said, right after that, then I know I have to go share this information and I decided to leave the district. And that was not part of our retirement plan, but it had to be done. Luckily I’m still married. So,ushe was okay with it.


Sam Demma (04:57):
Hey, sometimes you have to ask for forgiveness and not permission, right.


Larry Tomiyama (05:02):
That was definitely one of those occasions sound I don’t re I don’t recommend it, but it worked out. Okay.


Sam Demma (05:09):
Bring us into the environment of the school that you had the opportunity to work in. I don’t think every educator understands the feeling, the experience. Tell us a little bit about, and also what you learned


Larry Tomiyama (05:23):
You bet. I think if it’s okay with you, Sam, I’ll tell you a little bit about it and then I’ll tell you a story. And it really it kind of, I think people get a better visual visualization of what’s there. Sure. So our lady alert school was created to educate those students because of their behavior, because of their brokenness, because of their issues that they were having. They couldn’t be successful in any other school. So they needed a place to go to do things maybe a little bit differently than other schools but to see if we could help them provide some type of therapy for them to get them to the point where they might be able to integrate themselves back into regular school. So most of the time these students been suspended or expelled from other schools and there’s really no else, nowhere else for them to go.


Larry Tomiyama (06:22):
So we got to educate them in our building. So we had 60 students. Half the building was for really cognitively delayed and students with severe, severe autism. And the other half was the students who, and I called them to screw you kids because they had no problem telling to, to screw off and many other things as well. But they were just students who had experienced no success in school. And as we found out lots of trauma that they experienced that caused them to not be able to function. And it was our opportunity that we got to help them function in a way that they can be a little bit more successful. So the story that kind of illustrates this really, really well is a story. I call this student little G I gave all my students nicknames and Ralph was really, really good then, and the kids really liked it.


Larry Tomiyama (07:31):
So they liked, they liked that name. So this guy was little G little G came to us in kindergarten. Story is that at the age of two little G had to be removed from his biological parents because his biological father was sexually abusing him. At age of four he was in the foster system and social services felt it was important for little G to be with a sibling to try and get a family connection. So little G was moved into a foster home with his 12 year old brother. He was four at the time that lasted about six months and he had to be removed from that house because his 12 year old brother was sexually abusing him. Enter us. We normally didn’t take students that young at five, we usually took them at grade three.


Larry Tomiyama (08:31):
We wanted them to go into a regular system and see if they could function. And then if there was a problem we would try and step in, but myself and our psychologist went to go see little G in his school that he was at. And we saw this cute, angry, sad, outta control, little boy. And I looked at her and she looked at me and we looked at each other and said, we gotta take him. So I entered little G into our school. I, he started in September. The hope was that we would hear at some point that little G was gonna be adopted. That was really the goal, social services working super, super hard to try and make that happen. And it was like November. And in November, we got the word that little G there was a family from out of town that was extremely interest in little G.


Larry Tomiyama (09:38):
It was like a party at our school. We started planning the party. His last day was gonna be December 22nd. I think it was the last year of school. And then he was gonna leave school with the family and go to their help. And in in conversations and therapy sessions little G had mentioned over and over and over again that he just wanted to call somebody, mom and dad again. And so we heard this news, we did everything. We invited the family in. We saw, we let little G be with his perspective parents. As many times as we could at school, things were looking really, really good. And I remember it so clearly it was December 21st, the last day before school was to let out. And I got a call from Steve, the social worker, and Steve said, Larry, I’ve got some bad news. I said, what’s that? The parents can’t take little G they’re not ready. They don’t want ’em. I don’t know what the reason was, but they can’t take ’em. So I’ll be there tomorrow morning, the last day of school tomorrow morning to let little G know that that’s what the situation was.


Larry Tomiyama (10:55):
Selfishly, selfishly, on my part, I it’s, Steve, this is. You’re gonna come to school at nine o’clock wreck this kid’s life again, and we’re gonna have to deal with them for the rest of the day. I’ve got no choice, Larry. We gotta do it. Fair enough. So December 22nd rolls around we’re in the conference room, I’m sitting across a little G little G’s teacher is sitting across from Steve. The social worker. We bring little G in our little G’s teacher is she’s crying already. And we’re just waiting. So the meeting starts and Steve communicates the little GE gee, I’m sorry that the, the adoption didn’t go through the, family’s not gonna take you and you’re not gonna be going home with them today. And I just put my head down and waited for the explosion and to everyone’s surprise, LGI jumps up onto the table that we are at jumps into my lap and says, that’s okay, Steve, Mr. T that’s me, Mr. T you’ll be my dad. Right.


Larry Tomiyama (12:23):
And I had nothing and I was praying to God, what the hell do I say? What do give some words, gimme some words. And what came outta my mouth was absolutely. I will always be your dad at school. G always, always, always. And he jumps outta my, laughing into this teacher’s lap who can’t even talk and says, and miss G you’ll be my mom too. Right. And I, and she couldn’t even breathe. So I took her head and I motioned it for a nodding action. So she would say, yes, I think that was a yes. G you’re doing okay.


Larry Tomiyama (13:03):
So the, the reason why I tell that story is because we got to work with these students who experienced trauma and everything else that no student should ever, ever have to experience, but we got the chance through the model that we used to get that kid to the point where he thought enough of us thought enough of me thought enough of his teacher, that he might be able to call him mom and dad. And we have that opportunity every day. And this is an extreme case for sure. But every day, as educators, as teachers that we have, when we get to step in front of our students, there’s lots of little G’s out there, lots. And in order for us to be able to tee each them, those kids need to feel safe and they need to feel that somebody cares about them.


Larry Tomiyama (14:04):
And I don’t care if you’re in grade, if you’re in kindergarten and grade 12, that, that model, that formula in order to make those kids safe and secure prior to teaching them and get them to trust you. It just spoke volumes to us as a staff. And we got to do this every day. Not that it was easy. In fact, it was brutal sometimes, but to be able to do that, it showed me why we got into the business at educating and teaching kids and how we can get them to learn to like themselves enough to be productive in the, in, in whatever that they do. So, like I said, I can go into the model a little bit more if you want, but certainly he’s a great example of teaching us what needs to be done with these, with some of these kids.


Sam Demma (15:08):
Wow. But before we jump into the model and talk about that a little bit, can you share in your perspective how you believe you’re able to build trust with students? Not only the challenging ones, but also the easy ones. You shared some experiences on our previous call that really highlighted how I believe, you know, sometimes building trust is a long process and can be very challenging, but once you have it, like you just explained with little G it becomes a beautiful thing. How do you think you build it?


Larry Tomiyama (15:46):
It doesn’t matter if the, I mean, if, if a student is traumatized or not, sometimes, I mean, and, and the model speaks to it really well at the bottom of the model before anything happens, it’s safety. So the student needs to feel safe and how we define safety. When we worked with these kids was that the student needs to be able to predict what’s gonna happen next. That’s what safety is because in their lives, in their homes, in their situations, you’re not safe. If you can’t predict, I don’t, they can’t predict how mom’s drunk boyfriend is gonna act. They can’t predict if they’re gonna have supper that day. They can’t predict if they get in trouble, what that’s gonna look like. So we are able at school will be able to create an environment where they can predict what’s gonna happen regardless of, of how they act, what they say or what they do.


Larry Tomiyama (16:41):
They’ll be able to predict how we’re gonna act towards them and that’s respect respectfully, lovingly whatever we need to do that doesn’t, that doesn’t mean that there isn’t consequences. Cause there consequ are critical, but students need to feel safe. The next step that we need after we got them to feel safe, we called it security and security is that they’re willing to do things, even though they might fail, they feel secure enough because of the adults in the room or their teacher or whomever that even though if they fail, it’s gonna be okay. And kids, especially kids who struggle in school, they don’t, they’d rather not try than fail. So we need to get ’em to that point where you know what it’s okay to. And I actually, I was listening to another podcast and people didn’t like that word failure. So they used the word falling instead of failure.


Larry Tomiyama (17:46):
And I kind of like that, cuz falling gives the connotation that that you followed, but you want to get up as well. Mm like that. I like that. Yeah. So, so first safety, security, and then trust and trust was vague. They knew how we were going to react in every situation, even though it was a consequence and, and there were, there were students that I suspended. But they knew that what was gonna happen, they were able to predict that part of things as well. The reaction of, of somebody when things didn’t go right. And once that was there ex that’s when the magic happened, but that sometimes that took years, but even, even in a regular classroom, their kids that, that are trustworthy already, just because they’ve had pretty solid background, loving parents, et cetera. But they still used to it’s they still gotta trust you so you can prove it to them.


Larry Tomiyama (18:54):
And it comes pretty easy for a lot of kids and teachers. But it’s that bottom third to bottom quarter where it’s not easy. So we have to work a little bit harder. We have to make an effort. They might be the kid in the class. And you might think that kid is the greatest kid in the world. He doesn’t say a word. He doesn’t bother me. He’s fantastic. But he might not feel safe. So we need to go and make an effort to create those relationships with those kids. It’s easy for the kids that you, like. I tell the kids that, you know, the teachers in training that you think you’re gonna, like all the kids, you’re not gonna like all the kids. In fact, you might not, you might dislike a lot of them or some of them, the key is they can’t know that every kid in that class needs to think that you’d love them. Your inside voice might not say so, but it’s okay. They just need to know that you care about them and yell. And then, like I said, that’s where the joy of teaching comes from when you get that pack from the students. So hopefully it might be kind of confusing, but hopefully I explained it.


Sam Demma (20:13):
Okay. You did a phenomenal job explaining that. And it leads me to my next curious question, where have your principal’s ideas come from? It sounds like a lot of them have come from your past experience. The two years spent in this school and the 55. So or so years you spent in education altogether, but what resources, what courses, books programs, anything have you used or consumed that have been very helpful in helping you make a bigger impact on kids in the classroom and also as an administrator?


Larry Tomiyama (20:53):
Yeah. You know what it’s to say that there was I mean, a, a big on Robert Greenleaf’s book, servant leadership was certainly influential in my life, but you know, most of my stuff and, and most of the things that I speak about is from firsthand experience stuff that I screwed up royally as a principal, as a thing, and then to be able to think back record it, document it and understand, okay, that’s, that’s why I messed up on that. I should have it this way, or I should have asked for more input this way or they didn’t trust me yet. So I’ve taken what those kids taught me and the model that we used there and brought it back to the way that I was a leader in the way, the, the successes that I had and the failures that I had. And it’s all the same thing when I messed up.


Larry Tomiyama (21:51):
And, and I thought my staff should act this way and they didn’t it’s because I didn’t take the proper steps to get ’em safe. They didn’t feel safe. They didn’t certainly didn’t trust me. After a year, two and a half, they trusted me and then I could, then we do anything and everything. And we created culture. That was amazing, but it took me that while. So like I said, it was a culmination of those two years, but all the years that I was a principal and as a, a leader with the district and things like that, it all made sense to me when I got to live it with these students. And it made sense why I fell or failed in that situation. And it made sense why I am success. I was successful in many of those ventures. If there’s another book that I’m, that’s really influential in my life, right, right now it’s called neuro teach and is written by educators.


Larry Tomiyama (22:55):
And it’s all about brain-based research. And, and again, all the stuff that I thought is now reinforced by recent brain research. That that’s why we are able to help these students said we did. That’s why many of these kids were so stuck that when they were traumatized and they were young, their brain was damaged, physically, physically damaged. But research also shows that we have an opportunity to create neurons in the brain. That’ll help switch or flip their script, that all these people hurt me in my life. So I’m not lovable. I’m not likable and switch that to your more than lable. You’re more than likable, more than worth it. And we’re gonna show you why you’re worth it. So it, it, I don’t know. I I’m just, most of my life is cuz I’m a little bit messed up and that’s how we kind of evolve for me that those two years risk reinforced all the things that I had done before. And it’s really created and given me a a platform and a foundation to be able to share some of this information.


Sam Demma (24:18):
And you do a phenomenal job sharing it and telling it through the old art of storytelling in a way that’s engaging and fun for the audience. And last time we connected, you shared the story of I don’t know if that made a good representation of the sound or what happened, but, man you share that story before we wrap up today’s uhonversation and what you learned from it personally, if remember,


Larry Tomiyama (24:46):
Yeah. W was that with the I’m trying to think of which story that I had told was that with the little guy that I was in the timeout room with, correct. Ah, okay. Okay. So let’s, let’s call this student OB. And so OB was a grade three student who came from a war torn country. And his life was basically before he came to Canada, was running and fighting in refugee camps. So he comes to Canada and not functional in a regular school, kicked out of a number of schools or Exel from a number of schools just because he wasn’t able to, to function in a regular classroom. So we arrived at our season grade three and as most kids are, they’re not really that happy when they start in our building, because it’s just another place that they’re gonna be unsuccessful at and they’re gonna get kicked out of.


Larry Tomiyama (25:54):
And that’s where their head is at. So I got a call from the classroom saying that’s coming down and it doesn’t look like he’s very, he’s very happier. He is not ready to start class. So I said, fine. So I leave my office and O’s coming down the stairs and I know he’s not doing really well because he’s sucking his thumb. And that was his coping mechanism for when he was stressed or anxiety rid. And he comes down the stairs and I said, OB, how you doing? Just take a seat on the chair and we can get started with the day when you’re ready. You let me know. And he had his thumb in his mouth and everything. He just says, sure, up, shut up, Mr. T screw you. So it went on and, and on to that nothing that was pretty tame to some of the names I was called.


Larry Tomiyama (26:48):
So I was okay with that. And he came down, so it came down the stairs and was really, really angry, started throwing chairs, throwing things around and then went after a student. So we had intervene and when a student gets violent, we have a room that we call our calming room. And it’s basically a six by six cinder brick wall room with a door and a window in it. And so we brought him in there and he lost his mind in there. Kickings spitting, anything that you can think of. And usually they calm down after a while. So when they calm down, we enter the CLA enter the room and, and see if we can work with them. And so I walked into the room and he was lying in the corner of the room and started to get violent again. So I had to leave. And so I just waited and waited them out and got quiet. And he was mumbling and mumbling. I said, OB, are you okay? What are it’s gonna happening? Oh, I felt, tell me MRT. And I said, what’s that OB what’s happening, whatever you need. And he says, MRT, I’m gonna take their outta your and rub it right in your eyes.


Larry Tomiyama (28:23):
I couldn’t even talk. I was laughing so hard. I, I thought that’s so brilliant. How can and someone be so elevated? So, so mad and think of something like that. It took me like five minutes before I could collect myself. I looked in there and he’s crying again in the corner. So I walk, I walk in, open the door and I just sit on the floor and don’t do anything. And,uhe looks at me and I look at him, he puts his head down and nobody says a word for another five minutes. Uand then I see him army crawl over to me and put his head on my leg. Cause I’m sitting down in the ground. So he sat there for a few minutes and he’s crying and crying. And then he kind of collects himself. And he says to me, Mr. T, you can hurt me now.


Larry Tomiyama (29:24):
And I said, OB, what are you talking about? No, one’s gonna hurt you. That’s not why you’re here. We’re not doing that. Cuz he said, when I’m bad like that, and I say bad things, my brother or my dad beats the. And so I, I said, OB, listen, it doesn’t matter what you say, what you do, no one is gonna hurt you here. That’s not gonna happen. So we sat there for a few more minutes and in my work sense of humor, I said to him, I said, you know what, OB, you know, that stuff said to me, you know, with this and putting in my eyes and stuff like that, I go, I don’t know how possible that is. Do you think you could really do that? And there was a pause and he says,uand then he just starts full out,ubelly laughing.


Larry Tomiyama (30:29):
Yeah. Things like that. I said, OB, go clean up and get your to class. Mm. And so it went off to class. The, the, the big thing with that again, is the safety piece. Mm. That a, in his mind he was predicting what was gonna happen. Yeah. So when he acts like this, then he gets hurt and we had to flip that and we had to convince him that doesn’t matter what happens and how much you lose your mind that you’re gonna be safe here. So that was a huge, huge step in creating that safety for him. And again, this is an extreme story, but we can do little acts in our classrooms that show students that it doesn’t matter. What’s gonna happen. Whether whether we reprimand you or not how we say it or whatever. But you’re gonna be safe in my class. And that’s really, really the that’s the place to start


Sam Demma (31:27):
Love that. That’s such a powerful story along with the other one you shared and I’m sure there’s hundreds upon


Larry Tomiyama (31:33):
Hundreds. Yeah, no, it’s some of ’em are, are so ridiculous. They’re funny. Yeah. ,


Sam Demma (31:42):
That’s so true. Well, Larry, this has been such a pleasure with you about the, you know, the philosophies, the principles you have, the way you view education, the framework from which the school functioned. It’s really interesting. And if another educator is listening and is inspired by this conversation or has enjoyed it and wants to ask you a question or invite you to their event, what would be the best way for, for them to get in touch with you?


Larry Tomiyama (32:08):
Probably. I mean, if you need more information, I mean, my website’s not great, but it’s okay, but certainly it’s there. And my web website is https://ineverythinggivethanks.ca/about/. My email address is larry20ltomiyama@telus.net.

And shoot me an email take a look at the website that my contact information is on there. I’d be happy to talk to anybody. I talk to a lot of educators just about working with, at risk students about what, what I believe in leadership and what I, what I know works. And so I would be willing to share with anybody because it’s that’s what God God has asked me to do. And I don’t want to, I don’t wanna make him mad.


Sam Demma (33:06):
Larry, thank you so much. I really, really appreciate the time, effort and energy you put into your work and appreciate you sharing some of it here. Keep up the amazing job. And I look forward to our next conversation, hopefully on a golf course.


Larry Tomiyama (33:20):
My pleasure. Thanks.

Join the Educator Network & Connect with Larry Tomiyama

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.

January 24, 2022 by Education Consultant Experiential Learning Student Leadership Student Success Teachers Teaching Tips 0

Nicholas McCowan – Lenovo’s Visionary Teachers Award Recipient

Nicholas McCowan – Lenovo’s Visionary Teachers Award Recipient
About Nicholas McCowan

Nicholas McCowan (@NJMcCowan) teaches at St. Joan of Arc Academy in the Toronto Catholic District School Board and teaches Science, Leadership and Student Success.

In 2019, Nicholas was the winner of Lenovo‘s prestigious Visionary Teacher’s Award which earned him a set of VR headsets for his classroom. His submission focused on the socioeconomic limitations students face, along with the challenges associated with assimilating to a new country, as many of his students were newcomers.

Connect with Nicholas: Email | Instagram | Twitter

Listen Now

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

Resources Mentioned

St. Joan of Arc Academy

Visionary Teacher’s Award

Teach Me Toolbox

Teachers Meet Teachers

Bubba Gaeddert – CEO and Founder of the Varsity eSports Foundation

Google Expeditions

Minecraft 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 (00:00):
Do you want access to all the past guests on this show? Do you want a network with like-minded individuals and meet other high performing educators from around the world? If so, go to www.highperformingeducator.com. Sign up to join the exclusive network and you’ll get access to live virtual networking events and special opportunities that will come out throughout 2021. I promise you I will not fill your inbox, you might get one email a month. If that sounds interesting. Go to www.highperformingeducator.com. Welcome back to another episode of the High Performing Educator podcast. This is your host and youth speaker Sam Demma today’s guest is Nick McCowan. Nicholas is a teacher at St. John Arc Academy in the Toronto Catholic District School Board. He teaches science leadership and student success, and he is also a tech wizard. He helped an entire classroom at John Vanet experience visiting the national space station and traveling through exotic places throughout the world, using the Lenovo virtual reality classroom set without even leaving the classroom.


Sam Demma (01:11):
St. Joan of Arc Catholic Academy became the first school in the TCDSB to use this virtual reality kit. After today’s guest, Nick won an essay contest put on by the big tech giant Lenovo, and he believes that using technology can empower students who are new to the country and who may face social stigma. As a result, he is a phenomenal educator, phenomenal human being. He also runs something called Teach Me Toolbox, which is an Instagram page and a platform that shares tips that you can add to your teacher toolbox. He does so much to empower and educate and inspire his students. He is also a world experiencer. He loves traveling and he’s super passionate about the ocean. Anyways, without further ado, let’s get to the interview with Nick. I hope you enjoy it. And I will see you on the other side, Nick, welcome to the High Performing Educators podcast. It’s a huge pleasure to have you on the show here today. Why don’t you start by sharing with our audience who you are and how you got into the work you do in education now?


Nicholas McCowan (02:17):
Okay. Thanks for having me on Sam. It’s a pleasure to be here. So my name’s Nick McCowan. I taught with the Toronto Catholic District School Board for this is now my 10th year nine years at the school that I’m at. Generally I teach science and leadership and student success. So I wear a couple hats at the school. As a lot of us tend to do these days. I got into this work, I guess this story goes all the way back to high school. I had one particular teacher as I think a lot of educators can, can relate with this. They all had that one teacher that inspired them. George Robel at Cardinal Newman in a grade 12 history class. What he did was he, he brought in his, his dad just randomly and this, like, he sort of like crunched over old man walked in, didn’t say a word rolled up his sleeve and showed everybody the number tattoo on his forearm. And he had been a prisoner or in one of the concentration camps during world war II. And that experience just really like that got to me because I think, you know, that was the aha moment. Like what was in the textbook was real. And I think when that, for me, that experience was where I wanted to, to do that. I wanted to give people that experience. So that was sort of the main driver from me amongst a lot of other influential experiences as I went through my educational career myself.


Sam Demma (03:45):
That’s amazing. Yeah. Yeah. It’s so cool because I have that teacher for me too, and I don’t do, I mean, I’m not working in formal education as a teacher, but I’m, and I’m, I’m aspiring to impact students in, in different ways and doing so virtual right now. What other character traits did your teacher have, you know, in your, in your, in your history class that really made an impact on you? Cause I’m sure along with bringing in his father, there was other things he did for you that made his class your most memorable class?


Nicholas McCowan (04:15):
I think he was available, you know, he, he wasn’t just a teacher. He, he, he made himself readily available in the class and outside the class and, and he talked to us, not at us. And I think that that’s a valuable distinction that a lot of teachers, sometimes when you like in different stages of your career, or even just day to day, we we’ve something happened at home and we forget to talk to the students mm-hmm instead of at them. And I think that, you know, especially now given all the restrictions we’re going through and the challenges we’re going through, it’s an important lesson to, to remember. And Robo was so good with that. I mean, he would pull you out of class when he knew you were having a bad day and ask you what was going on. He would sort of just E even down the hallway, kind of engage you with something that you mentioned in class, which empowered us. Right? Mm-hmm he was listening to what we were saying. So I think that that was sort of the most valuable thing that he offered us as well, was just the fact that he listened and, and was genuine with us on a, a day to day basis.


Sam Demma (05:18):
No, that’s awesome. And it’s funny when I think about Rob and my teacher, Mr. Loud foot, very similar. He tried to meet each student where they were at, meaning he would take his overarching lesson and try and apply it to all of our lives individually. So one kid loved fashion. He would talk about the ability to make an impact on the world. Through fashion. One of us loved sports. He would talk about the importance of using the platform you build responsibly to make a difference. And what’s crazy is that their, their preaching was backed by life experience and action. So like my teacher told us small actions make a massive change, go in the community and try something. And I didn’t know it, but he, he, for 20 years along with other colleagues of the school were organizing the food drive. And when he, when he retired from the school board after 20 something years or 30 something years, they had, they had donated over a million pounds of food. And I didn’t know that. And he did that. And I’m sure your teacher the same way, you know, showed interest in all of you guys and behind the scenes was like very calculated and, and very intentional about doing so how do we, how do we be intentional and make students feel seen and heard in this virtual world you know, with all the challenges that are being faced?


Nicholas McCowan (06:39):
I, I think the important thing is to remember that as educators, like we really have that role of a hero, right? I, I think that you can’t underestimate how much the kids are watching and how much they’re listening. And even if we can’t observe it as readily as we can, and during like regular teaching and having the students in front of us, we have to remember that they’re still listening and they’re still observing everything you do. So, and it’s even more important. And I mean, we’re constantly bombarded by warnings from our school boards, like, Hey, you know, dress the right way, have the background the right way, have, you know, have all, all your ducks in a row so that you can’t get in trouble. And, and the phrasing of that has kind of made people paranoid. So we have to under like still address those kids and be impactful from behind a screen, which has like been.


Nicholas McCowan (07:34):
I don’t know, we’ve had a whole new set of challenges given to us, and we’ve really had to adapt so quickly. So I guess some of the ways that we’ve done it is by using some of the amazing tools that are available. I, myself am a pretty tech savvy guy. So we’ve I’ve been doing this for a long time. A couple years ago, 2019 Lenovo Canada gave me the visionary teacher of the year award for some of the work we we’ve been doing with our VR project. At school, we, we were doing the virtual classroom two, three years ago using VR helmets to give students student voice at the particular school that I’m at, we’ve got a lot of new Canadians and allowing them to use tools like Google expedition which is a fantastic tool that we can get more into if you’d like.


Nicholas McCowan (08:25):
But essentially it’s one of the VR programs that you can go to anywhere in the world, see different environments. And you know, like for a kid, who’s just come from the Philippines who doesn’t have a handle on the language who doesn’t know the environment he’s coming, and he doesn’t have any friends in the class throw that helmet on him and show him his street in Manila, that kind of power from that experience is huge. And that just, that opens up so many things because now kids in the class can be like, Hey, I lived right around the corner from there. And that gives him the power to say, I now have the commonality with the kids in my class. So those kind of tools that we’re, we’re dealing with, you know, we are restricted because we can’t put the helmet on them, but we still have the ability to use similar tools from behind the screen. And it’s important to keep digging and not make it full. Do you know, like we, we really can’t just send an email like here, do questions one to 10, you gotta make it as engaging and interactive as possible. And that’s when you really grab the student’s attention.


Sam Demma (09:26):
Where did the, where did the curiosity come from for you to develop your tech skills and dive deep into to these?


Nicholas McCowan (09:39):
I would say experiential learning opportunities is, is it bad to blame Sega Genesis or like, or PS, you know, PS one through four, you know, like I think actually a lot of it came from gaming, man. I think you know, as much as a lot of parents ride the kids for gaming, I think more and more, those are the kids that are tech savvy that are, are winners when it comes to this online engagement. And I’ve seen a lot of kids become wizards with using some of the tech tools that are out there. They’re so, so better versed at it than we are. And I think that that comes from that, that kind of similar back that, that gave me that that love for it. It was no nobody in particular, but I, I guess I’ve always really taken to it. I mean, being at UofT and being at Trent University and at Ottawa doing all the degrees that I’d done, you, you, you’re doing labs, you get these opportunities to play with electron microscopes. And I mean, we’re all kids at high, right? So when you get these tools, like why not engage fully? And I love offering that opportunity to the students.


Sam Demma (10:43):
I just recently on the high performing student podcast interviewed a director of something called the, the Varsity eSports foundation and his name’s Bubba. And he talks about the difference between mean talks about the difference between gaming and eSports and the stem advantages that come along with eSports. And I’m curious to know your personal opinion on that. Should educators listening, start being more open minded to the possibility of using games to build critical thinking teamwork and even, you know, overcoming challenges as a team?


Nicholas McCowan (11:18):
Absolutely. I mean what better platform than to use one that students are already familiar with? There’s no need to like teach them the skillset to use the tech, you know, so they’re already familiar with it. So they hop in running. I use a a game called no man sky for PS4. It’s not an amazing game, but allows students to explore sort of it it’s engages them with space exploration, which helps with my earth and space science class at the 12 U level. So it’s a nice little hook activity for them. And then as soon as they have that, you can start adding to programs like sky safari pro, which is a fantastic sort of telescope tool. And I think that for students, as soon as you, you pull out those, those tools, they’re already engaged as it is. So they, they love that kind of thing big time and, and hop in with both be.


Sam Demma (12:13):
That’s awesome. And for a teacher who’s listening and thinks this is awesome and wants to give it a shot, but is so overwhelmed by the idea of this technology. What is the first small step they can take to dabble their feet in the water and give some of these things a small try?


Nicholas McCowan (12:31):
I think the best thing to do is to ask the students, ask the students, to show them what they think is best and do a quick little poll. The kids are, well, I should say students because, I mean, I got kids that are up to 18 but they’re watching the videos on like Twitch and, and watching all those streams, right, where ki people are playing the games. So a, a student would readily have, you know, a whole handful of videos that a teacher can use to, to sort of learn the basics and, and, and watch the gameplay and see whether it’s valuable for the lesson they had in mind. So I would start there with that. But a lot of the S resources that were being given by our particular board, we’ve got a great 21st century learning team that is all about a listen.


Nicholas McCowan (13:18):
If you guys have some sort of tech tool that you wanna use, go for it. We, I mean, we even got a Minecraft license so that we can use Minecraft for some of the for some of the tools in elementary. And it’s, it’s going from math to English all the way over to history. I mean, the, it, it’s pretty amazing. I think a, another, one of the valuable tools that we were talking about earlier, Google expedition, one of the things that they can do with that. And I know like for an English teacher, the chance to use a lot of tech is, is not always there. It, it tends to be more like a, a stem teacher that has the availability. One of the experiences students can have is, is being the ghost of Macbeth in the play and watching the play virtually from the stage. So, I mean, you can actually experience Shakespeare, which is the way it’s supposed to be, right? So you have students that are, are so accustomed to just opening up that small little book and reading along in class. Now you can actually live the experience, play on YouTube VR or on on this like Google expedition platform. So really the, the learning for the teacher is not that onerous. So it’s actually pretty straightforward and there’s lots of great tutorials online.


Sam Demma (14:34):
So what you’re saying essentially is teachers can take their kids on a class trip without leaving or going on a bus.


Nicholas McCowan (14:44):
Well, it’s, it’s cost effective. I’ll tell you that. We, we we’re we do that all the time in my environmental or biology classes, earth and space. I mean, talk about bringing the experiential learning to the classroom, because I mean, another one of the hats I wear, I work Fori academy. And we take students down to Belize and Costa Rica for the summer. And I mean, the very first day in class, we, it in class is a loose term because we actually take a, a skiff out like to the coral reef. And we jump into the coral reef and dive with sharks and, and Ray, and actually engage in discussions about biodiversity. And there is no better teacher, but obviously that’s an experience only a few can afford. So these VR helmets and, and this kind of technology allows that integration into the learning and when it comes for free, I mean, it’s, it’s a win-win situation, right?


Nicholas McCowan (15:41):
Like the kids are all in as soon as they can do that. Another interesting facet of that technology is, I mean, you can, some of the AR the augmented reality stuff that they can do too, is I can now put a shark in the middle of the classroom virtually via an iPad. So I can have a camera showing the class input, the shark, and we can dissect it like layer by layer, you know? And, and I think that that kind of experience for the students is, I mean, you can’t touch it, right? Yeah.


Sam Demma (16:09):
You can even do that in real classroom, unless you were thinking about it, you know, at least virtually, maybe more teachers are open to the idea of giving this a try now. That’s so cool. And what’s the difference between virtual reality and augmented reality in a very layman’s terms.


Nicholas McCowan (16:26):
Okay. Quick virtual reality will be a full immersive 3d experience. Okay. so if you want to go down the backbone of a DNA strand and look at all the different nucle or the nucleic acids, as you go down in the phosphate backbone, you can actually engage and manipulate the environment. Whereas augmented reality will be a 3d image that you can insert your, your camera’s ex view. So if you take a picture in a hallway or you have students sort of holding up a mitochondria or whatever it is they’re looking at it it’s, it’s something that they can actually manipulate in, in the virtual world, so they can spin it around with their hand. They can actually touch certain parts and information can, can pop up. So it’s a full, fully engageable learning tool that’s in that virtual world. So AR is that 3d image and VR is that fully immersive experience.


Sam Demma (17:30):
Okay, awesome. This is really, really interesting, and I’m sure there’s gonna be some and teachers who are very curious to learn more and hear more, especially from you. And we’ll, we’ll ask you to share some contact information at the end, but I wanna know in all the years you’ve been teaching, you’ve learned lots. You’ve obviously gained a lot of wisdom. If there’s an educator listening who is just getting into this, or they feel like they’re starting from the ground up, because it’s so changed and different this year what pieces of advice could you give your younger self or that new educator based on what you know now?


Nicholas McCowan (18:06):
I think the, the first thing, like when you, when you, we all start our careers, we, we really want to be that teacher, the one who students like really, they love our classes. They, they want to engage in all our lessons and we want to be the superhero that, that we all sort of start out as. And I think that we, we burn ourselves out so quickly at the beginning because we’re trying to be perfect. Mm-Hmm . And I think that the, the important message is that there is zero need to be perfect at the beginning of your career. We were all there and we all had to start building those courses and, and from scratch. And, you know, I think that not having it done the best way the first time, give yourself a break and don’t take it home with you.


Nicholas McCowan (18:52):
We are notorious overthinkers and teachers work like beyond the hours of the classroom. And I think that, you know, the, the mental stresses of, of that kid who didn’t eat in your class that day, and you worry about what’s going on at home, you, you still want to have that on the back burner, but don’t stay up till two in the morning overthinking how you’re gonna solve that problem, because it’s a group effort. And I think if you keep home and the student, most importantly, I think that that’s where those solutions start to come. So don’t kill yourself, trying to do everything. You know, I think where we’re sort of forced into this business and, and teachers were in the business of knowing so don’t kill yourself if you miss the, if you miss an answer on the board, be open about admitting that, hang on.


Nicholas McCowan (19:43):
I don’t know. And let me look it up for you and let’s learn together. Because each semester you got 30 new people in front of you, and, and you’ve got that times, you know, however many courses you’re teaching. And even if you taught it the same way, and it was successful for, you know, eight straight semesters, maybe these 30 need a brand new take on things. So be open to the new buzzword that we keep getting be flexible. So, you know, like, so be flexible in your own pedagogy and, and in your own lesson planning and curriculum delivery, because it’s really important to know that being perfect. Isn’t the, the be all and end all when you’re delivering curriculum. It’s, it’s good to have that idea in your head.


Sam Demma (20:28):
I love that. One of the pieces of advice I always tell students to is don’t, you know, don’t be afraid or shy away from asking for help. And I think right now it applies to educators more than ever. And there’s this one story called the Oracle of Delphy and it’s a story. It’s an ancient philosophy story about Socrates and an Oracle telling him you’re the wisest person in the land. And he says, no, I’m not. And, and so he goes around to talk to all the other philosophers and asks them, what do you know about life? And they all give him these, these definite answers. And at the end of all of his journey, he realizes, wow, think this Oracle might be right, cuz I’m the only one out of all the philosophers who said, you know, I know that I know nothing, and that’s why I continuously learn. I think educators are the perfect example of that because like by nature, you’re perpetual learners. Like you, you never stop learning. And right now is a chance to just learn a ton more and almost take the role of the student and the teacher, which I think is awesome and presents a cool opportunity. And if, if someone listening wants to be a perpetual learner and dive more into VR and technology and maybe have a conversation with you, what would be the best way for them to reach out and do so?


Nicholas McCowan (21:43):
I think right off the bat, I mean, email is a quick way to get in touch with me. Anyone who wants to ask any questions about what we’ve talked about?


Nicholas McCowan (21:56):
Well also I’m part of two other Instagram initiatives where I’m part of a group called @teachersmeetteachers. It’s not a dating site, it’s for for teachers to share resources and ideas and I’m it’s, it’s given me so many outlets to either share some amazing resources that I’ve found or engage in conversation with teachers or experiencing the same challenges. So give them a follow and coming up right now me and another teacher of mine, we’re starting up a new page @teachmetoolbox. And we’re gonna be putting up sort of valuable resources that will really help you get through the COVID times right now. So give those two a follow if you can.


Sam Demma (22:52):
Awesome. Perfect. Nick, do me one more favor and repeat your email one time and cut out a little bit.


Nicholas McCowan (22:55):
Sorry. Yeah. It’s nicholas.mccowan@tcdsb.org.


Sam Demma (23:10):
Nick, It’s been a pleasure. Thanks so much for coming on and maybe I’ll see you in person VR pretty soon.


Nicholas McCowan (23:15):
Let’s hope, man. Let’s hope, man.


Sam Demma (23:18):
Yeah, you’re welcome. And there you have it. Another amazing guest, an amazing interview on the High Performing Educator podcast. As always, if you enjoy these episodes, please consider leaving a rating and review. So other educators like yourself can find this call content and benefit from it. And here’s an exclusive opportunity that I mentioned at the start of the show. If you wanna meet the guest on today’s episode, if you wanna meet any of the guests that we have interviewed, consider going to www.highperformingeducator.com and signing up to join the exclusive network, you’ll have access to networking events throughout 2021 and other special opportunities. And I promise I will not fill your inbox. Talk to you soon. I’ll see you on the next episode.

Join the Educator Network & Connect with Nicholas McCowan

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.

January 22, 2022 by Cooperative Education Experiential Learning Student Leadership Student Success Teachers Teaching Tips 0

Diana Speranza – Catholic Educator and Life Long Learner

Diana Speranza – Catholic Educator and Life Long Learner
About Diana Speranza

Diana (@speranza_dpcdsb) is committed to a life of learning, inspiring students to be engaged in the learning process, building strong relationships, ensuring that all voices are heard, and working hard to help the underdog and the most vulnerable. She studied at St. Michael’s College-University of Toronto and the University of Western Sydney, Australia.

As a secondary administrator in DPCDSB Diana works hard to create a welcoming school culture of inclusivity that allows for staff and students to share their gifts and talents, voice their opinions and work collaboratively to make school a safe place of learning, growth and compassion.

Connect with Diana: Email | Instagram | Twitter

Listen Now

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

Resources Mentioned

Dufferin-Peel Catholic District School Board

Cardinal Ambrozic

Anti-Racism Resources

St. Marguerite d’Youville Secondary School

The Transcript

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

Sam Demma (00:00):
Welcome to the High Performing Educator podcast. I’m your show host and youth speaker, Sam Demma. Before we get into today’s awesome interview with another amazing educator, I have something of value that I wanna share. If you’ve ever struggled with teaching your students virtually, if you’ve ever struggled with getting them to turn their cameras on, I have have assembled all the information that I’ve learned and developed over the past six months of presenting to students virtually I’ve spoken at over 50 events since COVID hit back in March and I’ve taken my best tips, my gear list, and any special ninja tricks and assembled it all into a free five video mini course, you can go and get access to it right now www.highperformingeducator.com. And if you do pick it up, you will also get added to a private group of educators who tune into this show. People who have been interviewed on this show and you’ll have access to opportunities to network and meet like-minded individuals during this tough time.


Sam Demma (00:59):
So if that sounds like it might be helpful, go to www.highperformingeducator.com, grab the free course and get involved in the high performing educators network. That’s Enough for me and onto the show. Today’s high performing educator guest is Diana Speranza. She was educated at St. Michael’s College University of Toronto, and at the University of Western Sydney all the way in Australia, she is committed to a life of learning, inspiring students to be engaged in the learning process. Building strong relationships, ensuring that all voices are heard and working hard to help the underdog and the most vulnerable as a secondary administer in the Dufferin-Peel Catholic District School Board, Diana works hard to create a welcoming school called of inclusivity that allows for staff and students to share their gifts and talents, voice their opinions, and work collaboratively to make school a safe place of learning growth and compassion. Enjoy today’s interview with Diana. Diana, thank you so much for coming on the High Performing Educator podcast. Huge pleasure to have you on the show after connecting with few times, why don’t you start by introducing yourself and sharing how you even got into education?


Diana Speranza (02:11):
Okay. Well thank you, Sam so much for having me. It was nice to have a couple chats with you and I’ve done a little bit of research and, you know checked out a little bit about what you, you know, the stuff that you’re doing and you’re doing amazing things for kids. And thank you so much for doing that. So I’m Diana, Diana Speranza. I’m currently at Cardinal Ambrozic CSS formally, I guess like VP, but currently in the role of interim acting principal currently. And I’ve been in education for a long time by what, 25 years, 26 years. And I came into education because I had a lifelong need to learn. And was turned on to learning in school in high school. And it wasn’t necessarily, you know, becoming an educator wasn’t necessarily always the top thing on my list of priorities, but the learning process always was right.


Diana Speranza (03:15):
So like wanting to continue to learn, going to know why did I go to university to continue learning? Not because I had it in my head, this is what I wanted to be. And a lot of that came from and was sparked by the experiences that I had as a student in high school and in elementary school, so different raised nice. And now working too. So yeah, it’s lengthy journey to get here, but absolutely. You know, I wouldn’t trade, I wouldn’t turn trade it, you know, in, for the world. Like, I mean, I know that I’m doing what I was called to do and, you know, working with kids and working with teachers now, my teachers and students, and trying to share that you know, that’s inspiration for learning and you know, is, is kind of, you know, it’s important right to me.


Sam Demma (04:08):
So it’s awesome. I love that. Tell, tell me more about how you were turned onto education. Like, what does that mean? What were those experiences that you had that kinda led you down this path?


Diana Speranza (04:20):
Okay. So I’m gonna give you like an example that, you know, we talked about before I stand, right. but in high school I had always been a, a student, like, you know, even prior to high school, a student who kind of, you know who worked hard, was conscientious you know you know, insured that, you know, I doing everything that was asked of me to do in a sense of like, you know meeting all the, the, you know, the guidelines and regulations and whatever. But it was really in high school particularly with this one teacher Ramona Gosky who I think was the turn on to really lifelong learning to me. Right. because it was with her that I started to see that it’s not about just checking the boxes, ensuring that you’re, you know, studying and, you know, and, you know, passing tests and doing well and getting good grades and appeasing your parents.


Diana Speranza (05:13):
And, you know, it wasn’t just that, right. It was with her, it was all about, you know, why is it that you wanna learn? And let me tell you in grade grade nine in English I was, it was my first failure, really, like, you know, it was at that time when I was going to school, cause it was many years ago, we were like terms. And so you had the same eight courses for the entire school year. And if you passed like, you know, your first term exam, then you got exempted from the rest. So, you know, that was happening in all of my courses with the exception of you know, my English class was morning course. So first English exam in high school. And technically, yeah, well, yeah, first English exam in high school and failed, it got a 47.


Diana Speranza (05:57):
Right. and, and I really hadn’t failed at anything, you know prior to grade nine. And so that was a big thing for me. Right. He was like, oh my goodness, what happened? How could this possibly happen? You know, my answers were, you know, along and they were like, I filled in all the boxes and I felt right. And for me that was a huge moment in the sense that, oh my goodness, like, how could I not have right. Achieved, you know, with the expectations of what she was looking for then turns, you know, after that you go, you know, how did that happen have that conversation with the teacher and in that conversation with her that one conversation, even though we had had many it was in the, in those moments that I learned that, you know what was I going to do?


Diana Speranza (06:45):
What did I have to do to try to impress this woman to get a passing grade and I worked so hard, right. You know, okay. Tell me what I need to do. Okay. I’m gonna do this, I’m gonna try it once. I’m gonna try it twice. I’m gonna show her to see if this is good and I’m gonna work on progress. And so the rest of that school year became me trying to work towards, you know meeting her expectations. And as I was meeting her expectations, I was then starting to actually get turned onto that process of learning. Right. Mm-hmm and how it’s all about like, you know, getting better, you know, doing more expanding your knowledge. Right. So all of that became part of not just checking the boxes of accomplishing things. It became part of the process of kind of learning.


Diana Speranza (07:24):
And it was at that moment that I, that, you know, and I’m so glad that I had that in early high school, because the way that I then treated high school for the remainder of it was to what are my interests, you know you know, what are the things that I, it, it became very different for me. And I, I don’t wanna say that I was no longer mark driven but I was very, very much less mark driven, right. Because of that particular experience. But I wanna talk a little bit more about her and what she did.


Sam Demma (07:52):
Yeah. Tell me, yeah. Tell me, like, I wanna pause for one second though, and just reflect on the, a fact that you fell in love with learning through failure. And I think that’s really awesome because a lot of the time we think that you’ll fall in love with things when you succeed at them. But sometimes it’s the total opposite. And I think your story is a phenomenal example to show that sometimes struggle, isn’t a bad thing. You might find yourself in struggle might find yourself in hard times in, in hardship whether it’s failing French class or blowing up your knees on the pursuit of a career, you know so with that being said, please tell me more about what Ramona did for you that made it such a transformative experience in her class.


Diana Speranza (08:38):
And it was that, that sitting down with you and kind of walking you through her life, like actually bringing her life examples. Right. Mm. And talking about her failures in life, right. Yeah. And not too much, cause I didn’t really reveal a lot as like high school teacher that I eventually went on to have in multiple years. And I think I, I might have mentioned this to you before that you know, I wanted to have her as a teacher. Right. later on. And so that did get an opportunity to have her two times more nice you know, in high school because I wanted to be pushed and I wanted to be challenged and I wanted to have all those things happen. Like I, I said before, like this is, that was my first kind of failing experience, but it, it definitely has not been my only right.


Diana Speranza (09:20):
Like I continue to go through life failing at particular things, you know, you work hard. But you’re so right. Like we learned from those particular examples. Right. so in that process with her it was just a spark, right? Like there was a enlightenment that I had in, in high school about wanting to learn, wanting to be more wanting to be better. And starting to learn from the times that I wasn’t right. Successful or things didn’t necessarily go my way. Right. How do you take those particular examples or, you know, those times and turn them into something that’s gonna then motivate you and make you stronger. Right. Mm-hmm so with her I continued like, you know, having this relationship, I went off to, you know, study at university and, you know, everybody, what do you wanna be? What are you studying at university?


Diana Speranza (10:10):
And again, for me, it was, what do I want to learn more about? Right. It wasn’t a matter of, this is what I wanna be, you know, like thoughts have gone through, like, I studied science in my first year university. So I had dentistry and I had some things on my mind, but it wasn’t a matter that I had a kind of ideal job or career that I wanted to do. It was about learning. And so that’s why I went off and, and, and and it was her and in a, in a series of conversations that I remember her having a, with not only with me, but with students in our class about, you know, life is this journey, right. A, a, a, a long journey of learning and becoming right. And in those moments is when I learn that, okay, that, that’s what I want for myself.


Diana Speranza (10:55):
I wanna continue to expand the things that I know, expand the experiences that I have, and, and eventually turn those into opportunities for other people. Right. And going off to university and studying, and then eventually going to teachers college and then landing myself, you know, a, a full-time teaching gig was so, you know, I was so grateful and so blessed to be able to, you know, do that, that, you know, it has been, I, I, I’m just gonna, I’m gonna switch gears for just a second and just say, yeah, a couple years ago, I was on a trip to New York city with a cousin of mine from Australia, my brother and my nephew. So my nephew at the time, I think was probably nine and were sitting in the airport on the way back you know, waiting for our flight to come back Toro.


Diana Speranza (11:43):
And he says to me, out of nowhere, Diana you know, what’s your ideal, what would be your ideal job, right? What would you love to be doing? And my answer was so quick and I responded to him, I am doing it, I’m doing it. And I really like, it was interesting for him to ask me that. And then, and then I kind of reflected on not only how great of a question that was for him to actually ask me, but how quickly I responded with that piece. Right. And, and it, and the reason I think for that is because not only the role of, you know, the vocation of an educator for me is so important, it’s this learning process and it never stops. It never stops. You’re learning from everybody around you, right. You’re learning from students, you’re learning from your colleagues. And and it’s been, you know, such a, a godsend to be able to, you know, to, to experience this. And, but my Ramona story gonna go back to.


Sam Demma (12:35):
It sounds good. I love the, I love the story about New York.


Diana Speranza (12:40):
He so let’s go back to the morning. So I go off to talk teachers college in teachers college. I’m in Australia actually. So I undergrad at U of T off to teachers college at the university of Western Sydney, just outta outside of Sydney, Australia. Nice. And in one of our courses, I can’t remember which one it was. We had an assignment and that assignment was kind of to reflect on a teacher who had inspired or touched you in some particular way that caused you to come to this particular moment, you know, being in the faculty event. And I did that right. Reflected on the fact that I know it’s, I don’t, I don’t need much time to kinda, I know exactly what woman that was in my life who had that impact. And so I took it a little step further.


Diana Speranza (13:23):
And as I was writing this reflection that we had to him before, for the course, I thought, you know what, I haven’t been in touch with miss Gorsky. How amazing may it be to be able to write her letter? So I wrote her a letter. And so I wrote her a letter saying, you know, we got this assignment in class, and this is what I was asked to do. And I just want you to know that this is the impact that you have had on my life, right? Mm. This is the inspiration that you may not really know that you were, but I want you to know this is who you were to me and put it all in the letter and off it went. So I get back from the faculty of ed. I proceed to go through, you know, I get, I, you know, I get a job quite quickly when I get back to Canada.


Diana Speranza (14:01):
And I go on to teach and I teach at St. Paul’s for seven years when I first, you know, graduated from teacher college and came and came back home. So seven years at St. Paul’s, eventually I end up at you know, I guess in, I guess, eight, the eight year of teaching. I end up at St. Margaret Deville in Branson. And so as department head of social science, I had applied to a job there and moved to another school knowing at that time only when I got into do the when I went in to have the interview that Ramona Gorsey was on staff. And I had heard that she was up at a school in Brampton. I just didn’t know which one it was. And so I was excited that I would eventually be on staff if I was successful in this interview with this woman.


Diana Speranza (14:46):
And so I become a, a, you know, a staff member at at St Margaret Jugo at the time. And just before the start of the school year, like we got together for like a series of meetings and like, you know, a day in August like a, a retreat and, and so on. And so I see her, she sees me, I’m like overwhelmed with emotion, and I go up to her this huge hug you know, and, and we are crying both of us. And she says to me I just got your letter and I’m thinking, what letter is she talking about? I just, cause it’s been years now, right. It’s been almost 10 years from the fact nine years from the time that I wrote that letter to the time that, you know, I’m having this moment with her, she goes, I got your letter.


Diana Speranza (15:32):
I said, when did you get this letter? Yeah. A long time ago. And she says, no, I got the letter 10 days ago, or last week. It was just like the week before. Right. Wow. And I said last week and she had, she didn’t have it at that moment. But when we met in September, she brought the actual letter in, it had been all over the place. She had moved from the time that I had, you know, written that letter. She had changes, she moved homes and I guess back and forth the post office, it had stamps, you know, markings and all over it. It looked like it had been through everything. And she had said to me, I just got this last week. I had just got this last week. And the like, wow, to me, that’s not chance. Yeah. That that happens.


Diana Speranza (16:14):
Right. Like, I mean and being mentored by Ramona Goby and having that opportunity now to be able to work as a colleague, it took me a while you know, to be able to work as a colleague with her because she was a huge inspiration to meet. Right. Yeah. And I know that a law of what I became as an educator was because of who she was. Right. And what, you know, what the process that, you know, she helped instill in me and that whole focus on the process, focus on the journey. Right. The outcome will come when the outcome is ready. Right. Like, I mean, it’s that development process and I’ve taken the out as a lifelong, like real lesson. Right. Like, I mean yeah, like I’m, there’s been other things in my life that I had to go through.


Diana Speranza (17:02):
Like I’ve had, I had a challenging illness a few years ago. And, and that too has been, been, had, has become part of the journey for me. Right. on ensure that you learn like these things are, I don’t wanna say they’re put on our plate. Right. Because a lot of what we achieve in life and a lot of things that we do are because of the decisions that we make because of the, you know, the choices that we make because of the roads or past we’ve we’ve chosen. But I, I wanna go back to that point that you made at the beginning, like, you know, it really is like out of the failure, out of the, you know, the lows in our life is where we, you know, oftentimes can do the most learning. Right. And and I’m hoping that that’s what I’m instilling in the students that I kind of, I come in contact with. Right.


Sam Demma (17:53):
Awesome. I love it. That’s such a good story. And it’s such a cool story because, you know, if we think about how many letters students have wrote to educators and teachers that didn’t find them, right. Like yours got through after nine years. Right. But there’s so many letters that kids probably write. And so many emails they try send, but sorry, teacher moves school. So their email bounced back. Sorry, we can’t, you know, there, I want you to think about this, like the educator listening. I want you to think that you probably have someone just like Diana when she was a student that you inspired, just like Ramona did that tried reaching out it to you and maybe couldn’t find you, you know, sometimes sometimes the teacher hears about it other times they, they, they might, they may never, but you know, the, the same goes, if a tree falls in the forest, it still makes noise. Right. So, you know, you’re still impacting the kid, whether, whether there’s a letter attached to it or not. But your story’s such a be example of fate. It’s like a, this is, I dunno how else to put it, right. Yeah. It’s just 10 days before you meet her in your school. That’s, that’s insane. Are you still in touch with Ramona today?


Diana Speranza (19:03):
So I am well, not that we contact each other, you know, daily or, or, you know, regularly. She lives in a, like, you know, in a smaller town. And I often visit that small town. Nice. And oftentimes we’ll connect on the streets right. Where, you know she’s you know, taking her walk and, you know, I’m going to my favorite place for coffee you know, and, and will meet on the, on the side of the street. So I have spoken to her a few times in over the pandemic just because my getaway place is to go country driving. Yes. You know, and head out her way. And so oftentimes I’ll, I’ll see her out there. But yeah, she’s absolutely, you know, a phenomenal individual and I’m so grateful to have had her and have her in my you know yeah, it’s just, it was great to be able to teach beside her. Right. Yeah. For the years when, when, when we were together at St. Louisville.


Sam Demma (20:03):
Oh, that’s awesome. And I, I mean, this, this interview gives you a reason to send her a link, maybe right. Exactly. Yes. Which is awesome. But shifting gears a tiny bit into what school looks like now, you know, you started education, I think you said 25, 26 years ago. Things probably look a little different this year. and maybe the end of last year. And I’m curious to know, you know, like what are some of the important things you think we should keep mind when it comes to educating students today? Like in today’s environment.


Diana Speranza (20:37):
Yeah. and that’s a big question.


Sam Demma (20:40):
Yeah. There’s, and there’s so many perspectives, but if you have one or two ideas, like yeah, yeah.


Diana Speranza (20:45):
Like it is very different, right. Like, I mean, it’s very different today. It just, at our school alone, we’ve got the majority of our kids are online versus physically in the building, even when they’ve got that choice to be back in the building. So we don’t have that. Right. so with, you know, with that being said just the not being connected and not being face to face is hard. Not having those, you know physical daily check-ins right. Like you’re doing that. Teachers are doing that online. But you know, kids are comfortable in their homes. You may not have your camera on you know, when you’re in a classroom if you’re used to the, you know, the way that a kid kind of you know, walks in and what they’re are like, you can tell if they’re not, well, that day body language you can ask that’s right.


Diana Speranza (21:32):
You can ask today, is everything all right today? You don’t have that. Right. So I think right now teachers are very concerned with, do they have a good sense of how their students are feeling right, because delivering material to they delivering content you know, and being able to challenge and engage kids I think, you know, teachers are good at making that switch. Okay. So now you’re not here in front of me, but I’m gonna have all these other ways of which I’m gonna be able to reach you and teachers are good at making, you know, planning and doing those things to be able to engage students, you know, now in a different, in a different way. But that checking in to make sure that they’re okay part right, is, is harder at, you know, when they’re not physically in front of you.


Diana Speranza (22:17):
I think that’s a big thing right now, and that’s also for us as administrators checking in on our staff. Right. Making sure that, you know, it’s very easy to go through this and, you know, you’re coming into work and, you know, yeah. I’m okay when you’re at, but are we really okay? Like, are we all really doing okay? Yeah. Like you’ve heard it, you know, many, a times over the pandemic, you know, call, you know, your loved ones, call your friends, check in on them. Like the same thing. Like, you know, we’re doing stuff like, you know, we try to make contact in the building during the day when we were off, like, you know, when we were, everybody was online learning and there weren’t students in the building or staff in the building, you try to do that, pick up the phone, you know, give a staff member of call, find out how they’re doing.


Diana Speranza (22:55):
But it is, it is extremely difficult, but like I also, I also must say that, you know, education has, has needed a little bit of a, a change, right. A shake like yes, shake revolution. I, I, I keep saying, you know, education needs a little bit of, of a revolution and, and it’s starting to happen. Right. Yeah. And it’s happening, happening in the, in the way of the forced inclusion of multidimensions of technology, right? Various technology the forced, you know, revolution of ensuring that our curriculum is inclusive for everyone, right? So there’s a shake up that’s happening. And to me, this excites me as an educator. It excites me that, you know, these are things that are going to be happening because ultimately these are things that are good for kids. So if I, anything that we can do to improve the educational experience for kids I’m all about supporting that, right.


Diana Speranza (23:54):
So as much as it’s been difficult and you know, sometimes you’ll hear people say, I just can’t wait till we go back to normal. I don’t wanna see us go back to normal edge education, the way that it was prior to this happening. Right. Mm-hmm there needs to be, we need to come out of this situation improved. We need to come out better people. We need to come out better educators. Right. and we, we, the, that’s my, you know, hope that as we’re going through these things and learning more and they don’t become, they’re no longer, oh, this is a new way. It becomes the way then I think it opens and it creates a path for continuing to evolve. Right. Cause the question you really asked me was, you know, how do I, you know, because I’ve been in education for so long, it must look so different.


Diana Speranza (24:41):
Right. And the fact is up until this, it really didn’t look that D it didn’t really look different from, you know, it didn’t really even look different from when I was in school really. Right. like if I look at other industries they all change other in yeah. And, and education, there was a lot of it that was still very similar. And over the years, like, I mean, you, you jump on the train and you make the change that need to happen. But I think this has really caused us to have to make some real, real big changes that will ultimately have a, a greater impact.


Sam Demma (25:20):
I believe that so true. Like my, my parents used to, my dad used to lecture me on the side of the soccer, her field, Sam, there was a guy open on the right side of the field. Why didn’t you pass him the ball? I’m like dad. And I’m like, I’ll do what I wanna do. And he always just, he always used to tell me, he’s like, but you don’t understand when you’re in the game. You don’t see the things that I see. And it’s a whole analogy of when you’re in the picture, you don’t see the frame or when you’re in the frame, you don’t see the picture. Not sure the analogy, then it’s kind of true with, like, with work, you get into the grind of things and, you know, you just continuously do the, the things that work or provide a great opportunity and at no fault to education at all.


Sam Demma (26:01):
But I think you’re right. Like the challenge is leading to growth, new questions, new opportunities shaking things up, shaking things down. Like, I think it’s a super cool shift. And I know like your school has so many different clubs that have come to fruition and, you know, you’re putting a huge emphasis on student voice. What are some of the initiatives that are going on in the school right now that, you know, maybe Angelo and Jason and yourself kind of collaborated on and all the other amazing teachers that I don’t know about just yet, but I will soon.


Diana Speranza (26:32):
Our, our school is extremely vibrant right. In the area of extracurriculars. And even during this pandemic you know, all of these things are still happening. They’re not physically necessarily happening in the building. You know, our kids aren’t gathered after school in the building, but they’re gathered online. I can tell you that they’re in zoom meetings and team and, you know, and and meets, and, you know, they’re in places where there’s wonderful things that are happening. So we’ve got quite a few you know, ongoing committees or, you know student groups. So you got a student kind of leadership program, right? Well, not program, but like a student leadership group. And it’s called castle. And basically what it stands for is partner lambic, student leadership experience. Nice. and and, and under the umbrella, there are series of different of groups.


Diana Speranza (27:18):
So we’ve got our student council, we’ve got our core and chaplaincy group. We’ve got brave which is all about kind of anti-bullying and mental health awareness. We’ve got our black history month, we’ve got our equity and diversity ambassadors. We have spectrum, which is our LGBTQ group. So we’ve got I’m hoping I’m not missing any groups. And then that’s from other things that are running, right. This is just kind of our, our big, our leadership groups. And all those, you know, groups are so vibrant right now and, and still working on things. And so what kind of things are they working on? Our, so we’ve black history, our black history committee, cuz we are in the month of, of February has been working on a series of of not events, but you know, ideas.


Diana Speranza (28:10):
They put out through social media, a number of, of different things celebrating black excellence. And so they’ve kind of the group has gone and looked at. They’ve wanted to kind of bring it up to today. Like oftentimes in black history members were studying people from the past and kids, their, their voice has been saying like, you know, tell us about the people today that are doing things like, let’s talk a little bit about, I love that what people are doing today. And so this way I can feel like I can relate. Yeah, I can do what that person’s doing or I can see myself having that. So they’ve taken kind of black, excellent through the decades. Right. And so we started off with black once they started from the beginning to just 2000 to 2020. Right.


Diana Speranza (28:48):
So they took that time. And I think yesterday we just published the fifties to seventies. So on our Instagram, on our Twitter feed for Cardinal Ambrosek, we put that out there with some hashtags, which is, you know, the hashtag remembering black excellence. And, and yes, that’s what they’re doing right now with that. They’ve also putting together the focus students want to be heard, right. Mm-Hmm all, everybody, everybody wants to be heard. That’s a human thing. Right. We just wanna be hurt. And so the they’re focusing on an exhibit, they’re wanting to create a students created exhibit where teachers would kind of almost like a museum where teachers would walk through this exhibit and hearing their voices. Right. So it would be images of them their voices explaining their particular feelings about, you know, racism or inequalities.


Diana Speranza (29:46):
Hmm. You know, and, and it’s called, hear us, can you hear us? Right. Interesting. And so, and that will be for, you know, the adults in the building for teachers in our adults to kind of hear this is what students are feeling about the experience they’ve had in society and have they haven’t always been open, right? Yeah, yeah. That they want to be able to now voice and, and be heard we had an anti-black racism campaign. So Angelo was, you know, the lead on that. And we started that think in November. And we’re continuing they, I guess in December we started the of 100 days of anti-black racism and posting to social media, there were announcements and reflections, and that was quite a an eye opening experience, I think for a lot of our kids.


Diana Speranza (30:35):
And I think the, the best part that’s come out of that is that kids are feeling still to be able to share their stories. Cause they know that people are listening. Right. And, and that’s our greatest thing in education, right? Like, I mean, I’ve, I’ve been a believer. I continue to believe that every kid should be able to come to school and know that there’s one adult in the building, that’s got their back, right. That there’s somebody that they can go to somebody they can trust somebody that they can go to if they need some mentorship. And if they’re feeling, if we amplify that by saying that there are multiple people in this building that you can go to and you can trust because you know, you’re being heard and you’re being seen then we’ve done our job, right. Because at the end of the day, yes, education is important. And you know, the courses in getting credits and graduating are important, but it’s also important on how we make students feel. Right. And the connections that the, that we ensure that they have.


Sam Demma (31:31):
Yeah. Yeah. It’s so true. I mean, if we think about action and taking action, it all stems from your beliefs and emotions. So if a student doesn’t feel safe, they’re gonna take actions that relate to the feeling of not feeling safe and that will lead to a specific result if you change their beliefs and they start to believe, no, there are people I can talk to in this school that care about me. And like you said, who wanna support me and help me, that would lead to a more empowering emotion, which would lead to more positive action, which would lead to the better result, hopefully. So I agree. I think like caring for the person is so important aside from the curriculum. And I think it’s really cool that the school is putting a huge focus on that. I wanna shift this interview slightly for a second and ask you to ask your younger self. So if you were speaking to, you know, Diana from year one, as a teacher, what would you have told your younger self, knowing what you know now about education, about teaching advice for yourself when you were getting into this role?


Diana Speranza (32:36):
I’d have lots to say to her because I have seen, I’ve seen that, you know, the transition. Yeah. I, I have seen that. Well, it’s call it progression, right? Yeah. I’d say don’t be so hard on yourself. Right. That’s what I say to her. And lighten up a little bit. That’s what I’d say. Those would be the main things I say. And the reason why I’d say them is because as a, a, you know, a new educator, once you come into this field and I think it’s, I’m sure it’s true in many jobs is that you’re so worried about doing it. Right. Right. And so you’re so worried about ensuring that, you know, your, your lessons are planned to ITT and it’s organized and there’s, there’s no little wiggle room that a kid can’t get off topic. And, you know, you’re concerned about the way you’re marking.


Diana Speranza (33:19):
You’re not necessarily giving second chances because this is the way that it is. Right. Mm-hmm . And and I was fortunate like, well, I was fortunate to know that for me, that transition happened a lot after having hi, having had my own kids. Right. So you know, I was a teacher for, I don’t know how many years before I had kids, maybe let’s call it five years. I actually then had, had a child five, six years that having a child then became another piece for me to add on because now every kid in front of me was somebody’s kid. Not that I didn’t realize that before that. But it made me really realize that after having had my own. Right. so I, I would say that’s what I would say. I’d say kind of like get to know the learners that are in front of you get to know those kids.


Diana Speranza (34:05):
And, and I think I did that, but not at all. As well as I believe I did that as I continued on that journey. Right. that’s what I’d, I’d say, you know, the rules need to be followed right. You need to be doing those things. It’s very, very important, but I’d also say you know, don’t be so hard in yourself and really get to know the kids, because once you get to know the kids, get to know the learner, then you’re better at doing everything. Cause you know, who you’re preparing for, what you’re doing. You know, you’re able to make your assessments and you’re, and their material, you know, targeted towards what their interests are. And so that’s, that’s what I, you know, would’ve said to Diana, you know when she was starting off.


Sam Demma (34:53):
I love that. I love that. That’s awesome. And if someone’s listened into this conversation has been slightly inspired or, or feels the need to reach out to you and have a conversation about something you shared or something you said, what would be the best way for another educator listening to this, to reach out to you?


Diana Speranza (35:11):
So they could reach me at my email address at diana.speranza@dpcdsb.org. They could follow me on Twitter or on Instagram. And on Instagram and Twitter, I’m there by my first name and my last name. So you find me there, my first name, last name and yeah, I’d be you know, happy to engage in conversation in regards to, you know anything that we talked about here today.


Sam Demma (35:47):
Cool. Diana, thank you so much for doing this. I appreciate you sharing some of your story into education, some of your philosophies on education. Yeah, I really appreciate it. I look forward to staying in touch and watching the cool stuff that continues to unfold at Cardinal Ambrozic.


Diana Speranza (36:01):
Thank you so much, Sam. Thank you for having me on your program. And thank you for having this, you know, this, this podcast for people to be able to kind of join and listen and, and share ideas. Thank you so much.


Sam Demma (36:13):
You’re welcome. Talk soon. And there you have it. Another amazing evening guest, an amazing interview on the high performing educator podcast. As always, if you enjoy these episodes, please consider leaving a rating in review. So other educators like yourself can find this content and benefit from it. And here’s an exclusive opportunity that I mentioned at the start of the show. If you wanna meet the guest on today’s episode, if you wanna meet any of the guests that we have interviewed consider going to www.highperformingeducator.com and signing up to join the exclusive network, you’ll have access to networking events throughout 2021 and other special opportunities. And I promise I will not fill your inbox. Talk to you soon. I’ll see you on the next episode.

Join the Educator Network & Connect with Diana Speranza

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.

January 22, 2022 by Experiential Learning Principals Student Activity Director Student Leadership Student Success Teachers Teaching Tips 0

Cortnie Freeman – Dance Teacher and How to Adjust Virtually

Cortnie Freeman – Dance Teacher & How to Adjust Virtually
About Cortnie Freeman

Cortnie has been teaching for the past 12 years with the Durham Catholic District School Board. Her passion for teaching drives from a growth mindset that no one is ever done learning.

Cortnie currently teaches at the AMP Arts School in Durham where her passion for dance and teaching continues to grow as she develops young dancers to be all that they dream to become one day.

Connect with Cortnie: Email

Listen Now

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

Resources Mentioned

Durham Catholic District School Board

Arts and Media Program Arts School

Zoom

Teaching with Zoom

The Transcript

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

Sam Demma (00:00):
Welcome to the High Performing Rducator podcast. I’m your show host and youth speaker, Sam Demma. Before we get into today’s awesome interview with another amazing educator, I have something of value that I wanna share. If you’ve ever struggled with teaching your students virtually, if you’ve ever struggled with getting them to turn their cameras on, I have have assembled all the information that I’ve learned and developed over the past six months of presenting to students virtually I’ve spoken at over 50 events since COVID hit back in March and I’ve taken my best tips, my gear list, and any special ninja tricks and assembled it all into a free five video mini course, you can go and get access to it right now at www.highperformingeducator.com. And if you do pick it up, you will also get added to a private group of educators who tune into this show. People who have been interviewed on this show and you’ll have access to opportunities to network and meet like-minded individuals during this tough time.


Sam Demma (00:59):
So if that sounds like it might be helpful, go to www.highperformingeducator.com, grab the free course and get involved in the high performing educators. Network enough for me and onto the show. Today’s special guest is Cortnie Freeman. This is someone who actually taught at the high school that I grew up at at St. Mary Catholics, Secondary School. My sister, Franchesca actually had Ms. Freeman as her dance, her dance teacher, I believe. And I can always remember her coming home from school and just sharing how much she enjoyed her class, loved the way she taught, loved her style, loved her energy, and it’s apparent more than ever in this podcast episode. She has a huge passion for teaching and she shares that today on the show. I hope you enjoy this. I hope you have a pen and paper, so you can take some notes and I will see you on the other side of this conversation with Cortnie. Thank you so much for coming on the High Performing Educator podcast. It’s an absolute pleasure to have you on today. Can you share with the audience who you are and why you got into that you do with young people today?


Cortnie Freeman (02:05):
My name is Cortnie Freeman and I’ve been teaching now for 12 years. Sometimes that seems like it’s gone by really fast in other days. It seems like holy cow. Why I got into what I do is I feel teaching almost chose me in a way I never like growing up. I was never kind of like, I’m gonna be a teacher. It was just something that as life went on and I was trying to find more purpose in what I love to do. I got nothing more satisfying than when I was teaching students. Like my first year teaching was probably one of the best years of my life. I just feel like it’s, it’s a profession where you, you have to be a life learner. You have to constantly want to know what’s happening. What’s going on. You’re meeting new students every year.


Cortnie Freeman (02:56):
So you’re engaging them different ways. And it’s just, it’s something that I cannot see myself doing anything other than doing. I just love the opportunity to make a difference in students lives. I wanna be able to make that connections with them. I wanna be a positive stepping stone in this journey of life, especially in the high school realm. I feel like those are really a crucial times in kids’ lives. And I really love the opportunity to kind of just dig in deep with them and help them find kind of who they are and where they wanna take their life.


Sam Demma (03:32):
It’s, it’s so true when you mention, you have to find different ways to connect with them and engage with them every single year. And I think this year specifically, that’s true now more than ever. And I’m curious to know for you specifically, how has teaching online slash in the classroom been for you and have you figured anything out that’s been successful or had any experiences that totally flopped and you learned from that you think might be valuable to share?


Cortnie Freeman (04:03):
I would say for me, like, it was really challenging at first. I originally, you know, wanted to do the teaching in school as opposed to the online portion. So I thought I would be seeing students a lot and then we kind of got into it and it’s, I don’t, I hardly see them at all. You know, it’s, it’s a very 50/50 mix. So majority of my day is on the computer. And for me that’s a big change because seeing my students every day is kind of why I became a teacher, right? Like I wanna see them, I wanna have those daily conversations and those daily check ins with them. And I I’ve noticed that even when I see them on Zoom, it’s tough to get those conversations with them going, you know, I have these little boxes of their cute little faces online, and I wanna have one on one conversations with them, but that’s gonna take up the whole hour we have together because I need to click on each kid have that conversation.


Cortnie Freeman (04:56):
Right. So I’m finding where before it’s like they walk in the class, you can have a quick check in say, hi, how how’s it going? So I’m finding the biggest challenge right now is just keeping those connections with my students going and like, those kids need those connections. Right. So I’m finding that that’s been the biggest challenge so far and just keeping them motivated when they’re not with me and engaged . So I’ve had to change a lot of my lessons and just kind of not make them so on the computer. So when it is kind of those Zoom moments, when we have the whole week where it’s online to give them assignments that take them away from the computer. So we have our check-ins, I give them the assignment, but instead of having them write about, you know, somebody, I want them to go out and explore about it. So here’s an element here’s an idea and I’ll go and explore with it instead of writing about it, just to kind of get them out of the technology realm.


Sam Demma (05:58):
Awesome. How else have you changed your curriculum? You mentioned changing curriculum. I’m curious to know if there’s anything else that’s been helpful for you that you think might be helpful for another educator. Who’s struggling to kind of adjust to the new reality?


Cortnie Freeman (06:13):
Yeah, it’s funny. I’ve had to change it quite a bit, actually. I’m, I’m finding that you know, a lot of my pieces have turned into reflection pieces, so instead of you know, it’s tough because I’m not a normal, I, I hate saying that, but I’m not like a normal teacher, right. Like I teach a subject that dance. So a lot of it is physical and in order to, to make it equitable for all students, I can’t, a lot of ’em don’t have homes where they can just start dancing everywhere. Right. So I’ve had to change a lot to make sure that every student, when they’re not with me still has access to be able to engage in the lessons. So I’m finding that a lot of my pieces instead of I kind of, sorry, I’m repeating a bit from previous, but, you know, instead of them writing a paragraph about, you know, we just did healthy eating, I’ve got them to do like a little blog on it.


Cortnie Freeman (07:06):
So they’re out in their kitchen. They’ve actually had, now they’re at home. Right. So instead of them talking about it in class, they’re at home. So they’ve now been able to create a little like actually show the food. They can make it with us in the class. So just trying to get them engaged in physical, in their learning a little bit more than just sitting at their computer all the time. And just especially this year, I find a lot of my subjects have changed. Mm-Hmm as far as, okay. So there’s so much going on in the world today that I think need are hard things to talk about and that kids wanna talk about and they wanna be engaged in it. So I find now too, a lot of my assignments instead of being like, okay, write a reflection piece on this, I’m saying, okay, I want you to choose what you wanna write about mm-hmm and these are kind of the checklists of things you also need to include in. So I’m giving them the basics of what they need to write about, but the topic can be their own choice. And I’m finding that they’re feeling really empowered about being able to choose the subject matter. And then just focusing on like the checklist.


Sam Demma (08:13):
I think options is a great idea right now, especially when there’s so many different topics going on, I applaud you for that, that great. I think if I was in your class, I would, I would’ve loved that option. So keep, keep doing that for sure. And anyone listening, it might be something to consider.


Cortnie Freeman (08:35):
I just find when you give the students the chance to focus, what they’re really passionate about, mm-hmm , it can still, it can still grasp those ideas of, you know, the curriculum, right. They need to do a reflection piece, that’s the curriculum, but what they’re reflecting on can be something that they’re more passionate about and personable about, and it just adds to the level of learning and engagement crazy.


Sam Demma (08:59):
No, that’s true. And the impact it has on the student, I know they’ll enjoy class more and get a better outcome because of it and also have a better experience with you because of it. And I think that’s one of the reasons why Mr. Loud foot from St. Mary had a huge impact on my life. And I stay in contact with him to this day. And you mentioned earlier that one of the main reasons you got into teaching was to change young people’s lives. And I’m sure over the years, you’ve had dozens of people, you know, write you letters you know, Ms. Freeman, thank you so much for everything you did. You changed my life. Maybe some of them even got into dance and now our dance teachers because of your class that, that’s a very rewarding moment. And I want you to think, you know, about an educator who’s listening, who’s burnt out right now, who might want to hear a story about how education has changed a young person’s life. And this could be a story that you’ve personally, you know, of, of someone you’ve personally taught. Who’s written you a lead and you can change their name if it’s a very serious story. Just for the sake of privacy, but share a story about, you know, a kid who is deeply touched by your teaching style or your class in the hope that it’ll inspire other educators to remember, you know, this is really important stuff that we’re doing.


Cortnie Freeman (10:15):
Yeah, that’s, there’s, there’s quite a few, honestly, where I’ve had moments of students that are just like, I would not have gotten. And it’s, it’s so weird saying it out loud because honestly, I feel like when I’m teaching, I’m just being human. I’m just making them feel human. Yeah. You know, I’ve never, I always say when I’m teaching with my dancers that we’re working together, it’s never like, I’m, you know, I never look down on them. I just make them feel like we’re on the same level and we’re in this together. And, you know I feel like the biggest impact I’ve had on most of my students that have written letters to me, or thank me kind of years later is just thank you for seeing me. It’s it’s those years and high school, I find kids get very lost and they get very confused sometimes.


Cortnie Freeman (11:01):
And they’re just, you know, one day they have best friends and then the next day they don’t. And, you know, it’s, it’s a lot of an emotional toll and I was kind of that consistent in their life. Like they knew every day they’d walk in my class. I would have a smile on my face. I would say to them, I would give them good structure in the class and just giving them that steady, especially cause I’ve had them, I have them for the full four years. So I guess the, the one that kind of sticks out to me the most is I had a a foster student in my class. Mm-Hmm I’ve had quite a few of them over the years and you know, it’s hard for those kids to feel like they belong because they’ve been in few homes here and there and they kind of get passed around a bit.


Cortnie Freeman (11:51):
And just this one student I could just tell needed to have that kind of what I’ve said in the past is that consistent adult in their life that believes in them mm. And encourages them, you know, like, even if it’s just checking in on how they’re doing in their other classes, when they come in or saying, Hey, you seem off today, like it’s okay to ask those questions and make them see that I see you. I see when you’re off. I see when you’re doing well. I see when, you know, like, I, I, you know, kind of the idea of like, I’ve got your back and I think that’s important as an educator to remember, we’re not just, we aren’t, we are not just there to teach them the curriculum. And if you are, then you’re just, you’re not doing your job properly.


Cortnie Freeman (12:33):
Really. We are there for the student and curriculum comes with that, but if they’re not whole, and they, they don’t feel comfortable in your class, they don’t feel engaged in your class. Like then they’re not going to get the curriculum. So I always spend like the first week or two weeks of my class, I’m teaching them yes. The curriculum, but that’s my time to really get to know who they are. Mm-Hmm and get to know what they’re into and maybe what their background is, what their struggles are, what really kind of gets, ’em excited about learning. And the more like it’s all about the student, it is. And that’s the biggest thing. I fine when students kind of, you know, say their thanks use to me is thank you for seeing me mm-hmm . And I never wanna forget that moment. And I never wanna forget that each student in my class is honestly so important to me. Like each, each one, the one that, you know, mouthy, the one that’s quiet, the one that’s, you know, like they all are just , it’s just, you have such a small window of their lives that you spend with them. And I wanna make the biggest impact I can. And that, that small little window. And I don’t know, that’s kind of what I find is the most consistent when students kind of reach out to me and, and years later.


Sam Demma (13:50):
I love that. And you alluded to the importance of asking questions, getting to know the students. How else do you see? Like, how else do you make a student feel seen? Like, those are two great examples. Maybe you have anything else that you do during those first two weeks that you think is really impactful?


Cortnie Freeman (14:09):
Yeah. Making them feel seen. I just, you have to be present, you know, know, as a teacher, I never like the idea of they come in my class, I give them work to do, and then I go sit down at a desk. Yeah. You know, like I just, I, I just don’t like that. I, you have to be, it’s such a physical, no matter what subject you’re teaching it’s it has to be like a physical presence as well. You’re walking around, you’re saying high, you are, you know, at the, you know, as the kids walk into your classroom, you’re standing at the door door. You’re saying those highs to them. You’re making sure that, you know, they’re also making connections in the class, you know, it’s not always like, okay, pick your groups. You know, like first two weeks I pick their groups for them.


Cortnie Freeman (14:54):
It seems like such a small, like little thing. But then the more they get a community in that class as well, the better they’re gonna feel. Right. And I have a lot of kids that take like dance is a huge exposure. Like you’re standing in the middle of a room. , you know, there’s no guests, there’s no nothing. And if you’re a kid that’s a little self conscious or, you know, you need to feel like it’s a safe community, especially in, in a realm of a class where it’s all about creating, right. You need to feel vulnerable. You need to allow to, you know, vulnerability is so huge in creating. And I think that’s why the classroom, my C from setting is like my number one, you know? And also like the more you get to know them too, like I’ve taught jazz the jazz lesson, like a hundred times, right?


Cortnie Freeman (15:40):
Like I’ve taught for 12 years now. But do you think I’ve taught it the same twice? No. Because levels are different. Kids are different. Their music is different, you know? So it’s also just staying in tune with, with the kids are into. And so then when they come in, like, I’ll remember things, they said, oh, that was their favorite song. So then next week I’ll like, have it playing as they enter the classroom. And I’m like, I’m so cool. and they’ll me for like dabbing or whatever. Right. Yeah. But it’s just you know, being that positive, happy, even if you’re having happy day as a teacher, like it’s not, that’s not your time. My time is my students. And I need to make sure that if they’re having a bad day, it’s my job to kind of just remind them it’s, it’s good. We’re gonna have fun today. This is gonna be your time to forget about all of that other stuff in life. And we’re just gonna have fun in these, you know, the 70 minutes we see of them for the day.


Sam Demma (16:31):
That’s awesome. And in a virtual scenario, that could be something as simple as commenting on what you see behind somebody as like an object that’s sitting on their shelf. You know, maybe you can’t come up to their desk and talk to ’em on the shoulder, but you can show you’re paying attention and, you know, virtually walking around the classroom by commenting on what you see. I, I did a speaking engagement for a school in Saskatchewan one yesterday. And while I was speaking, a girl went like this and during my speech, I just pulled the peace sign out and she automatically saw it and started laughing because she noticed that I was paying attention. And I think that’s how we can also do it virtually for anyone wondering, you know, how do you transition that into virtual class or virtual school? I, another cool idea might be the, you know, the idea of playing their favorite song. Maybe you can’t play it in class, but maybe you can share the music through your computer as they’re all doing the Zoom room or Uber eats them a coffee or their favorite drink or favorite McDonald’s Sandwich.


Cortnie Freeman (17:29):
So funny you say that, cause my dancers were on Zoom meal other day. And then all of a sudden I just saw like this little, like, and I was like, wait a sec. You know, she just pulls a Starbucks over and I’m like, okay, what’s your go to drink? And it like just opened this whole conversation of like Starbucks and drinking or coffee and was good for you. And we’re like, well, actually this is a good segway into the healthy unit. Right. And it’s, it’s paying attention to those little moments of yeah. Connection, right? Like any relationship, right. It’s being aware and communicating.


Sam Demma (18:01):
Yeah. Just being interested, showing interest.


Cortnie Freeman (18:04):
Being interested. Exactly. Showing interest. I, I want to get to know you. I, I want you in my class, especially if they’re absent. Right. Like I find if a student’s away for a day in my class. Oh. They will know that. I notice that they were not there in a good way though. Like not like, where were you? Well, sometimes I do that. But just being like, Hey, where were you yesterday? The class is not the same when you’re not here. Right. And like, sometimes I get your looks on their face, but just letting them know that, Hey, we missed you. And this class is made up of 24 students. And when you’re not in here, it throws the shift off. Right. We need you all here. We like, you know, and it kind of reminds them that when they’re not there they’re, they’re missed. Right.


Sam Demma (18:40):
Yeah. That’s so important. I’ve never, I don’t think I ever had a teacher who, who, after missing a class said, we missed you here. It wasn’t the same. so that’s, that’s cool. I love that actually. Yeah, that’s a great, that’s a great point. If you could travel back in time to your first year teaching, you know, you just got into it. You’re probably confused a little bit unaware of what was going on excited, but also overwhelmed by all the new realities and systems and procedures and all this stuff. What advice would you have and think about, you know, the educator who’s just starting, just teaching like their, their first year is this year and they’re thinking, you know, what the heck did I sign up for? This is crazy. What advice would you have for yourself and, or those people just starting to teach in their first year as well?


Cortnie Freeman (19:28):
Yeah. Oh my gosh. I remember my first year I was so nervous and I was just like, oh my God. And everyone’s like, you look like a high school kid. I’m like, okay. I know , you know what I would recommend for any teacher kind of starting out. The first thing to do is just kind of write yourself a little note just of why you got into teaching. Like I, on, I, I have to reflect teaching is hard. There are moments where it’s just like, I don’t know if I can do this anymore with all the others, aside from the student stuff, it’s just, it’s a lot. And it’s, I always go back to those first years of how excited I was to get like your first paycheck, like, oh my God. Right. And just like trying, getting to know your students and you’re excited and you say your classroom went perfectly and I can see as kind of the years go on, you just stop paying attention to those little details.


Cortnie Freeman (20:18):
And it’s those little details that make you get excited. Right. So I, I always kind of, whenever new teachers kind of, you know, frantically like, oh my gosh, this and that. And I’m like, it’s all about the kids. As long as your students are having a good time in class, just take a breath. But I, I always say like, write yourself a note right now of how excited you are. We can always tell a new teacher, cuz they’re like so excited and they’re like, you’re like, okay, write yourself a letter and remind yourself of these points of how you feel right now, how excited you are to, you know, make those lesson plans to make those rubrics that now seem like tedious, ridiculous thing, but remind yourself of how exciting that is and how good it feels to have your own space in your own room.


Cortnie Freeman (21:01):
And you’re in charge of these four, you know, these 24 humans for the, you know, the semester and stuff like that. But, and it’s also surrounding yourself with the right people. Mm-Hmm, that kind of share the similar interests in you that have the same passion as you do. I’m lucky, like in the arts, almost every teacher is pretty passionate about what they teach almost probably or too passionate sometimes. Like we take it to another level of serious fashion. But it, it is, it’s just finding those teachers where you can constantly feed off of and, and, and bounce ideas off of like, you know, Mr. Lab. And I like, we are always messaging each other about ideas we have or things that aren’t going so well. And how can I sad or what did you do for this unit? Cause it’s not really working for me and those moments, you need to find it yourself. Cause we’re not given it a lot of time. You know, we, we teach at the same time we leave at the same times. So you have to work at it. You have to find those people and you have to have those people to bounce ideas back because it always makes your learning styles and your engagements so much more stronger when you have another teacher kind of looking at what you’re doing and bouncing off ideas from. So those would be kind of my two cents to the new teacher.


Sam Demma (22:22):
That’s awesome. And if there is a teacher listening who wants to get in touch with you, maybe reach out by on some ideas around, ask some questions, you know, share some good energy, how could they reach out and do so?


Cortnie Freeman (22:35):
Yeah, I would love that I, as a life learner, like I love giving my stuff and I also like hearing new ideas. So my, probably my email is cortnie.freeman@dcdsb.ca.


Sam Demma (22:52):
All right. Perfect. Sounds good, Cortnie. Thanks so much for coming on the podcast. It was a pleasure chat.


Cortnie Freeman (22:57):
With you. Thank you so much for having me. Yeah, it was great. You’re doing amazing things. So stick with it. It’s I don’t know. I’ve heard so many teachers just say such great things about you and seeing you at all saying like just blown us away. Thank you. And for giving us also this forum to talk about teaching because it’s, it’s great.


Sam Demma (23:17):
And there you have it. Another amazing guest, an amazing interview on the High Performing Educator podcast. As always, if you enjoy these episodes, please consider leaving a rating and review. So other educators like yourself find this content and benefit from it. And here’s an exclusive opportunity that I mentioned at the start of the show. If you wanna meet the guest on today’s episode, if you wanna meet any of the guests that we have interviewed, consider going to www.highperformingeducator.com and signing up to join the exclusive network, you’ll have access to networking events throughout 2021 and other special opportunities. And I promise I will not fill your inbox. Talk to you soon. I’ll see you on the next episode.

Join the Educator Network & Connect with Cortnie Freeman

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.

January 22, 2022 by Student Success Teachers Teaching Tips 0

Sarah Daintrey – Teacher, Activities Advisor, Bear Wrestler and Service Education Advocate

Sarah Daintrey – Teacher, Activities Advisor, Bear Wrestler and Service Education Advocate
About Sarah Daintrey

Sarah Daintrey (@sdaintrey) has been teaching and doing student activities for 15 years at Clayton Heights Secondary in Surrey, British Columbia.

She is extremely passionate about service education whether that be inside the classroom or in extracurriculars. The time to do something good is always now. Starting Project Equal, her students have felt empowered by giving back and serving others, leaving a positive impact on the local and global community.

Connect with Sarah: Email | Instagram | Twitter

Listen Now

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

Resources Mentioned

Clayton Heights Secondary

Project Equal

Cloverdale Community Kitchen

Surrey Urban Mission

United Way British Columbia

The Transcript

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

Sam Demma (00:00):
Welcome to the High Performing Educator podcast. I’m your show host and youth speaker, Sam Demma. Before we get into today’s awesome interview with another amazing educator, I have something of value that I wanna share. If you’ve ever struggled with teaching your students virtually, if you’ve ever struggled with getting them to turn their cameras on, I have have assembled all the information that I’ve learned and developed over the past six months of presenting to students virtually I’ve spoken at over 50 events since COVID hit back in March and I’ve taken my best tips, my gear list, and any special ninja tricks and assembled it all into a free five video mini course can go and get access to it right now www.highperformingeducator.com. And if you do pick it up, you will also get added to a private group of educators who tune into this show. People who have been interviewed on this show and you’ll have access to opportunities to network and meet like-minded individuals during this tough time.


Sam Demma (00:59):
So if that sounds like it might be helpful, go to www.highperformingeducator.com, grab the free course and get involved in the high performing educators. Network enough for me and onto the show. Welcome back to another episode of the high performing educator podcast. This is your host and youth speaker Sam demo. I am super excited to you. Today’s guest. Her name is Sarah, and she has been teaching and doing student activities for 15 years at Clayton Heights Secondary school in Surrey, BC. And I’m sure you’ll realize this very quickly, but she is extremely passionate about service, education, service leadership, whether that be inside the classroom or an extracurricular activities. And she wholeheartedly believes that time to do something good is always right now. You’ll be super surprised when you hear about the interesting and awesome club that she started, I believe 15 or 14 years ago at her school that is now making a huge impact on her community and the world at large. I can’t wait to see you on the other side of this interview. Enjoy this take notes and here’s Sarah Daintrey. Sarah, thank you so much for coming on the High Performing Educator Podcast. Huge pleasure to have you on the show, another ambassador for serving leadership and service work. Why don’t you start by introducing yourself and sharing a little bit about why your, about the work you do in education today.


Sarah Daintrey (02:27):
Hi, I’m Sarah. So thank you very much for having me. I’m really excited to be here. So I am very, very passionate about service education and connecting service to curriculum and in extracurriculars as well as as in school. So I’m really, really passionate about that kind of stuff. I really want to create kids that graduate from high school that I’m not afraid to live next door to. I want them to be good neighbors that will help their neighbors in with their groceries. If they need to or go shovel their driveway. If it snows, I want them to be not afraid to be a part of a community. And I feel like service education is the pathway to that.


Sam Demma (03:08):
What inspired you to teach students about service work? I’m sure there was a reason why you got so involved with service work and now you preach it to all the students you teach. I’m curious about the, the story behind that.


Sarah Daintrey (03:21):
Okay, well that, one’s a big one, Sam, so when I was first actually, okay, so rewind to be being a child. My dad was really very diligent about making us good people. And so he, as weird as the sounds, he took Christmas from us when I was 12, he said, we will not have Christmases in this house anymore. We will donate all of the money we would’ve spent on you, kids to your charity and you get to pick this here, Sarah. Okay. and so it’s a, it was a, one of those things. It was just a life lesson like that. We, we surround ourself with all this stuff, but this stuff doesn’t really make, make us happy and giving to others can really make us happy. And so like my charity this year, I think that year, I think when I was 12, I gave a TV to a homeless shelter and I was like super jazzed about it.


Sarah Daintrey (04:09):
I think the next year my brother gave a couch to a family center. Like it was like, it was some cool stuff. So I can really thank my parents really for getting me into this. But if you really wanna go why I got into the deep, deep dive of the surface education. So when I was first started teaching, I was 22. So just a little bit older than you when you I was a young cat and I got diagnosed with multiple sclerosis about maybe four months after starting teaching. So I had double vision. And so I, it just took me into this crazy journey of like, what am I doing with my life? And I really poured myself deeper into service education at that point. Also like at a weird vote a year later, exactly. After I got diagnosed, my husband who was not my husband at the time was my live-in boyfriend got diagnosed with a muscle disease.


Sarah Daintrey (05:07):
And he has really rare form muscular dystrophy. He spent eight months in the hospital and I really, at that point I was teaching and I didn’t tell anybody what was really going on. I was I was teaching at my school that I’m at now and, and I was teaching from eight till three. And then I was at the hospital from three 30, till nine 30, every single day. But that was when the service club that I run at my school started, it was called Project Equal and it still is called that. And I really poured myself into that because if you got something that is bothering you, how helping others is a pathway out of that. And so I really grinded and, and put that club in. I put a lot of energy in my time into that club while I was at school. And it’s become a fairly successful thing after that. So it was one of those things. It was a dark time, but Project Equal was really, really one of those things that kind of got me through it.


Sam Demma (06:06):
People often think that they will give once they have, or they will be of service once they’re successful and have time, I think it’s and the reverse and you give, and the more you give the better you personally feel and the better others feel. Can you dispel that myth? And what are your thoughts around that idea that you have to wait till you graduate or wait till you have enough money or wait till you have more time?


Sarah Daintrey (06:33):
No. Now is always the time now is always like grasp the moment while you have it and help those while you can, because you never know what’s coming around the corner they’re pro tomorrow is promised to no one. So help somebody today.


Sam Demma (06:47):
I love that right now. What do you think are the benefits personally and selflessly for the people around you of getting involved in service work?


Sarah Daintrey (06:56):
Oh, I, I mean, there’s so many benefits I’ve seen. Okay. Like from like the kids who have been involved in my, in the program, in the service program that I run at school, I got one who’s working for the UN United Nations right now. And, and she’s in Kenya helping. Yeah, I know. And I’m not taking credit for that, but like who, that would nice to have like a little piece of that, right?


Sam Demma (07:21):
Spark the fire, you sparked the light.


Sarah Daintrey (07:24):
I got, I got a, the girl who started Project Equal, she’s running the Fraser Health Emergency Management right now. Wow. So she’s running COVID in our profits, its yeah, like there there’s like some functional skills that is learned and from not only like planning meetings and executing events, but it’s also like from like reaching out and giving to others, it’s unbelievable to see what, what the kids have been able to do. It’s it’s great. I got a lawyer, an environmental lawyer who came through our program who, when I coached him in cross country, he would never come back from a run without like a piece of garbage. And I’m like, dude, you could probably run a little faster. He’s like, yeah, but this garbage I’m like right. And so good.


Sam Demma (08:07):
That’s awesome. I love that. And, and you’re speaking to the benefits a student would get and what’s awesome is that service is a win-win win scenario. I like to say this student or the person doing it benefits, the whole world is a whole benefits and the person you’re doing it for also benefits and the more we can engage in win-win win activities, especially during a time like COVID where everyone’s a little bit upset or down the better everyone humanity as a whole will feel. Tell me more about Project Equal. So what is it, what does it look like? Like what do you do with these students? When do you meet, how do you meet? Tell me more, tell me all about it.


Sarah Daintrey (08:46):
Typically I, we meet on Mondays at lunch at school and it is our biggest club at school. So I like to okay. Say that I’m also a fun squelcher and sometimes in my nature. So I, if a kid comes to me and they say, oh, I wanna start a senior citizens club or I wanna start a dog club where we only help dogs. And I’m like, well, Project Equal helps all of those things, bring your idea to project equal and then we’re gonna, we’re gonna help you out there. And the, and the collective group comes together for project equal and we help all of these different causes instead of having 25 different clubs that are all reaching for the same cookie Sam. Like, do you get what I mean? Like if everyone’s hand is reaching into the jar for a cookie, ain’t nobody gonna get cookie.


Sarah Daintrey (09:35):
I would rather ask one at a time, reach in and then you can have your cookie this month and we’re gonna support you. So I think that that is the magic of Project Equal. Is that the collective good? And that it is not about who’s the president of this club. I don’t know if you, you probably have experienced this in your, or kind of foray into student leadership is that there are resume checkbox, people who say like I started my own club. Well, what did you do within that club? Equals is like an all encompassing service thing that if, if you wanna get involved in service, you can just come and join us and present your idea. So I don’t, I, I feel like it’s a, it’s more about the collective good.


Sam Demma (10:25):
I think it’s awesome because I also found that in school. Yeah, you’re right. Sometimes you start a club just for the sake of writing it on your resume for university applications or for a future job. I never got involved in anything at school, which I highly regret due to my own soccer passions. But if I could go back starting something like project equal at my school, sounds like a phenomenal idea. If an educator is listening and thinks, this is such a great idea, we don’t have a service club at our school. I would love to amalgamate all these clubs that are working towards awesome goals. What advice would you give them to get started with something like this?


Sarah Daintrey (11:02):
Sit down with the stakeholders and start to talk about bringing people together. Now, when I’ve, I’ve talked to many schools about this, Sam I’ve gone and brought this idea to the schools because sometimes as an educator, you feel like it’s yours. Hmm. Right. That’s my club. I run that. It’s mine project. Equals is not mine. Project Equal is the students club. And it’s for people who really wanna make a difference. So I don’t really feel like I own it even though it’s, it’s been a part of my life for 14 years now. Right. So, but it’s, it’s not, I don’t own it. It’s more of it, so like sometimes you get like a teacher and they feel like they, they, this is my club and these are my kids and this is what we do together. It’s like, well, that’s great and everything, but gotta put your ego aside and let’s talk about what is the collective good. Now sometimes it’s worked at schools like I’ve had a few people start a collective service club and it is working no like no problem, but sometimes egos get in the way and people want to have their hope for homeless or the pause for the cause. Or you, you, you know, you could name it any, anything, or BR or cancer awareness or like relay for life club, all of those kinds of things. But wouldn’t it be great if we could all come together and support each other?


Sam Demma (12:27):
Tell me how many students are involved is, is like you, you said it’s the biggest club in school and now you’ve peaked my care. How big is big?


Sarah Daintrey (12:35):
Well right now it’s hard. Okay. We can’t meet because of cohorts, we can’t get together, but on a regular, like if we’re in regular school, there’s between 150 to 200 kids that come and show up and do this stuff. Wow. And it’s not a pressure thing, Sam, like you come to equal one week and you’re like, yeah, this is awesome. Well, I had a lunch date next week. Okay. Well then you get, then you’re outta here. And we don’t have a president of project equal. Okay. We run through executive council. So if you wanna run our club, you come before school to my classroom on Mondays and we meet and we plan out the meetings together. What’s it gonna look like? What do we want to accomplish? And if you want a cause supported, you bring it to executive council and they talk about it together. Hmm. And they run the meetings together. It’s fantastic. I mean, sometimes this is a train wreck, but as you’re watching all students do what they do. But it mostly is very, very good.


Sam Demma (13:34):
No, that’s awesome. You, you reminded me like what we do with PickWaste. We don’t have a non-negotiable schedule and all students have to come. We have an email list to volunteers. They all get an email on Thursday saying, Hey, this is where we’re going on. Saturday. Feel free to come. If not, we’ll still part friends, you know? And sometimes someone shows up and then they don’t show up for another formal. We don’t bug them. It’s just drop in. If you’d like to give back today, you, you have the opportunity to do so. And I think that model is so it’s so great because there’s no pressure. And it it’s, there’s no one pushing you to do it. You just, you show up because you want to get involved. Which is awesome. How do you, how do you inspire a student to build that inner drive? To want to give back so much so that no one needs to push them, but they’re jumping at the opportunity to do so.


Sarah Daintrey (14:25):
So I mean, I, I think my, okay, okay. This is weird because I am like extremely shy and a totally humble person. But I think the fact that I’m willing to dive in. Mm I’m, I’m going to walk with them. I’m going to hand out the care packages with them. I’m going to do the things with them. I’m gonna be of like the I’m gonna dig the hole with them. I’m gonna be in the garden, planting the plants with them. I think that that is speaks to the, the fact that kids wanna get involved. Like one of my I’m at home this year, Sam. So because I have Ms. I don’t have an immune system. So I’m at home this year. I’m teaching kids online. I’m actually teaching socials and English right now, which is thrilling and great.


Sarah Daintrey (15:12):
Shout out to my socials and English kids. So I, but I’m at home this year. So it’s been a big lesson for me. I’m not at the school and it’s been very difficult, but my teaching partner in crime, she gave me a little piece of paper that I keep at my desk. And it says, what you lack in talent can be made up with this and giving a hundred percent all of the time. Mm. And I look at it every single day because it reminds me that I’m willing to grind and really get in there with kids. I just gotta wait for my opportunity to be able to do so.


Sam Demma (15:46):
I love that when I was in high school and I had my knee injuries, I was lucky enough to have a educator just like you, who helped me redefine what my self worth was attached to. I thought growing up that to be worth something, I had to be an incredible athlete because everyone around me praised me when I played good soccer. And when I lost the ability to play sports, I felt like I was absolutely worthless. And I didn’t know what I wanted to do with my life. And the reality is is that every student, whether they’re facing a soccer injury or not all attach their self worth to something, and it was Mike loud who stopped me and he said something very similar to what’s on that paper. He said, your self worth is attached to two things. Two decisions that you can make every day, the first being to show up and give a hundred percent of your effort so that when the day’s over and you look in the mirror, you can say, I’m proud of myself, despite the result, whatever happened happened.


Sam Demma (16:35):
But I gave a hundred percent of my effort. And the second decision was to be of service to others. And he actually used to reference Muhammad Ali Muhammad Ali had a quote and he used to say you know, your rent here on earth, the rent that you pay, you pay it by service to others. And Mike loves that quote. And I love that quote. And I think it’s just so important for students to remember that they’re not their skills, talents, and abilities. They are their effort and their decision to give back to others. And I think that’s such an empowering message on the topic of giving back. What are some of the projects over the past 14 years that have been started within and project equal?


Sarah Daintrey (17:15):
Well, there’s some, some cool stuff. I mean, we did start out with like the typical raise money for free the children and buy schools in international communities. And we’ve been on trips with them as well. We kind of have distanced ourselves a little bit from that since the waters got a little bit muddy a couple years ago. So there, as with all things, Sam, things are both good and bad and you gotta take the good and then minimize the bad. So yeah, I, but this year alone I’m, I’m at home, but I’m still meddling as much as I possibly can. Nice. So we’re doing an art project with my senior art teacher. She’s created a 36 pieces of art that are going to the Brookside Lodge, which is our local seniors home that we usually have for Christmas dinner at our school.


Sarah Daintrey (18:09):
They come and we serve them a Turkey meal at our school. But they can’t come obviously because of COVID and we dropped off 36 pieces of art for them to have an art installation with pictures of the kids who created the art and why they created the art on the back to build a connection between those two people. That was a cool one that we were doing nice. What’s one of the, I really, I mean, we serve at local shelters quite often. So the Surrey Urban Mission or the Clovadoke Community Kitchen, we’re there three to four times a year, obviously not right now, but we’re itching to get back there. I’m trying to think of some cool things. There’s just been so many, I mean, and then the garbage cleanup we do invasive plant species removal. Those kinds- I got a environmental as mark likes to refer to me as a Birkenstock green, green thumb person, but that’s fine.


Sarah Daintrey (19:04):
I’m, I’ll take that as a compliment. yeah, so I, I, we do lots of environmental stuff. And, and cleanups, we ran beach cleanups as well. I took my biology, 11 kids on a field trip to go paddle boarding, but then the first part of the morning was all beach cleanup. Nice. So they had to clean up the intertitles zone, which is what you learn about in biology 11. Yeah. I mean, it’s really just integrated into my life. If I’m teaching you a course, you do service. If I am working with you in a club, you do, you do service . If you’re in my leadership class, you do service . So I don’t like the word volunteer hours anymore. Yeah. Sam, I don’t like it. I don’t know why I have an avert the word, but I prefer service.


Sam Demma (19:53):
Yeah, no, I’m I’m with you. I feel like volunteering is something that you’re forced to do. I think service is something you choose to do. Like, I think that’s, that might be the differentiation between the two, because when I hear the word volunteer, I, as a student associated with my principal, handing me a blue book and you need this to graduate, whereas it should be, this is something you should be doing for the rest of your life. Here’s a perfect time to start. So yeah, I think I agree with you on that one. And on that note, what do you think is the difference between the word leader and the word servant leader, if you had to define the two?


Sarah Daintrey (20:31):
Well, okay. I also run student council at my school, which is a big part of our school culture. Or I’m one of the teacher sponsors anyways. I don’t think I run it, the kids run it. But those leaders are more for getting people involved and like, and showing them the way to get involved at our school. Whereas servant leaders are more about I guess what I said before is diving in with people and working alongside people to create a, a better world and a change in their community. I think that that’s more a, what servant leadership is.


Sam Demma (21:09):
Love that. And I know that your school has partnered with large non non-national organizations. And you guys have brought in big partners. Has that been a difficult process or would you say it was surprisingly easy? I’m curious to know.


Sarah Daintrey (21:22):
Okay. So this was like, right. Top more sort of, was it preparation me talk opportunity. That’s like, OK. Yeah, that’s it. So these people came to our school because somebody was on a Facebook group ragging on how terrible our teens are in our area. So the United Way came to our school. And my principal said, well, I don’t, you should talk to our leadership teacher. You should talk to she’s one of our advisors. So they came and they sat and talked to me and she’s like, have you seen this Facebook group? I’m like, no. And she’s like, well, do you know what they’re saying? I’m like, no, she’s like, you wanna know? No, I don’t. And then I blurted out what we had just done this year. I’m like, we just had seniors. He, we had 80 seniors here. We served them a Turkey dinner.


Sarah Daintrey (22:11):
Did you guys know about that? No. I’m like, well, I like don’t judge our school about what some, sorry. Texting Susan or whatever her or him texting Tim does behind a computer screen. Yep. Okay. Not judge our school on that. And I have a really hard time shouting from the rooftops, all of the amazing things that our school does, because I don’t feel like that should be the reward. The reward should be the act itself. Mm-Hmm . So I have a really hard time with the celebration walls and the Instagram posts of all of the amazing things we do. I have a difficult time with that because it is not about that for me, it’s about the act itself. And so I, I, I do I’m right now. I’m doing my level two certification for CSLA and that’s the part I’m really struggling with is I’m know that we need to do that in our school. That’s something we need to do better is celebrate the things that we’re doing. But I, I, I, so I don’t know why it feels like I’m like getting the act gets tainted by the it’s not bragging, it’s celebrating, but it, I don’t I’m I struggle with that part of things.


Sam Demma (23:30):
There’s a, a cool distinction. There’s a content creator named Gary Vee and he’s a marketer and he’s been creating videos like every other day, every day for the past, like four years, he has a huge marketing company. And he said something that really resonated with me that might help shift your perspective a little bit. He says, don’t create content, promoting yourself, just document the journey. And that for me was a cool distinction, cuz you don’t have to stand and say, look how great I am. You could just pick up a camera and be like, here’s what we’re doing today. And just post a short little video. But on that note you’re not alone. I feel the same way that you do so much so that I took a year off social media. I’m about six months in I used to post secondary school I went to on the stage saying, rah, rah, I’m speaking at a school.


Sam Demma (24:14):
And then I turned 21 and I sat down with myself and had an honest reflection and realized this isn’t helping anybody. I feel like an idiot doing this all the time. I’m probably gonna stop. And so I just stopped cold Turkey. And I haven’t posted on Instagram since. And I think for me, it’s helping dismantle like a little bit of my own personal ego and I’m still a young guy. And I think it’s important that we all ask ourselves. What’s the real reason behind why we’re posting something. And if the, if the reason is genuine and authentic and then I think it’s okay, but you have to be really, you have to be really clear and careful on what you put out and the reason behind why you put it out. So all that to say you’re not alone. I think, I think I, I kind of feel the same way sometimes too. And it feels weird when you do post it. So I will wait until the day comes, when someone figures out how to promote events and things that are happening without sounding selfish, self centered I’m with you on that.


Sarah Daintrey (25:08):
My bullying day today was I was two teachers from last year doing something goofy in pink. And I said, the pink is the first step, but the intentional kindness every single day is the hard work. Yeah. Let’s get there. Yeah. I agree. Actually, I think this is getting lost. Like this pink shirt is getting lost in the shuffle and the intentional kindness is where we need to get back to. Yeah. Yeah. Like it’s not about the dress up. It’s about the intentional kindness. Yeah. And not the confetti kindness, not the like sprinkles kindness. It it’s the deep, intentional kindness. Like my classes today, there’s a young girl in mission. I got this wonderful idea for my teaching partner at school. There’s a young girl in mission who was beaten up and bullied in January for being a transgender youth. Wow. And she was just like fully attacked. My kids today are writing her letters. Wow. Of encouragement. Nice. Because that’s deep, intentional kindness. I, I had them watch or read an article on her and we’re gonna reach out to her because I think it’s that that’s deep and intentional on their part and, and something that can make them feel powerful and good.


Sam Demma (26:25):
Mm-Hmm no, I agree so much. Like I, I couldn’t agree more. And I think it’s also important to know that sometimes it is the harder decision. Sometimes we convince ourselves that it’s easier to pass someone on the street and not do anything about it or to see a post like that and just keep scrolling on your feed. But you know, when you do take those actions, those deep, intentional acts of kindness, it has a positive impact on everyone else. That’s involved in the situation and you also feel great. Like, you know, whether you post about it or not, you selfishly feel good. That’s a cool thing about philanthropy is that everyone wins. You feel good? Other people feel good, so why not get involved? I think it’s so cool.


Sarah Daintrey (27:05):
That, yeah. I, people always say like, oh, there’s no unselfish act. That’s true. because if you do something good for somebody else, you intent, you feel good. And it is the only drug I want to be addicted to. Yeah. It is the only survey other people is the only drug I wanna be addicted to. And once you, I, I give people a taste of it. Like for example, in my math 10 class I usually teach math 10. Aw. Which is for kids who hate school or suck at math or even worse are the combination of both. And they have been told, and they’ve been told they’re not good at school and they can’t do it. I, you work with the United way and I bring them in and we do a project where we feed as many people as we can, for $1,500, they gotta do budgeting.


Sarah Daintrey (27:57):
They gotta do skill. Like they have some hard skills they gotta do with this. And then we go and we feed people on the downtown east side with help from save on meets. It’s a company on the downtown east side of Vancouver. Okay. These are kids who don’t feel like they can do anything. I’ve had four or five kids turn around from that class. And then they join leadership the next year. Or they come out to project equal and they come and they do stuff. Or I have kids who wanna be my peer tutor the next year. So they come on that field trip and feel good about themselves. So it’s not just for the leaders, it’s for everybody.


Sam Demma (28:32):
Mm. So true. And it’s the little things that matter most, the little acts of kindness. Right. I, I, I watched a movie the other day with Denzel Washington called the little things and he’s at a, he’s a hop and an investigator, and he’s trying to bust this criminal on some thing that he did. And, and multiple times in the film he stops and he looks at the camera and he says, it’s the little things that will get him caught. But I also think it’s the little things that make the biggest difference. Like writing someone, a handwritten note or smiling in the hallway or buying them a coffee. I also think that sometimes students get overwhelmed or teachers get overwhelmed with starting a club like this because they think that they have to go out and, and become the next Martin Luther king and change the world. And I think it’s 11 kids. Yeah. And I think it’s totally false. And I was gonna ask you, like, you know, what are some good benchmarks to think about in terms of project sizes and starting thing like this, for someone who’s listening to this whole conversation and is really interested in getting involved.


Sarah Daintrey (29:30):
OK. So I’m extremely competitive. OK. OK. mostly with myself. OK. Mostly I’m like kinda one up myself all of the time. Yeah. So I had a principal at the time who shall remain nameless because he is mostly good dad, but some people have some bad parts to them. He said, Margie equal is a stupid idea. It will never work and whatever else. Right. And he said, but go ahead. If you want to, and you can just do it with the grade 11th. So I had seven grade elevenths that first started out. And then, and by the end of the year, I think we grew to 11 kids. We bought our first school in Sierra Leon, because that was what the one of the kids wanted to do. And we served at the Sur remission. And we did some environmental projects where we like went and cleaned up garbage, all this kind of stuff.


Sarah Daintrey (30:14):
It was great year. I went and slapped the check on his desk personally. Yes, let’s go for, I love it. And then he went to the district and bragged about it, and then we became bigger after that, which was great. I guess I can thank him for speaking my praises, I guess. But I do think that small, intentional acts and small steps works. I mean, where equal even came from the word project equal young lady, it did some math, she had 236 people in her grade and she did some math if somebody gave up just $5 a month. So like going to Tim, Horton’s go to Starbucks even probably less than going to Starbucks. Now. if they gave up $5 a month, she could buy a school in a, in a third world country to that was her idea. And I said, that’s brilliant, but I want to help locally too, as much as we do globally. So as much as we do international, and then she, she agreed with me and literally we bought our first school within that year. And we helped we handed out meals at the Sur for a mission. We did care packages. Like there was so much we did, and that was just with her year. Wow. And then we expanded after that. It was incredible.


Sam Demma (31:27):
So the sky’s the limit and be creative.


Sarah Daintrey (31:28):
Basically truly is. And smart. Start small for goodness sake. Do not try to eat all the whole cake. Just take one bite.


Sam Demma (31:36):
Love it. That sounds great. Well, Sarah, thank you so much for sharing your passion about service work and servant leadership and project equal. I appreciate it. And if someone is listening right now, thinking this is an inspiring conversation and they’d love to chat with you further, what would be the best way for another educator to reach out and, and have a conversation?


Sarah Daintrey (31:55):
Oh, I’m super great at email. So if you wanna email me at daintrey_s@surreyschools.ca. You can email me. That would be super great. The rest of my forms of communication are very subpar. So email works. Haha!


Sam Demma (32:13):
That is perfect. Well, thank you so much for doing this. Again, I appreciate your time. Keep up the awesome work, whether or not you post about it will be secretly trying to figure out what you continue to do behind the seats. Thank you so much.


Sarah Daintrey (32:31):
I want you to come to my school. Okay. When this is over, I feel like you should come to my school. I, when I can go back there, we’ll meet. We’ll meet there. How does that sound?


Sam Demma (32:41):
Sounds ike a plan. I’ll get on a plane and I promise and we’ll make it happen.


Sarah Daintrey (32:44):
Yeah. You sound like you fit with my vibe. I like it.


Sam Demma (32:49):
No, I appreciate it, Sarah. Thank you again so much. And let’s stay in touch.


Sarah Daintrey (32:53):
All right. Sounds good. Thanks Sam.


Sam Demma (32:55):
And there you have it. Another amazing guest and amazing interview on the High Performing Educator podcast. As always, if you enjoy these episodes, please consider leaving a rating and review. So other educators like yourself can find this content and benefit from it. And here’s an exclusive opportunity that I mentioned at the start of the show. If you wanna meet the guest on today’s episode, if you wanna meet any of the guests that we have interviewed, consider to www.highperformingeducator.com and signing up to join the exclusive network, you’ll have access to networking events throughout 2021 and other special opportunities. And I promise I will not fill your inbox. Talk to you soon. I’ll see you on the next episode.

Join the Educator Network & Connect with Sarah Daintrey

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.

January 22, 2022 by Student Activity Director Student Leadership Student Success Teachers Teaching Tips 0

Andrew Hall – Chaplaincy Leader at St. Johns College

Andrew Hall – Chaplaincy Leader at St. Johns College
About Andrew Hall

Andrew Hall (@drumjokes93) is a drummer and started a junior and senior worship band at St. Johns College. He challenges students to write a worship song every year and then takes them to a studio to record it. This year with all restrictions, he can’t do worship band but am still finding ways to give students opportunities.

Connect with Andrew: Email | Instagram | Twitter

Listen Now

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

Resources Mentioned

Redeemer University

Mount Mary Ancaster

Junior and Senior Worship Band

St. Johns College

The Transcript

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

Sam Demma (00:00):
Do you want access to all the past guests on this show? Do you want a network with like-minded individuals and meet other high performing educators from around the world? If so, go to www.highperformingeducator.com. Sign up to join the exclusive network and you’ll get access to live virtual networking events and special opportunities that will come out throughout 2021. I promise you I will not fill your inbox. You might get one email a month. If that sounds interesting, go to www.highperformingeducator.com. Welcome back to another episode on the High Performing Educator podcast. This is your host and youth speaker Sam Demma. Today’s guest is Andrew Hall. He is the chaplaincy leader at St John’s college, and he also runs a band, a worship band with his high school. He is a drummer and he started a junior and senior band and he challenges students to write a worship song year, and then he takes them to a studio to record it. Because this year’s COVID, unfortunately that’s been a little bit difficult, but he is still finding other ways to give students opportunities. And that’s what we talk about today on the show. So pop your headphones in and enjoy today’s interview with Andrew Hall. And I will see you on the other side. Andrew, thank you so much for coming on the High Performing Educator podcast. I love the Jersey you’re wearing. I would love for you to share with the audience who you are, the work that you do and why you originally got into the work you do with youth.


Andrew Hall (01:36):
All right. So my name is Andrew Hall. I’m a chaplaincy leader at St. John’s College in this is my seventh year at the high school. I also did three years of elementary chaplaincy in Niagra and one year as an onsite chaplain at Mount Mary Ancaster. So I’ve been in chaplaincy 10 years in total. And the reason why I got into it just was because I have a passion for the Catholic faith, and I love sharing that faith with teenagers and students. And one reason I’m I’m in this position as a chaplain is that I kind of love the freedom that comes with it. Like for example I don’t have to be at parent teacher interviews or grade or do things like that. There’s a lot of fun that comes with this job. So for example, in a normal year, like isn’t a normal year, so I know we’ll get that a bit later, but in a normal year I’d be taking kids to nursing homes. I’m a drummer, so I’d be jamming with the worship band at lunch be going to volunteer at St. Vincent de Paul doing community work. So, and having campus ministry meetings where we play games. And I try to make faith interactive for students because I think faith shouldn’t be boring. It should be fun. So that’s a huge part of why I’m in this job is just making faith fun for students and showing them that you can have fun in your faith.


Sam Demma (02:55):
I love that. And at what point in time did you know, I wanna be doing this specific work? Was it when you were in high school? Was it when you were in university? When did you decide this was gonna be your future?


Andrew Hall (03:07):
So I’d say right after university actually I wasn’t really planning to be a chaplain, so I can kind of tell you how I kind of maybe accidentally stumbled into that role if you want. Sure, sure. Yeah, sure. So anyway, I was planning to be a teacher. I was I got the degree from Redeemer University College and their teaching college program. And I also got an undergrad in theology and Phys. Ed. So I was planning to be a teacher. At the time I was planning a band. So I was trying to make that work. I was also doing landscaping on the side and had all of these different things going on. But one day I decided to go for a hike on a Bruce trail near Mount Mary Ancaster. And if you don’t know what Mount Mary is, it’s a modest area.


Andrew Hall (03:54):
It’s where, where nuns live. And anyway, I, I happened to bump into an none and we got to talking and I told her, you know, I go to Redeemer and you know, in Catholic. And she said, would you be interested in being an onsite chaplain here and running retreats for for grade eights from Kitchener, Waterloo? You know, I never really thought about it, but it was like a really it sounded really secure to me. Like, you know, I was guaranteed, like, you’re gonna run like 40 retreats that year. You’re guaranteed, like these are the days you’re working and, you know, with landscaping, you, you get rained out. , you know, things like that. And, you know, the band and the music industry, it’s a, it’s an awesome dream to have, but, you know it’s a tough gig, you know, so anyway, I said, sure, I’ll, I’ll come by for interview tomorrow. They gave me the job and basically by just going hiking and bumping into a nun that’s how I became a chaplain really. And now I wouldn’t have, I wouldn’t do anything else. I love this.


Sam Demma (04:51):
Awesome, man. That’s really, really cool. And you mentioned earlier, there are some challenges that make this year a little bit different than the average year. What are some of the challenges that your current faced with and what do you, or what have you been trying to, to overcome them?


Andrew Hall (05:06):
So first I think our biggest challenge is at least for our Catholicity is we’re not allowed to have masses. So this is like the first time where, you know, our students are unable to gather for masses and see our priests, you know, face to face at school. As the musician too, you know, I do the worship band. This is like I said, it’s my seventh year, seventh year at St. John’s and we’ve had a worship band every year since I’ve been there. And I challenge the kids to write a song and we take them to the studio to record it. And that’s like a huge love that I have at that job, but we can’t have worship band this year because as you may know, like singing’s not allowed, right. I guess from what I know, it can spread germs during COVID, you know, so for those safety reasons, we can have worship band, like even my wife who sings sometimes at church has to sing behind glass, you know?


Andrew Hall (06:00):
So there’s a lot of precaution to go into music right now. If it’s gonna happen. So just outta safety, we’re not doing worship band. So what I’m doing instead is I’m challenging students to record songs at home. So if you’re a singer guitar player, Hey, record a song at home, send it to me and we’ll throw it in the liturgy. Even we’ll just throw it in as on a random day, like, Hey, here’s this person celebrating their faith at home. And other challenges too are just for example, we, we can’t go to nursing homes right now. Like that’s something I’ve done every year and the kids love it. I love how a big part of, of me is showing every person that they matter and that every stage of life matters. So we go to the nursing home.


Andrew Hall (06:43):
That’s the one thing I love about the work I do as well. So we can’t do that. So as an alternative, I talked to one of the nurses at the nursing home and we’re doing a pen pal program with them. Hmm. So for the month of October, November, I have about 35 students signed up and we are writing a letter to them once a week. Mm-Hmm and also it’s really cool for English teacher jumped on board. She’s getting her class to do it as well. So those are challenges I’m facing, but I guess one rule that I’m trying to come up with is, you know, if what I’m trying to say, I guess is if I’ve try to do something or, you know, the things I normally do, I’m just trying to try to find a different way to do them.


Sam Demma (07:24):
That’s a great perspective. Just adjust and pivot a little bit, still have the impact of the activity, but maybe in a slightly different way. That’s great. Yeah. I know sports have been, been impacted as well. Speaking of you’re wearing a Raptor’s Jersey are you a big Raptor?


Andrew Hall (07:39):
Oh yeah. Yeah. Big time mean that’s kind of, I guess, sidetracking, but yeah, no I have been a Raptors for, I’d say about four years now. Nice. I’ve always been a basketball fan, but like, I’ll admit, I I always love playing it more. I’m watching it. Yeah. but you know how I said, like I got really lucky and I happened to bump into that nun that day. Right. Well, an, an experience like that actually helped me to become a raps fan. I, I won this random contest and it was like, it’s a limo free hotel, like free food to the raps opening game of four years ago. Nice. And honestly, once I went and saw live for the first time my dad, I was hooked and yeah. I never missed a game now, pretty much on TV when that happened.


Sam Demma (08:26):
That’s nice, man. That’s really cool. , you’re someone who radiates hope and joy and positivity, and you can tell it in your responses. And I’m curious to know aside of the challenges that are happening right now, what keeps you personally motivated and hopeful with the work that you’re doing?


Andrew Hall (08:43):
Oh, so what keeps me motivated and hopeful. Yeah. Okay. I guess right now seeing students buy into it, like even in the times we’re in like knowing that students are still willing and wanting to be involved. And I guess what gave me hope walking into September was knowing that during last year’s, you know, last school year’s pandemic when we were off that I still had students participate, even though we weren’t at school. So I thought if I can get students to do that, then I have a shot going into this year. You know? So for example, when we were off last year I challenged students to create like virtual liturgy. So the word, and every morning I would have a student film, a prayer video, we’d send it up to staff every single morning. So we even did like we had a virtual grad retreat for example, last year.


Andrew Hall (09:41):
So that even gave me hope. So for, and you even asked me, I think maybe I was looking at some of the questions, so I’m kind was right to jump ahead, maybe yeah. Go for it. Right. Right. Well, all right. No, I was just thinking about that. I mentioned virtual retreat and you know, I was thinking about I guess one of those questions that we were talking about before we started recording was just like do I have any mistakes that I’ve made maybe, or would I do anything differently? And I think when I look back to virtual grad retreat, I almost didn’t do it. I thought there’s no way kids are gonna do that. They’re off from school, what are the chances? And I thought, you know, I’m just gonna go for it. So virtual grab retreat actually gave me a lot of hope and this happened in may last year. I just thought, you know, if this 27 students can sign up in may. And that just made me think, you know, if we go back September, then I know if things can work. Yeah.


Sam Demma (10:39):
Yeah. How, how did you do that? How, like, if you were to share a little bit about how that was possible for someone who might be listening, would you be open to sharing?


Andrew Hall (10:48):
Yeah, sure. Like how did I actually get it off the ground? Virtual grad retreat?


Sam Demma (10:51):
How did you do it?


Andrew Hall (10:52):
Sure. So basically I didn’t even have any idea what I was doing, but I, I kind of came up with I thought, okay, first off, what would you do in a virtual grad retreat? So I came up, I wanted to keep it simple. So I contacted our parish priest, that’s connected to the school and I said, Hey, can you start the retreat off with a a blessing for our grads? So we did that. We had an activity like where I asked students to reflect on their four years at St. John’s college and write a letter to a teacher that impacted them. Because our theme, we have a free year theme at our school board, and last year’s theme was encounter. So I wanted to, to reflect on that theme of encounter and how has a, a teacher that you’ve encountered impacted your life.


Andrew Hall (11:38):
And then, then we did a a big song at our school’s awesome God, the the worship man is always requested to play it out song. So we did like an awesome God challenge, where I challenged students to listen to the song, maybe do something funny or goofy, take a picture and host it on social media, just with the hashtag awesome. God. And then the last thing was just taking a selfie with saying SJC virtual grab retreat as a hashtag. And that was pretty much it. So it’s just, honestly that took an hour and students really appreciate it. I think one way I know that is just I was actually, I didn’t know what to do with the letters the kids wrote to their favorite teachers. Right. So I actually went and delivered them to the teachers and with my kids, I familiar two oldest kids in the car and we went out, we delivered letters and it really made it was really nice to see just the impact on the teachers, not seeing those students to get those letters.


Sam Demma (12:36):
Yeah, that’s awesome. And during this time you mentioned 27 kids showing up in may. I’m sure you’ve been impacting a lot of students right now during this time as well. I’m curious to know if there’s a story in your mind. It doesn’t have to be of right now, maybe in the past years of, of your work a story that might, you’ve impacted a young person’s life through your own work. And the reason I’m asking you to share the story and you can change the student’s name if you’d like to, for the sake of privacy. But the reason I’m asking you to share the story is because if there’s another educator out there listening to this, thinking to them themselves, you know, it’s been really tough year this year. Sometimes it’s hard to remember why my work important to hear a story that you have. It might inspire them to remember, you know, their, their purpose.


Andrew Hall (13:20):
Okay. You might hear a baby in the background there. We’ll see, but that’s okay. It’s like school, there’s always something going on. Right. That’s all good. Right. So anyway I guess a story about how I’ve impacted someone’s life. Just let’s go back to virtual grad retreat. I didn’t expect to get a letter from a student. But I did I had a grade 12 girl write me a letter just saying, Hey, you know, without you, as our chaplain, I don’t think I would be as close to God as I am right now. So that actually that really I just made me reassured me that even in these toughest times, I can still be effective as a chaplain even going into September our new board theme has transformed. So I reached out to a few graduates and I asked, Hey, you know, can you record videos?


Andrew Hall (14:17):
Cause I think it’d be awesome for our staff to be witness to by students who have graduated and just saying how your faith is transformed at St. John’s. so this one girl she won’t even mind me saying her name, but her name’s Ella and she filmed the video saying how much to worship band impact impacted her life, how it helped her to overcome shyness and just be more outgoing. And she, she said in the video that, you know, if you would’ve told her in grade nine, that she’d be singing in front of like 1200 kids, she would’ve never believed you. But it happened. And to me, I think that says that sometimes people are just looking for an invitation to get involved. And I think that’s my role to give people opportunities and hope they take advantage of them.


Sam Demma (15:04):
That’s awesome. I was gonna ask you as a follow up question, like how do we, you know, knowing that students write these letters to their teachers and their chaplains, you know, what do we do proactively to get those? Not, not that you’re looking to get that response from a student you wanna, you know, impact their life. Is it just tapping ’em on the shoulder and providing them with an opportunity or what do you proactively do to make students feel cared and appreciated?


Andrew Hall (15:30):
Let’s see. Well, I guess providing those opportunities is my way of showing I care. Nice. You know? Yeah. And I also think like the personal touch is like something you gotta do. Like it’s not just going on announcements and saying, Hey, come out. Like it’s for me going into those classrooms and being face to face with kids and saying, you know, I’m not just on announcements, I’m actually going into classrooms. And I think that students, when they see you like walking around the hallway or not just this, not just a chaplain in your office, that you’re actually out there and doing things, it shows that you care. So that’s how I try to show students that I care just by being present and giving them that opportunity.


Sam Demma (16:13):
Awesome. I love that so much. And it was a teacher who taught me on the shoulder and said, Hey, Sam, go do this in the community. That totally transformed my experience in a high school. So I, I can totally agree to that. If someone listening who’s an educator wants to reach out to you and maybe just bounce some ideas around, what’s the best way for them to do that.


Andrew Hall (16:32):
Oh sure. As, so they can contact me at my email, which is ahall@bhncdsb.ca. That’s where they can talk, contact, and reach out. They can also Google my name in St. John’s College and I’m sure my email will pop up.


Sam Demma (16:58):
Okay. Awesome. Andrew, thanks so much for coming on the show. It’s been a pleasure chatting with you and I can’t wait to hear some of your new student music.


Andrew Hall (17:05):
Awesome. Thanks. Yeah, we got music coming out next week for doing something different for Thanksgiving. Like I said, we can’t have our Thanksgiving mass. So we’re actually having we have our schedule set up in four different blocks right now, just with COVID. So at the end of each block, we’re gonna pause and have something to celebrate our faith and give thanks for Thanksgiving. So I actually have students recording songs at home for Thanksgiving. So yeah, we’re gonna have some music coming out next week.


Sam Demma (17:38):
Awesome. Well, I’ll look forward to it and I’ll talk to you soon.


Andrew Hall (17:41):
Awesome. Thanks Sam.


Sam Demma (17:43):
And there you have it. Another amazing guest, an amazing interview on the High Performing Educator podcast. As always, if you enjoy these episodes, please consider leaving a rating in review. So other educators like yourself can find this content and benefit from it. And here’s an exclusive opportunity that I mentioned at the start of the show. If you wanna meet the guest on today’s episode, if you wanna meet any of the guests that we have interviewed, consider going to www.highperformingeducator.com and signing up to join the exclusive network, you’ll have access to networking events throughout 2021 and other special opportunities. And I promise I will not fill your inbox. Talk to you soon. I’ll see you on the next episode.

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

January 22, 2022 by Music Educator Student Success Teachers 0

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