student support

Marc Iturriaga — Executive Director of the Mohawk Students’ Association and founder of Bonobo Consulting

Marc Iturriaga — Executive Director of the Mohawk Students’ Association and founder of Bonobo Consulting
About Marc Iturriaga

Marc Iturriaga is the Executive Director of the Mohawk Students’ Association and founder of Bonobo Consulting, whose mission is highlighting the importance of fostering belonging within our society. He holds a Bachelor of Arts degree and a Master of Arts in Leadership. 

Marc started his career as a student leader in both Campus Rec and Residence Life, and upon graduation, he worked as a Program Coordinator for national and international youth development programs, an International Program Coordinator for the University of Toronto, a Residence Life Manager for McMaster University, and eventually back into Collegiate Recreation as an Intramural Coordinator for the University of Waterloo, eventually leaving after 13 years as the Associate Director of Recreation and Business Development. Marc has served as the Recreation Program Manager at Mount Royal University and the Executive Director of the Genesis Centre, a multi-purpose community complex acting as a recreational, cultural, social and educational hub of the community in the most culturally diverse quadrant of Calgary.

Currently in his role as Executive Director for the Mohawk Students’ Association, Marc is on a journey to ensure students are supported, have a voice, and feel like they belong in their higher education experience.

He’s a family man, cat dad, LEGO master, Comic nerd, and basketball enthusiast who can pretty much identify most 80’s shows by their theme song.

Connect with Marc Iturriaga: Email | Instagram | Linkedin

Listen Now

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

Resources Mentioned

Mohawk Students’ Association
Bonobo Consulting

The Transcript

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

Sam Demma
Welcome back to another episode on the High Performing Educator podcast. This is your host Sam Demma and today we are joined by a special guest. Marc Iturriaga serves as Executive Director of the Mohawk Students Association and the founder of Bonobo Consulting, leveraging his extensive higher education experience to champion student belonging and support. His diverse career path includes roles in international youth development, residence life management, recreation coordination, and executive leadership at community complexes like Calgary’s Genesis Centre.

Sam Demma
With a master’s in leadership and commitment to fostering inclusive environments, Marc brings both professional expertise and personal passion to his work, balancing his dedication to student advocacy with family life, Lego building, comic book enthusiasm and basketball fandom. Marc, thank you so much for being here on the show today.

Marc Iturriaga
Oh, Sam, thank you. That’s got to be the wickedest intro I’ve ever heard for myself. I got to write that down. That was awesome. Thank you for that.

Sam Demma
Just let me tour with you when you go to these events.

Marc Iturriaga
Done.

Sam Demma
Tell me and the audience a little bit about who you are and what got you into working with young people and in the world of education.

Marc Iturriaga
Yeah, so my high school career and elementary school, I was a good easy student. So I skipped a grade. So I was always the youngest in my grade school came easy to me, didn’t need to try high 90s in high school, and decided to go to University of Waterloo for actuarial science. So I really loved math. And then first year university hit and my whole world changed.

Marc Iturriaga
We talked about being from Pickering. So I had a culture there that I was experienced and comfortable with. And then when I hit university, whole new world of different people, music, lived experiences. And let’s just say my first year university experience wasn’t great. It started off with maybe failing four of nine classes and maybe I would have failed that fifth if I hadn’t dropped it. And a lot of that came not from, well, part of it was, you know, attendance and those pieces. It wasn’t that I couldn’t handle it. It was I was just involved in this whole new world and I loved it. So I was getting more involved with intramurals. I started reffing. I started working on campus and joining clubs and different pieces. And though I got my marks back on track and I switched, you know, course loads to something a little bit more down my line because I realized I didn’t want to do math for the rest of my life. Actuarial science is the business of insurance. Nothing’s more boring to me than that. But as I got more engaged and involved with the people around me, yeah, I just realized how interested I was in people. So I became a student leader and it was those opportunities that came my way, some by luck, some by, you know, a little bit of grit and determination, but I had so many different experiences in my university career that led me to say, hey, I can actually do this for a living, and that’s what really brought me into those things. So I started off maybe wanting to go to teacher’s college. I worked at a private school as a dorm master when I first graduated, which led me to go, I don’t want to do formal education anymore. So I’m out. Great, great experience, but it’s one of those things you learn what you don’t want to do sometimes is a valuable experience. And then from there, I worked with youth programs. And then I got back into higher ed, where I was in residence manager and all those pieces. And I realized that I had a lot of influence and impact in those positions with young people and students and realizing you didn’t need that formal teaching piece. I love teachable moments. I love just like being in the moment with students and learning together. And I think that’s the biggest piece about what brought me here and to where I am today is that I’ve worked for institutions for most of my career. This is the first time I’m really focused 100% on working for and with the students in my role. And it’s just so rewarding. And really for me, as long as it involves students and youth in a leadership capacity, and let me preface that by also saying, I believe all students are leaders, just by taking a journey of education and just growth, that is leadership to me. Yeah, nothing could be more rewarding. And I think the coolest part too is, so I’m 50, I just turned 50. I still feel like I’m 27, because I feel like I’m older than the students that usually I work with, but not that far removed, but I realized now that I am. But it is, I still learn from, from my experiences working with them as much, you know, it’s corny, but they give me as much as I give them. And it’s just an awesome journey. And I don’t think I would ever not do anything that doesn’t involve the youth and students in some way.

Sam Demma
Teachable moments. Can you walk me through what that means in your mind, or what one of those has looked like in your own life or the life of a young person? And the reason I ask is because I believe that curriculum is secondary to those teachable moments, especially the moments I remember most when I was a student were not when my teacher was standing and teaching us something at the front of the classroom, but when they pulled me to the side of their desk and talked me through something that really mattered to me. So tell me more about that.

Marc Iturriaga
Yeah.

Marc Iturriaga
So it’s about outputs and outcomes. And I stress this a lot. My staff and students would go, oh, here goes Marc again with outcomes. Curriculum is an output, right? The outcome is the learning, right?

Marc Iturriaga
The realization, the reflection, the growth of the individual. The outputs are teachable moments and tests and all these pieces. My experience has been those teachable moments are the ones where we’re most successful in achieving those outcomes of growth. And you’re right, it is about that one-on-one conversation. I’m a one-on-one guy. I really love the sit down chats and all that. And I know the best way I’ve learned, even though I was so great.

Marc Iturriaga
I mean, I was great at taking tests and book learning, writing essays. Like I felt like I gamed the system because I just knew how it worked, but the true growth for me was sitting down with someone, especially when I failed, who sat me down and really helped me reflect and understand, okay, what happened here? Did you achieve your outcome? So for me, actually, one of the biggest learning moments that I really said, okay, this is how I want to be engaged as a mentor, is I remember I had a task, I was working in a youth program, I had to find host families. And I was there four months, I found five out of nine host families thought I was doing good in the first month. Cool, the rest will come to me. And then within two weeks of the program, three of them had quit. And now I got two host families, I need nine. And I got a group of students from all across Canada and Ecuador about to arrive on a bus, and they needed a place to stay and I didn’t have it. And it took my boss and mentor who came all the way down, it was up North in Kapuskasing, so they were from Toronto, they had to drive all the way up. They didn’t do it, there was no Zoom, right? They weren’t doing a phone call.

Marc Iturriaga
They knew I need to talk to you one-on-one. And they sat me And so I said, but I did this and I did that and go, all great. Didn’t work, did it? So you need to change gears. Your outcome is you need those families. And they started saying, you need to go on the, on the radio. You need to go talk to pastors. You need to do whatever you can. And I realized those were things like, I kind of don’t want to do that. And it’s like, yeah, but you gotta. And that’s what it took.

Marc Iturriaga
And it was really that hands-on conversation that really made me realize that that’s what I want to have when I speak with individuals and staff and students is that teachable moment. So what is happening in the moment and sitting down and going, let’s reflect on that.

Marc Iturriaga
And it’s not about what answers I have, it’s what that individual sees and understands and reflects on their own experience to go, yeah, you know, you’re right. Because my boss wasn’t telling me anything I didn’t know already.

Marc Iturriaga
It’s just, I didn’t want to do it. And so again, that flow, and sometimes it just takes that person. And so that’s where I say too, that that relationship is both ways. And so I’ve got to earn that trust when I have that moment with others. And that’s a huge piece to say, hey, you’re trusting me to sit you down and walk you through your experience. That’s pretty important too. And so that’s, again, it’s about that interpersonal connection. That’s why I love the teachable moments.

Sam Demma
When you think of your experiences as a university student, maybe in that first year when things were not going the way you expected them to, were there any individuals that provided mentorship to you, that redirected your path? And if so, who were those people and what did they do for you?

Marc Iturriaga
Yeah, one was my mom who just took it and understood. I was so surprised how much she did not berate me. You know, you know, you accuse me of like, well, what are you wasting our money on? You know, and all those things, you know, understanding. And I know she was disappointed, but just that, knowing I had someone in my in my corner that way and saying, you know what, I trust in the past, you figured this out. I’m going to give you the space to figure this out as well. I’m sure I got a couple of conversations that were, you know, a little bit more on the what are you doing side. But it was giving me that space to figure it out. And I greatly appreciate that. The other was, I would say it’s observations of friends that I saw of realizing where they were going and what I could learn from their lived experience and realizing how different that was that I didn’t feel pigeonholed to say, well, I have to be doing X because that’s what’s expected of me. It was about that freedom to go, hey, there is a Y. Let me figure that out. And that was when I realized I learned. And it wasn’t first year university. It was actually second year when I actually had to move out due to my living arrangements. I had to find a new place to rent from and I found a whole bunch of new guys to live with who I didn’t know. There were different programs. And one of them just said, saw me just kind of sitting around and going, what are you doing? And it’s like, I don’t know, like I’m just going to class. He goes, go do something. And one of the things that brought me on my journey too was he actually said, well, you should get hooked on crack. And I was like, what? Now, let me preface that is the Campus Rec Advisory Council, C-R-A-C.

Marc Iturriaga
All right.

Marc Iturriaga
So he knew I liked basketball. He knew I liked, you know, get involved. So just come on this. So it took that invitation of I didn’t know I could get involved that way. And that was my stepping stone to get it and I was highly involved in high school so I don’t know why I didn’t check it out at university but it was that invitation from a roommate that got me involved and that’s where I met my future boss in an intramural coordinator as a student so he was kind of my mentor through that time giving me more leadership opportunity and to the point where when I did some roles in the like residence life and all that I was looking for a permanent role and he called me when I got married. He called me and said hey I’m going to teacher’s college you want my job. I went uh sure so he walked me through and that’s what got me on my kind of larger career for a long time was with athletics and recreation and campus recreation. And that was a you know there’s a 13 year with just the University of Waterloo but is where I’m involved now with a lot of other organizations, still my passion and yeah it all came from that personal invitation from a leader. And that’s the other piece about curriculum. Curriculum doesn’t invite you to anything. It just gives you the info.

Marc Iturriaga
It just gives you the data. It’s the people that invite you, that welcome you, that include you, that help you in that growth. That’s the power, and you’re right, like curriculum, it’s just a book. And you can get lots of insights from book, but there’s so much that an inanimate object doesn’t do for you in your growth and education that an individual does.

Sam Demma
The title of this episode, How I Got Hooked on Crack. Of course not, but it’s too funny. You said, knowing I had someone in my corner, those are the words you use to describe your mom’s impact on you when you were going through university.

Sam Demma
And I think that’s a beautiful way to position it for any relationship with somebody who’s supporting you. When you truly know someone is in your corner, you can have the difficult conversations because in your heart, you know, they’re doing it. They’re trying to share these things with you for your best interests. And they have your genuine best interests in their hearts too.

Marc Iturriaga
How do you build a relationship with a staff member or a young person to the point where they do know, yes, this person is in my corner and is rooting for me? It’s hard, right? Because I think the biggest thing is that it takes time. It takes consistency, right? You got to behave that way constantly. And the one time we used to say this a lot in Resonance Life is they don’t remember the nine times that you were there for them. They remember the one time that they let you down, right? And so and that comes from that, you know, role modeling, and hey, we’re all human, we slip, we make mistakes, you make bad judgment calls. But it’s got to be that consistent, you cannot say, hey, I got your back. And then two seconds later, not, right. And so how do you create intentional interactions and pieces that demonstrate, I got your back, right? And that is more importantly, usually through failure than it is through successes. It’s easy to celebrate success and going, you rocked that, you’re awesome. It’s when they failed and they go, I failed you. And it’s like, you have not failed me or anyone. You learned, hopefully.

Marc Iturriaga
You’re gonna fail me if three, four more times you continue to repeat the same mistakes and not get to where we need to get to. But those are all learning pieces, right? And that’s the most important. So when did my mom have my back the most is when I was failing, not when I was being successful.

Marc Iturriaga
Cause when I was successful, she was kind of like, you got this, I can help you. It’s when we’re at our lowest that you need someone there to either support you, push you, do something to say, you got this. Because in the end, it’s I got this, right? I have to have it. I can have all the mentors in the world holding me up and trying to, but if I’m not going to do the work to actually get to where we need to go, it’s not gonna happen. So it’s like, they’re the support, but you still gotta put in the work, right? And that’s where I know I did. I put in the work to get to where I am.

Marc Iturriaga
There’s a lot of luck. There’s a lot of privilege as well. I get that, but there’s also a lot of work and a lot of learning along the way that if I didn’t take those opportunities that when those supports times were happening, yeah, I may not be where I am today.

Sam Demma
My favorite authors is a gentleman named Jim Rohn who’s passed away now, but he said learn to celebrate in the spring if you’ve planted really well in the fall and and learn to accept if there are no fruits in the spring or the summer that it’s because of your own previous actions and that the beautiful thing is another season will arrive where you can change the choices you make and hopefully reap a larger harvest. And I always think about that when I examine and reflect on my own life and how things are playing out and luck and privilege play a huge role, but labor does too.

Sam Demma
And most of the time our list of reasons why things aren’t working out doesn’t include our own name. And that’s like, it’s important that we put our own name on there if we want things to change. So I appreciate you sharing some of that as well. Tell me a little bit about what your role looks like today. You’ve worked in many different positions, and now you’re with the MSA.

Marc Iturriaga
So the coolest part about this role is that I was hired because I have an expertise, a lived experience that really relates to the operational pieces of the student association. So that is designing programs, having staff that support the student journey. Where a big gap was, was learning about student government and what that looks like.

Marc Iturriaga
Over the last four or five years, I’ve had a crash course in that. And the cool thing is I learned from so many different people that a lot of the work that we’re doing right now is ensuring that our outcomes are what are important, not our output. So our outcomes is that students have voices that students are supported.

Marc Iturriaga
And the more we look at those outcomes, we can start looking at some of the structures and systems that maybe are barriers or constraints for there’s some gaps that are preventing us to get to those outcomes. The other cool pieces is doing that collaboratively. So though I’m tasked to look at these things, I can’t do it on my own. I’m not going around saying, I know how to fix this, here’s this. It’s about making sure that if I’m going to fix a problem, I need the people with the lived experience to come and talk to me about it. I need to hear their voices. I need to see other lenses. I need to see diverse opinions. I need to see opposite opinions to really help us do that. So right now, our focus is on how do we, especially at you know in Ontario and the the university and college system being affected by international student enrollment, there’s a whole new lesson of learning to happen that we need to do together because we have so many people with different touch points with students and their needs that I can’t, I can’t assume I know the needs of every student there, it’s impossible. We need others in our circles, in our relationships to help us define that and help us move forward. So that’s what I really appreciate about my role is that I’m still learning. I’ve always said, and I used to tell students that, if you’re in a student role, like a job or a leadership role, and you think you’re not learning anymore and you’re just going through the motions, I can’t use you anymore because it’s time for you to move on, time to give that opportunity for someone else right and the kicker is there’s always something to learn but it comes back to that what you said who’s putting in the labor and the work to do that it’s easy to go I did this before go through the motions but then you’ve lost the outcome, right? You’re just focused on outputs. And so when we start losing sight of that, it’s time to move on. And I’ve done that with student leaders to say, hey, maybe time for you to take a break because I could use some other, even though it would be easier to have them because they know what they need to do and they already know the task. But I love, you mentioned too that, what I love about, especially higher ed is that cyclical nature. You got a term and things didn’t go right, hey, you got a new term. You got a new term and it’s not for everyone, but I love it because every new term we can go back, what did we do well? How can we repeat that success? Hey, what did we not do well and what can we work on that? Again, it always changes because the next generation of student comes in and those needs change every time. And so we need to be nimble. We need to keep learning and that that’s exciting. That’s what I love.

Sam Demma
I feel the passion coming through the mic for this this podcast. So you’re in the right position. You’re doing the work you’re supposed to be doing. It’s obvious and I appreciate you spending some time sharing your journey through education, some of your beliefs around building relationships with young people on the podcast.

Sam Demma
Keep up the amazing work you’re doing at the MSA and just know that I’m rooting you on and I’m excited to just continue following the journey. If there’s someone listening, Marc, and they wanna reach out to you, what would be the best way for them to get in touch with you?

Marc Iturriaga
It’s a Mohawk Student Association. It’s, you know, my first name, last name, I’m on the website. You can see us at, you know, https://mohawkstudents.ca/.

Marc Iturriaga
Yeah. But for me, outside of that, I do work with a higher ed organization, sports organization to help foster that sense of belonging amongst, you know, especially young people, but it is with Fostering Belonging and staff, and they can reach me at bonobo-consulting.com. And I love to talk, you know, help organizations really understand that impact they have when it comes to fostering belonging.

Sam Demma
Awesome, Marc, thank you so, so much. Keep up the amazing work and we’ll talk again soon.

Marc Iturriaga
Awesome. Thanks, Sam.

Join the Educator Network & Connect with Marc Iturriaga

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.

May 27, 2025 by Educator Entrepreneur Executive Director 0

Meagan Morris — Vice Principal at St. Joseph High School in the Ottawa Catholic School Board

Meagan Morris — Vice Principal at St. Joseph High School in the Ottawa Catholic School Board
About Meagan Morris

Meagan Morris is the current Vice Principal at St. Joseph High School in the Ottawa Catholic School Board, where she has served for nearly 25 years. Her career with the OCSB has included roles as a classroom and resource teacher, coach, guidance counsellor, and administrator. She has a particular passion for supporting students in grades 7 and 8.

Meagan is a firm believer in servant leadership and is deeply committed to supporting others in achieving their full potential. A strong advocate for extracurricular activities, she has coached the school’s Girls on the Run program, among other initiatives. Meagan believes that student success is rooted in positive relationships with every member of the school community, and she strives to create an environment where students feel seen and heard. Recently added to the OCSB principal eligibility list, Meagan is eager to continue her leadership journey as a principal.

Connect with Meagan Morris: Email | Instagram

Listen Now

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

Resources Mentioned

St. Joseph High School
Ottawa Catholic School Board

The Transcript

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

Sam Demma
Welcome back to another episode of the High Performing Educator podcast. This is your host, Sam Demma, and today we are joined by Meagan Morris. As Vice Principal at St. Joseph High School in Ottawa, Meagan brings nearly 25 years of diverse educational experiences to her role, having served as a classroom teacher, resource teacher, guidance counselor, and coach. Her dedication to servant leadership and particular passion for supporting intermediate students has shaped her approach to creating an inclusive school environment where relationships are at the heart of student success. Recently added to the principal eligibility list, Meagan continues to demonstrate her commitment to fostering student growth through both academic support and initiatives like Girls on the Run. Meagan, thank you so much for taking the time to be here today.

Meagan Morris
Thanks for having me, Sam. I appreciate it.

Sam Demma
Do me a favor, share a little bit about who you are with the educator listening to this and how you got into education.

Meagan Morris
Okay, so I am actually born and raised in Ottawa and I am a product. I work for the Ottawa Catholic School Board but I’m also a product for the Ottawa Catholic School Board but I’m also a product of the Ottawa Catholic School Board. So from K to 12 or OAC back then, I attended schools in the OCSB and you know when I was graduating high school I wasn’t really sure about what I wanted to do,

Meagan Morris
which is not unusual for high school graduates. And I had a friend who encouraged me to apply to the concurrent education program at Queens. And he said, if you don’t get into the teacher’s college portion, you’re still gonna do an undergrad at Queens. And so I applied thinking,

Meagan Morris
this could be a good opportunity. And through the application process, you have to identify your work that has supported education, you know, in jobs and volunteering. And by going through the process of the application, I realized just how much work I had done with youth, and how that was an area where I felt comfortable, and it was sort of an area that I was drawn to. So I ended up being successful and I did the concurrent education program at Queens, but then I still wasn’t convinced

Meagan Morris
that I wanted to be a teacher. I just, I think sometimes when it’s too obvious, you tend to doubt it a little bit. Yeah, so I took some time and I took a year and went traveling. And I actually was offered a teaching job

Meagan Morris
by email when I was in Thailand. So I was in Thailand. Yeah, I was backpacking through Thailand. And a principal emailed me to offer me a position. And I was skeptical at first. I wasn’t even sure I wanted to go back to Ottawa.

Meagan Morris
I didn’t know what I wanted to do. And I remember going out for dinner with a group of backpackers and mulling over the idea. And to them, it was a no brainer. I mean, this was a career that I was going to be starting and it was secure and it was a job and I hadn’t had none of that. So I said yes. And I started in 2001 and never really looked back. So that’s how I got into teaching.

Sam Demma
You mentioned that you traveled. Did you travel because people in your life told you you should? I think that travel is such a beautiful opportunity to see the world, expand perspectives, build our personality and character. Tell me a little bit more about that decision.

Meagan Morris
You know what? Actually, it was a bit of the opposite. Nobody encouraged me to travel. And it was something that I think I just felt like I needed to do. Partly, I think, because at the risk of sounding cliche, I just wanted a new experience that would provide me with a different perspective. And I felt like, you know, this was an hour and ever opportunity and I had no one to go with. The timing didn’t work out well that I could have friends who would could travel with me.

Meagan Morris
They were starting careers and things were happening. So I actually went by myself. And so I traveled through New Zealand, Australia, Southeast Asia, all on my own. And that was such an incredible experience. And I remember my parents being quite nervous about me going. I was still relatively young, I think I was about 23.

Meagan Morris
And my mom actually kept copies of all the emails that I sent her. And I recently, she gave them to me, I recently read them. And it was such an incredible time in my life. And I, and to be honest, I was really scared. I remember getting off the plane in the first country I landed in New Zealand and not having a clue about what to do and just made my way and it was, it was really cool.

Sam Demma
That’s how a lot of educators feel in their first year working in a school. They’re trying to figure it out. You have this passion and this idea and this motivation to get started. And then when you land in the classroom for the first time, you’re like, whoa, this is new. I got to figure out the next step I need to take. And I think it’s the same for any new experience that we have. When you think back to your first year teaching or working with young people, maybe it was even outside of the school walls, what advice do you think you needed to hear that in hindsight you could share with a person who’s just getting started in education now?

Meagan Morris
You know, I did get good advice in my first year because you are right. Your first year of teaching is like no other. And I think the advice that I got was not to be so hard on myself. So it was to invoke a bit of self-compassion because of course I was going to make mistakes. I was going to deliver lessons that would flop. I was going to mishandle classroom behavior.

Meagan Morris
There were things that were gonna happen that I was certainly not expected to do perfectly. And instead of wasting time and energy on doubting myself and chastising myself for not handling it maybe in a way somebody else would, I needed to just forgive myself and move on and learn from it. And I had a resource teacher that worked with me and she had quite a few years of experience and she was the one to say, you need to just put it in a box and move on and forgive yourself and take what you can from it, but don’t beat yourself up over it. And I think that’s the biggest piece of advice. Nobody wants you to be perfect. They just want you to try.

Sam Demma
You mentioned when you were filling out the application for teaching, you had this reflective moment where you realized I’ve done so much with youth already. I’ve worked with so many youth. 

Meagan Morris
Yeah. And I was really young, like, I think I was probably 10 or 11. And I had moms in the neighborhood probably thinking I was a lot older than I was asking me to watch their kids. And it just came natural. I mean, I gravitated towards the energy of kids. And just the feedback that I got, because there’s so much, you know, there’s so little restraint in terms of the positive and the negative. But then that moved into positions where I was working at afterschool literacy programs.

Meagan Morris
When I was in high school, I was doing sports camps. I was lifeguarding. I was doing all of these things that just, you know, I sometimes just fall into. So one experience would get me the next and often I was tapped on the shoulder.

Meagan Morris
And it was just a really happy place for me to be around that energy. And I remember my mom telling me that that was a bit of a gift that I have. And I guess I didn’t see it because when you’re looking at it from the front end,

Meagan Morris
it can be overwhelming to look at all your options. But in this case, it’s proven to be the absolute right decision.

Sam Demma
It sounds like serving others is a philosophy you follow, whether it’s working with initiatives like Girls on the Run or wanting to help and support young people, and now even the staff in the building. Where did that idea of, or philosophy of servant leadership originate for you in your life?

Sam Demma
Was there a role model or, you know, I think of my grandfather when I think about servant leadership, and I think that’s where I got it from. Where did that philosophy start for you?

Meagan Morris
It started with my parents. And my parents were, my parents are both retired now, but they were civil servants, but they believed in civic duty. They believed in being part of a community. They were great neighbors.

Meagan Morris
They are excellent friends. And they instilled in me, and it’s something that I have three kids of my own and it’s something that I share with my kids. And I can remember my two things that my parents would say to me, are one to be true to yourself. And the other was to give more than you take. And the idea that we’re put on the earth not to be takers, but to be givers. And that, you know, we have to share this space with billions of people, and we don’t have the right to take away. We have a responsibility to give. And that was the message that I got from my parents regularly. Certainly they said it, but they acted on it. So it 100% came from my parents. I have a brother who’s a criminal prosecutor. I have another brother who’s a criminal prosecutor. I have another brother who’s a police officer and my other brother’s in civil service. So we were just taught that that’s the way you operate.

Sam Demma
I love the value of giving more than you take. I also think that a lot of happiness and fulfillment comes from the providing and giving more than it does the receiving or taking in my personal experiences. So I think it’s a really big win-win scenario where you feel really good about the work you’re doing and so many other people benefit from it.

Meagan Morris
But 100% and I think that’s what makes it a vocation, right? Is that you believe in the work that you’re doing. And we know, I mean, there’s, we know that people, you know, get so much satisfaction by contributing, by being a contributing member brings that level of purpose and satisfaction that gives your job, quote unquote job meaning, you know?

Sam Demma
Yeah, you have a particular passion for supporting intermediate students, you know? Yeah. You have a particular passion for supporting intermediate students, grade seven and eight students. What unique challenges do you see in this specific age group and what opportunities exist for impact?

Meagan Morris
So when I first started teaching, I was teaching at the intermediate level. So I taught at the intermediate level for 10 years. And I taught at a school that was, we consider a family support school. So there were a lot of economic challenges.

Meagan Morris
There were a lot of socioeconomic needs. And that was new to me. Like I was a suburb kid who back in the nineties when I went to high school, it was predominantly white. And so I didn’t have that experience with diversity. And so I remember leaving that school and saying that, the students at this school taught me more than I could have ever have taught them. And particularly at the intermediate level, they’re really finding their way. They’re not elementary level, they’re not K to six level in the sense that they’re still following rules because the rules are in place. They’re starting to question things, they want autonomy, they’re dealing with hormones, they’re dealing with interpersonal skills, they’re thrown in our case with our board being a seven grade seven to 12 model, they’re technically thrown into a high school and learning to navigate that. There are so many challenges that it creates a sort of perfect storm of potential behavior, but also for growth. And they’re still young enough that they are so impressionable.

Meagan Morris
So it’s a great time to take even those behavioral moments, even, you know, dysregulated actions. It’s an opportunity for learning. And I just feel like they are really special. A lot of people can be intimidated at that intermediate level for all those reasons and can shy away. But I just think it’s a really special time because they’re really in flux. And so it’s so important that they have people in their lives that see them and hear them and validate what they’re going through.

Sam Demma
You’ve worked as a teacher in intermediate and junior high, high school. You’ve worked as a coach. You’ve also worked as a guidance counselor. How has your experience as a guidance counselor shaped your beliefs around leadership today and ensuring students feel seen, heard and supported?

Meagan Morris
So that’s a great question because when I first, you know, as I was moving through teaching, my end game was always to be a guidance counselor. I didn’t envision myself being an administrator, it was sort of the leadership piece that moved me in that direction. But my real passion was that sort of guidance, counselling support.

Meagan Morris
My undergraduate degree is a psychology degree. And so at some points, I thought about going in different directions and maybe pursuing a master’s in psychology, but in the end I went the teaching route and so it lent itself really well to being a guidance counsellor. and it just the perspective you get when you are able to have some one-on-one time with students and understand them, understand the motivation behind their their choices and their successes and and perhaps lack of successes is so important because you can you put things in perspective and you also remember that you’re teaching and working and supporting the whole student, not just the academic side. And I think in the classroom, sometimes teachers don’t know the whole story. I think it’s important to get to know your students, but sometimes you don’t know all the details. But I think teachers have to assume, you always have to assume that there is something you’re working with.

Sam Demma
It’s that backpack.

Meagan Morris
It’s the, and I, and that’s why when you came to our school and gave your presentation, I thought this is resonate so well with me because everybody has a backpack, everybody has something. And they’re never going to be able to work with that backpack unless they feel like somebody understands what’s in it. And a guidance counselor, being a guidance counselor, I would also say that being a guidance counselor before being a vice principal has given me a level of empathy, which is needed. I mean, you know?

Sam Demma
The question I’m curious about, and I think another educator might be thinking the same thing, is how do you build that trust and relationship with a student where it gets to the point where they’re comfortable sharing with you as the caring adult, some of the things that are in their backpack? I think there’s a lot of educators that would love to be able to support their students. And not that every teacher can be a counselor, that’s not possible. But for them to have some of that context would be helpful.

Sam Demma
I think that there’s something special about guidance counselors and the way they approach those conversations that enables those students to feel safe and feel supported. What are your thoughts on building relationships with young people?

Meagan Morris
So I think, you know, sometimes what we do is we rely on our own experiences with school. And a lot has changed. And our experiences, and that’s one thing that I learned, my experience was completely different than a lot of the students that I came into contact with.

Meagan Morris
And I think it’s really important first to be vulnerable, to understand that I’m not teaching them necessarily. Sure, there’s things that, there’s curriculum that I’m teaching them, and I’m mentoring them, them and I’m supporting them and I’m an example in the classroom, but we’re kind of learning together. And so you have to be vulnerable enough to show them that we’re learning together. I’m learning about you. I’m learning about who you are, how you learn, how this works with you. So I think you have to be vulnerable. And one thing that I always say to teachers that I work with is you can’t take behavior or dysregulated actions as personal. It’s not about you. We know that every student wants to succeed. And when they’re not succeeding, it’s because something is happening that is preventing that. And nine times out of ten, it’s not about the teacher. And so you have to have that level of unconditional support.

Meagan Morris
And when they know that you’re still going to be there after they’ve had a dysregulated moment, or they’ve, you know, done something that’s not appropriate, if they know that you’re still going to be there, then they start to trust you. And then that’s not appropriate. If they know that you’re still going to be there, then they start to trust you. And then that relationship starts forming. But at the end of the day, it can be, behavior in a classroom can be frustrating.

Meagan Morris
It can be exhausting. It can be, you know, but behavior comes from somewhere. And understanding that it’s not about us really takes the pressure off us, but it also helps us to continue to support those students.

Meagan Morris
And that’s how you build relationships is by having them see you as somebody they can trust.

Sam Demma
I’m assuming one of the other ways you build trust with young people is giving them some time. Is that one of the reasons you got involved in extracurricular activities, running programs, like girls on the run? Tell me more about when in your career, you started getting involved in more extracurricular activities and what prompted that?

Meagan Morris
So when I first started teaching, I was a phys ed teacher. So that lends itself to a lot of coaching. And it’s actually a nice segue into counseling because when you are a phys ed teacher and you’re a coach, you are always seeing students in an unstructured environment. A phys ed class in grade seven and eight can be organized chaos. So you’re often seeing students in their natural habitat. And so it allows you a way of getting to know students in a way beyond curriculum delivery. And coaching also lets you see the skill set that students may not be able to demonstrate in the classroom. They can show, you know, when they’re on a team or when they’re part of a club, they can demonstrate leadership, they can demonstrate teamwork, they can demonstrate collaboration, compassion, all of those things. And so I got started out of necessity, because when you’re a phys ed teacher, you coach. But then I never really left it. And I had the opportunity this year to run the Girls on the Run program, which is basically a run program for students who identify as female. And in addition to training them to run a 5k, we also work on the social emotional side.

Meagan Morris
So you do a little bit of running, a little bit of internal work, and then it culminates in a 5k race. So super empowering. And I think it’s just, especially now as a vice principal, it’s so great to be working with students in a proactive role instead of a reactive role.

Sam Demma
That program sounds amazing. I remember when I was graduating from elementary school and starting high school that I ran cross country for the first time. And some of my fondest memories from elementary school and starting high school that I ran cross country for the first time. And some of my fondest memories from elementary were running the perimeter of the fence in our schoolyard after the school day ended with our cross country teacher. We didn’t have the social emotional learning aspect of it, but I enjoyed those moments and I remember them a lot. I’m sure you’re creating moments like that for all of the girls for all the students who identify as female students in that program. So that’s has it been around for a while? Is it a new program?

Meagan Morris
Well, apparently it’s been around for a long time. It started in the United States, but it just recently came on our radar at the OCSB. There was a principal in the elementary panel who kind of put it out to the OCSB and a bunch of us jumped on it. And it’s really, really cool. But I mean, I agree with you, we know that getting involved in extracurricular has protective factors, right? It supports mental health, and it supports well being. What’s happening in the classroom, obviously, is paramount. But those are the things that students remember. They remember extracurriculars. They remember field trips. They remember those connections They made with their coaches and their club, you know leaders That’s what makes and you know, if we learn nothing from Kovac that’s what makes the high school experience what it is because When we don’t have that we’re not having different forms of connection, which is so important.

Sam Demma
As you prepare for this next step, I know you’re a vice principal now, you’re filling in as a principal this week. As you prepare for that next step, what vision do you have for creating a culture that balances academic excellence and strong relationship building?

Meagan Morris
Well, I think like you mentioned in the introduction, I do believe in servant leadership. And that does come back from what I know. But I think when you are leading a school community, it’s like an inverted pyramid. And the administration is actually at the bottom of the pyramid.

Meagan Morris
And our job is to be of service to every level above us. And that’s your staff, that’s your students, that’s the family, that’s the community. And so that is going to help those relationships build. And that is going to get the best out of your school. Like right now, I’m responsible for supporting the intermediate panel, which is a love for me. But one of the things that I’ve done this year is I’ve done a monthly lunch and learn. So we have a lot of new teachers. And I recognize that, you know, when you’re in a really big school, like we are, it can sometimes be hard for new teachers to connect with mentors. So once a month, I bring everybody together. We order pizza, we hang out and we talk about different topics, because I know that if I’m supporting the teachers and the teachers feel like we have a solid relationship, they feel seen and heard. That’s only going to translate to the connections those teachers are building with students and their families. So my job really is to make sure the staff is in a healthy position to do the best and to do right by the students that they work with.

Sam Demma
That whole concept of inverted pyramid is such a powerful way to think about leadership, not only in the context of a school, but any organization. I really appreciate you sharing that. For anyone listening to this who wants to ask you a question or reach out and connect, what would be the best way for them to get in touch with you?

Meagan Morris
Well, I shared my Instagram, but also I would almost say email. Email is the best. Yeah.

Sam Demma
We’ll make sure to pop that in the show notes for anyone listening. Meagan, this was a lovely conversation. Thank you so much for taking the time, sharing your journey into education, some of your beliefs around building relationships with students and administration. I really enjoyed this conversation.

Meagan Morris
Well, thank you, Sam. Well, thank you, Sam. I really enjoyed it too.

Join the Educator Network & Connect with Meagan Morris

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.

May 22, 2025 by Education Educator Vice Principal 0

Lori Wagner – Coordinator of Student Support at Myrnam Outreach and Homeschool Centre

Lori Wagner – Coordinator of Student Supports
About Lori Wagner

Lori Wagner is the Myrnam Outreach and Homeschool Centre (MOHC) Coordinator. She was born feeling the need to make connections and to help others. The passion to teach was in her blood.  She has always looked at learners from an individualized lens; a perspective that was different from how others looked at the teaching profession over twenty years ago.

Her path through life has been filled with twists and turns, which has deepened her compassion for others, and has allowed her to approach times of change and struggle with a perspective that has helped her live every day to the fullest. 

Connect with Lori: Email

Listen Now

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

Resources Mentioned

Myrnam Outreach and Homeschool Centre (MOHC)

Camp Widow

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 Lori Wagner. Lori actually saw me speak at a teacher convention about two and a half months ago, and we connected right afterwards and it was obvious that she would be a great fit for a podcast interview; so we brought her on. Lori was born with the feeling that she needed to make connections and to help others.


Sam Demma (01:03):
The passion to teach was in her blood. She always looked at learners from the individualized lenses; a perspective that was different from how others looked at the teaching profession over 20 years ago. Her path through life has been filled with twist and turns, which has deepened her compassion for others and allowed her to approach times of change and struggle with the perspective which has helped her live every day to the fullest. And she vulnerably shares some of those challenges during this interview today and it’s actually an anniversary of a huge challenge that she went through years ago. But that’s what really has boughten out her light and her compassion and I think you’ll get so much out of today’s interview. So I’ll hear you. I’ll hear from you on the other side; enjoy today’s episode. Lori, thank you so much for coming on the High Performing Educator podcast. Huge pleasure to have you on the show after meeting at the teachers convention briefly. Why don’t you start by introducing yourself and sharing a little bit about what led you to working with young people?


Lori Wagner (02:02):
Well, it was, well only the thing that I ever wanted to do. My dad was a teacher for 40 years, probably at the same school. He was a junior high science, which did not interest me at all. I, no offense to those teenagers. I love coaching them. I love teasing them, in the hallways and walking down, getting like blown away by their acts, the body after street. But I do not like teaching them and the reason is I am kind of a five year old at heart. So where can you be goofy and like sing in front of a class and do weird accents and just make kids like super engaged? Elementary! So that was my route. And then I chose special ed because I just have a passion for finding the, like that student who is struggling. You see them so frustrated and when you get to that point that you can see you’ve like figured out how they learn and that spark goes in their eye,


Lori Wagner (02:56):
It’s like the best thing ever. Mm. So that’s why I went this special ed route. And it’s still a passion of mine to figure out kids with learning disabilities, ’cause you really see them kind of get lost in the regular classroom. And if you don’t have that sped eye that I feel like I do have and really know how to get to them and do those diagnostic testings and make a difference, like in my first practicum there was a boy and he was like a non-reader non-writer by the end of my practicum, he wrote a creative writing story that was two pages long. ‘Cause I made this cool project. It was like create a creature and the news came and it was just like that. So that was not even teaching. That was my practicum. It impacted me to then carry that on to the next years ahead.


Sam Demma (03:40):
I love that something interesting is you mentioned, you know, when you, you really feel for them when you see the struggle and you know, you’ve been through an instrumentable amount of struggle and I’m curious to know what your perspective on struggle is. Like how do you view struggle?


Lori Wagner (03:57):
Sometimes you have to view a sense of humor. Yep. Sometimes you have, you have to view it with the silver lining. Sometimes you have to view it that we are all struggling in some way. So it was really interesting to me. So the backstory about what Sam is talking about, the struggle is today it’s a 12th anniversary. My husband’s death. It was a sudden death in the avalanche. I was, was pregnant at the time, six months pregnant with my second child. And that was really one of the, well, that was the hardest thing that I had to do in the months ahead and deliver by myself and crazy two little babies, but the connections and the compassion that I felt from the people of BC and also of Alberta who supported me, like it filled my heart. It made me feel like I wanted to do that for other people in any way. So on this day, like if my voice shakes a little bit, you’re just gonna have to ignore it.


Sam Demma (04:54):
But no it’s just feels


Lori Wagner (04:55):
Passionate about it. Like it’s my, it makes me smile. When I think back to that feeling because he had died on a, in a mountain called McBride in the Rocky mountains, which funny and left, I ended up moving there and changing my life and new perspectives were, were changed there. But I just remember going to view his body, which my parents thought I was pretty. He is either like, you’re gonna you’re pregnant. This is gonna be bad for the baby. And I was like, no, this is what I have to do. And the whole town of 500 people just rallied around us, the victim service worker, which is now one of my best friends. She stayed us with us the whole time. The corner was like, if you need to see him at two in the morning, again, you just call me, I’ll come pick you up.


Lori Wagner (05:41):
We’ll take you to the hospital. The hotel put us up, everyone at the, the hospital and restaurants were just feeding us and taking care of us. And I was just like, wow, these people don’t even know me or my family. And they’re crying for me. Like this is made me feel like this connection to strangers that I now like, especially on this day, I love connecting to people. I don’t know because everyone has a story. And if I can make them smile sometimes like that taxi driver that I’m like reaching out, not treating ’em my keys, a second class per, or that Pelman that I’m like, how’s your day going? And like, what’s new with you. And those people that don’t get talked to in my travels, which I usually somewhere amazing on March 24th. Cause I’m determined to make this day the complete opposite of what it was.


Lori Wagner (06:33):
So I’ve always like gotta go to Vancouver. We’ve gone to the states a couple times last year, we’re supposed to go to Texas. And so the pandemic hit last year and it, it gutted me because March back to the perspective of how people are feeling right now, I really feel like now people all understand what March brings me because there is, we’ve been getting emails about that unresolved trauma that many people feel from last year that their world was falling apart. And how now they’re reacting, not by like a cognitive way, but it’s hitting them like with anxiety or just this feeling of unsettling and, or just they’re crying for no reason, nobody because of what happened last year. So every month I go through this process and I never know when it’s gonna hit me. I’m usually a little bit anxious, but last year it felt like our world was falling apart.


Lori Wagner (07:28):
So that’s how it brought me back to a PTSD feeling of 11 years ago from last year, my world fell apart. So it tanked and it put a, and not a great place, which I’m now with the help of some therapists and getting back on meds and being pro mental health, no stigma talking about it. But people now understand that that is not something you think about the whole world feels this trauma right now. And so it was hard for me to talk about this to other people. Well, cuz they would say, oh, March 24th is, that’s gotta be such a hard day. I’ve got all these text that are saying big hugs to you. And, but they don’t know that I actually broke down last weekend for no reason. I don’t know because I just felt like I got hit with a truck. Mm.


Lori Wagner (08:14):
I dug my husband’s ashes out and like feeling them. I don’t know if you know anything about ashes, but there’s bone bin in there. There’s teeth and crying. And my present partner who he’s been with me for six years is super supportive about me crying over my dead husband, which is like not really that common. So I’ve gone on now, a mini tangent from the con connecting with compassion and then kind of back how trauma has made me feel. But I’ve had hard days, but I’ve also had a lot of times that I really just had to laugh at what was going on. So I can give you an example of that time


Sam Demma (08:53):
Please. And before you continue, before you continue, I just wanna say thank you so much for being so vulnerable and sharing this part of yourself. It will relate to some people listening and, and they’ll find some strength in your sharing. So thank you so much.


Lori Wagner (09:08):
Yeah, no, Sam, I really think that being young widow, I was 32 at the time. So I went out to, because I, I don’t know how to be a widow. I’ve got two little kids and a section on grief in chapters had like seven books in it. And the one that I picked up and looked at was about finding a new golf partner one year 65. And it was so unrelatable that I’ve like since reached out, there’s a camp down the states called camp widow, which now they operate them Ontario. There’s an amazing camp called camp care, which is a grief family trauma camp. Oh wow.


Sam Demma (09:40):
It’s,


Lori Wagner (09:41):
It’s just that connecting with other widows that know what’s happening and how it feels to have two little kids that feel like you wanna crawl up in or how many kids crawl up in a corner and cry, but you can’t because you have to keep goings. So anyhow, there was one time, couple, it was probably, I don’t know, six years in and I kind gone through some ups and downs with my in-law family because death brings out hard feelings in people. And sometimes there’s times that we weren’t talking and we got back on track and my mother-in-law and father-in-law were always amazing. So I decided to do something important for them and take some, I’ve always offered the ashes to them and they said, no, no, no, that’s fine. You don’t have to. So I looked into it and there was this place in the states that you could get ashes like blown, like glass into this orb.


Lori Wagner (10:33):
And then it made like a beautiful little ornament. So I contacted them down there and they said, this is what you have to do. You need so much ashes and we’re gonna, you can ship it down and then we’ll send you the ornaments back. So I’m at the kitchen table having a beer with my, my dead husband’s ashes and kind of looking at it like, this is the most ridiculous thing. Like this is ridiculous. So I’m, I’m scooping it out and I’m like, I wonder what, part’s going down the state SCO be your arm, proving your, I don’t know, but you’re going, this is a man who never went on a flight to the states. I was like your first vacation. Hey congratulations. So I go to the post office and funny enough, the lady at the counter was also a bit of, and she was, but she not a looking at the dark side of humor kind of person than I am, like kind of laughing about the crazy stuff.


Lori Wagner (11:25):
So yeah, she goes, what’s in the package. And I said, and I was like, it’s ashes, my, my dead husband’s ashes. She was like, well, how much would you think this, this would be worth? Cuz you have to put that a on there when you have the item that you’re shipping down. And I was like, what do I say? Priceless? Like nothing like it’s ashes in the metal container. Like I don’t know what to tell you. And my friend was there and she kind of understands my sense of humor and we’re trying not to laugh because this is so crazy. I’m shipping my husband off and trying to put a price tag on his, his, his worth. But that there’s no sense in that to me. So anyhow, it was just one of the stories I had shared with my widow group because they got it and thought it was very humorous and yeah, it was just one of times, like my kids had asked many times actually when they’re little, can we pull out daddy? And I was like, okay, here we go. Like bring up, open the box up. And I have to remind my two year old, like daddy’s not a sandbox. Let’s get the cars out of there and yeah, shut ’em up and put them to bed. And then I have a little moment of like, wow, that was hard, but also crazy. And this life is so weird, but also amazing.


Sam Demma (12:41):
Hmm. And you said when you, you moved to where the accident happened in your life, you know, changed, like what changed for you? How did you approach life differently? Like, I’m curious to know what minds said shifts happened after the experience


Lori Wagner (12:56):
That life is too short and we can, and there’s really bad things that happen that we shouldn’t worry about the little things. So especially during this pandemic time in teaching, there’s been a lot of people worrying about what I call the small stuff like and worrying about. I’m not talking about getting sick, but just worry about those little details. And my perspective now is like, whoa, I don’t care. Like pretty pandemic or whatever about chewing gumming class. Or if you have a hat on let’s, I’m not arguing about those details. I cannot do it or worrying about. So my social online kids that I have in grade eight that are also struggling with theirs, some health problems going on, there’s some family stuff, Hey, guess what? Grade eight, you’re gonna still be a good person. If you don’t remember 18, whatever, whatever. So what we’re gonna do is just do the review. I’ll help you through the test and we’re getting you through grade eight social cause this will not matter in five years. Like I cannot deal with the silly details when there’s bigger things in life. So what had happened was I was starting to go visit my, the victim service lady that we got to be connected with. She was about my age and I would use it kind of as mistakes. So my perspective also was I’m just a swearing podcast or not,


Sam Demma (14:14):
It’s just fellow educators. So it’s okay.


Lori Wagner (14:17):
I’m gonna make this life the same way I would’ve done with my husband. So that means I’m gonna learn how to drive a fifth wheel. I’m gonna get myself a big one ton to pull it around. And I’m fricking doing it with a eight month old and a two almost three year old and it’s happening. So I learned how to pull a fifth wheel all that thing to through the mountain passes all the way up. It’s like, I don’t know if you know where prince George is, but anyhow, you go through Jasper and then you go, instead of going down Camelot and Vancouver, you take it up to like halfway to it’s 45 minutes from Mount Watson. Okay. If that gives you some sort perspective on perspective again, on where I’m at. So I’m parked in our backyard and I’m thinking, okay, instead of parking in our backyard, maybe I should look for some investment land.


Lori Wagner (15:02):
There’s another backstory about why I had some money for investment land because I had these bring me back to this, but I had some thoughts three months before he died about him dying. And I kept, it was a gut intuition that I could not fight and we just had sign life insurance. So, oh wow. Bring me that if you’d like. Okay. So anyhow, I’m connected with this real estate lady who we had got to be good friends, cause everyone in this town is like a personal connection. It’s such a cute little small town. And she said to me, so too bad, you weren’t like looking at buying a business because you’d be so good. You’re really sociable. And I, and I said, what kind of business? She said, it’s a trading company, kind of those like small town, bulk health food jars on the wall, little cafe that, that, so I said, well, I love baking that that would be like, take me to see it.


Lori Wagner (15:52):
And it was just this place. You ever walk into a place and you feel like it’s home. Like, wow, this feels amazing. So I said, well, what’s the catch on this? She goes, well, there’s a couple there that would like to go in with a partner. They don’t wanna do it on their own. So I asked my friend if she knew them. And of course she does cuz you know, everyone in this town. And so I cold called this guy. He was a retired banker and just had a conversation. We went to go see the building again. And he goes, okay, well think about it. I’m in, if you’re in. And I was sitting outside, looking at the mountains and put my kids to bed in the trailer and I thought, this is crazy if I walked away for like, I was on math leave.


Lori Wagner (16:33):
But if I left my teaching career, which I do love, but would I regret not trying when I’m 85? And my answer in my heart was like, this would be something I would regret, not throwing all, just all caution to the wind and taking this huge leap by myself and just doing it. And my thought was always like, what’s the worst that could happen. Mm. The worst that could happen, it would go south. And I could move back to Alberta. What’s the best that could happen. I can change up my life a little bit. Get myself out of that. Like whenever I’d go to the local grocery store or see someone in town, I’d get that pity widow look like, how’s it going? Worry. Yeah. And then you’d have to kind of like console other people, even though they’re trying to be very compassionate, but it was a hard space to be.


Lori Wagner (17:23):
And it was also a small town that people knew me. I’d taught in for 10 years. So I made the decision like within minutes, I’m gonna buy this business and we’re moving. I had three apartments above this to go building. Like we can live up there. So I call my parents from, from the backyard. I was like, so, and they were worried about me living on an acreage Alberta by myself. Mm. Like they were that concerned like Lori, you’re gonna have to sell your house just after Luke was born. That’s my son. You can’t handle it all acreage by yourself. You’re a single mom. Now you’ve got two little kids and they made me move into town to be closer to them right after he died. So anyway, I called about, I was like, mom, dad, I have something to tell you. He might wanna sit down.


Lori Wagner (18:04):
I bought a business to McBride and I’m moving there next month. And what are you like, are you actually insane? And I was like, it’s happening? So anyhow, I move up there. We had a couple years we lived in and then I ended up finding the most amazing soul healing place up on the mountain road, just by chance through my friend up there. That was in the same en road that my husband died at the top of that mountain. And that house was, I’ll send you pictures after like you, people from out where you live will not believe that some people are that lucky to live in such a magical mountainous valley. Like it was just gorgeous. And I lived there for about eight years and then circumstances kind of, I don’t know if you believe in the universe and like putting things out there, but I always wanted to live in the mountain.


Lori Wagner (18:55):
I always wanted to own a bakery. And this is like, when I’m a teenager, I did that. I did that. I wanted to get back to teaching and I kind of felt a little bit stuck in that mountain town. The schools, people were moving out, the schools were like 50 kids. There was a, and any opportunity for me after I’d worked in a few different places. So I thought I love this place, but I’ve also dated the men in this town. So I’m not gonna find any new ones. I also do want a partner that is going to be like my chapter two partner, which I did meet up there who coincidentally his birthday’s today. So now always celebrate.


Sam Demma (19:31):
Wow.


Lori Wagner (19:32):
Yeah, it was the universe saying to me, here you go, Laurie, like my, my best friend. And I looked at each other when we were talking about this and I met him up on a, a Memorial ride for their friend. And I said, so how old are you? And he said, 40. And last month, when’s your birthday? March 24th. And my girlfriend and I looked at each other like, is this, is this a screen Still around years later? And, and it’s brought me back to, Alberta’s the most amazing school my kids are doing well, and we’re all doing well. And we just appreciate what we have.


Sam Demma (20:08):
Wow. It’s such a good reminder to cherish the small and big things in life, you know? Your story’s amazing. And if you had advice for young teachers or, you know, teachers that are just getting into the profession, what would you share with them?


Lori Wagner (20:23):
Well, I do have a new teacher in here that I apparently I’m mentoring. Nice. So I, yeah, I, I did see her come in and get, she kinda get overwhelmed, which is normal. But I, so the new position I came into was a position that kind of fell into my lap last year. And it was the facilitator of the home learning outreach program. And it had no structure. It was like a, just a program. They thought they would get up and running to increase enrollment. And when I got hired or offered the position, they said, I said to them, so what does this look like? And they said, whatever, you’d like it to be. So every day was a learning process last year. And every day was scary until I learned something and could apply it the next time. And so I, in that, by from it, and then by the end of the year, I could see how far I’d come.


Lori Wagner (21:12):
So this new teacher came in and then also we revamped the program twice this year and the other teacher’s like, oh my goodness, what are we doing? I’m like, everyone just stop. Let’s take it day by day. This will all work out. I’ve been through this before we will learn. We will grow. We will tweak. And that’s part of even teaching, right. Or being a human, like we’re supposed to make mistakes. We’re supposed to be scared. We’re supposed to be uncomfortable or else we wouldn’t be growing. So when I was, had no idea what I was doing last year, I learned even more like when I moved to BC, scary, uncomfortable, but worth all those magical years I had with the people that lived in that town and what memories we collected. So we’ll, we’ll collect memories by being stressed out and anxious and taking that step.


Lori Wagner (22:01):
I know, I feel like a lot of the teaching community, I’m not type a, but I feel like there’s a lot of type a out there and that’s hard to deal with change, but I think we need to force ourselves to deal with change. And I could not live with not changing because I would get more quickly. Yeah. Frankly. And before, before Cory died, I was thinking, oh, this life’s kind of boring. And then it got really boring, but you know what? My daughter, when she was eight said to me, dad didn’t die. We would never have met all these people and had these experiences. She’s kind of an old soul. And I was like, you’re right. Like, good for you seeing this over lining in this. Cuz we, we lived in an amazing life in the mountains. Like we quad to the top of the mountains and a, you go up for snowmobile to the cabin to have a hot dog grow river boating on the river.


Lori Wagner (22:53):
Whenever we’d want to like doing all these crazy things that people who live in Alberta or who live in the city. My kids experience so much because of the steps that we went through. And so now, okay. Back to the teacher, the first year teacher thing. Yeah. Change and being scared is good. I just do just do it. Put, take your steps forward, build the plane as you’re flying it. And that’s fine because that’s how even I’m 44, this little young thing is 22 coming in and I can tell her it’s okay. I still sometimes don’t know what I’m doing, which is what I tell of kids. Cause kids, since we’ve got like, oh, you’re an adult, you’ve got it all together. I’m like, guess what? No, we don’t. And that’s okay. Cause we’re, if we figured it all out, we might as well be dead, be honest.


Lori Wagner (23:43):
So I also look at kids and young people that are just coming into their own well, I’m thinking like teenagers and kids too. I think we have too much, too many high expectations for kids and how they behave in their emotions and what they’re dealing with because I kids live in like the red or green zone and we kind of operate the yellow zone. And when we like, we can be okay, but when we get mad, we’re mad or sad. We get sad where kids just go from one extreme to the other and I can have a crying fit, but it could be in my own space cause I can regulate myself. But when kids are overwhelmed or their parents are overwhelmed because of what’s going, how they’re feeling. I really think that we need to take the behaviors as something behind it and recognize that adults have temper tantrums. So how can we expect our kids to walk into the door? Having good days all the time. Yeah. So I guess that comes like from a first year teacher, how we’re feel about things to how you’re recognizing the emotions in our fellow staff members and just trying to be compassionate about where everyone’s at and sharing that with them. Cause then you don’t feel like you’re alone. Same with like the sharing with the widows. You don’t feel like you’re alone anymore.


Sam Demma (25:01):
I love it and thank you so much for taking the time again today to chat about all this. I really appreciate it. If another educator is, is tuning in right now and wants to reach out to you and have a conversation about anything we just shared, like what would be the best way for them to reach out to you and have a conversation?


Lori Wagner (25:22):
My email would be fine. I would, could would share out to them if anyone reached out to you. I don’t know any other technology.


Sam Demma (25:30):
Email is perfect. Yeah. Just spell it out.


Lori Wagner (25:36):
Oh, it’s loriwagner44@gmail.com. Perfect.


Lori Wagner (25:45):
So what was I to say with oh, sharing with people? I, yeah, I’ve also like cold reached out. Like when people, the avalanche victims really get me those news stories. If you Google my name, Lori Wagner, avalanche McBride, that story went national because it was at the end of the very bad avalanche here. Wow. So now when I hear about these like credit mess, I will reach out to those widows or widowers, or whether I know them or not. And just say, Hey, I’ve been through what you’ve been through. If you’d like to reach out, I totally help walk you through how you’re feeling and it’s okay to feel that and validate that for you because, and some of them have come back to me and we’ve had that kind of conversation. And on those that also were a little bit lost, like I was lost. So I’ve often thought about a podcast about widows ’cause I don’t know if there’s a lot out there, but it might be an interesting topic.


Sam Demma (26:40):
I think that’s a great idea. An amazing idea. And if you do start it, let me know. But again, thank you so much for taking the time to chat today and honoring the, you know, the Memorial, today’s 12 years. I really appreciate it. Keep doing awesome work and stay in touch. I would love to stay in touch, whether it’s over email or whatever and keep doing great stuff and, and I’ll talk to you soon.


Lori Wagner (27:07):
Okay. Thanks a lot, Sam.


Sam Demma (27:09):
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; f you want 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.

February 20, 2022 by School Counsellor Social Worker Student Success 0

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