This week on the Essential Element, Christian sits down with community mentor Melanie Grassi to talk about growth and evolving through deeply difficult times. Melanie shares her experience on finding ways to continue to mentor, learn, and support the people in her community all while dealing with her own journey of becoming a widow.

Featuring original music from SOTA Graduates Abbey Meysenburg and Ellia Coggins.

Visit elementsofed.org for more information.

This week on the essential elements, Christian speaks with Carrie Hampton, the first face you see when walking through the doors at SAMI. Carrie shares with us about how she makes space to get to know every student that walks through the door by the end of the year, what it means to hold students, the ways she helps push them forward, but also how to show them grace when they may be struggling.

Featuring original music from SOTA Graduates Abbey Meysenburg and Ellia Coggins.

Visit elementsofed.org for more information.

This week on the Essential Element, Christian speaks with SAMI science teacher and mentor Matt Lonsdale about how so much of his teaching is actually human connection, about his hopes and dreams for his students futures, and about education through inquiry instead of focusing on just knowing the answers. 

Featuring original music from SOTA Graduates Abbey Meysenburg and Ellia Coggins.

Visit elementsofed.org for more information.

This week Christian sits down with IDEA Humanities Teacher and mentor Kate Merwin to talk about intergenerational relationships, about her past work with incarcerated student has informed her current work in the classroom and as mentor, and about what it mean for empathy to be slow burn. 

Featuring original music from SOTA Graduates Abbey Meysenburg and Ellia Coggins.

Visit elementsofed.org for more information.

This week Christian sits down with SAMI social worker and mentor Jodi Dumont to talk about creating a space for students to fail in ways that are constructive and that create a sense of worthiness along the way. Jodi speaks about going beyond meeting the basic needs of students to give them a sense of value and belonging that they can use even after they graduate. 

Featuring original music from SOTA Graduates Abbey Meysenburg and Ellia Coggins.

Visit elementsofed.org for more information.

Featuring original music from SOTA Graduates Abbey Meysenburg and Ellia Coggins.

Visit elementsofed.org for more information.

On the fourth episode of the Essential Element podcast with Christian Paige, Christian talks with speaker, educator, and consultant Dr. John Gaines. Their conversation focuses on relationships and mentorship centered around his three pillars of people, place, and purpose. People find their purpose through a specific place. This translates to the partner schools at SOTA, SAMI, and IDEA, each of which provide a unique place for students that need a place to be seen, where their purpose connects to their passions. 

Featuring original music from SOTA Graduates Abbey Meysenburg and Ellia Coggins.

Visit elementsofed.org for more information

 On the third episode of the Essential Element podcast, Christian talks with SAMI teacher Duncan White about the importance of relationships and student voice in projects and assessments. Duncan talks about searching for student’s curiosity and passion and building on that to inspire engagement. Each student is unique with a complex set of interests and ideas, combined with a natural curiosity for the world. Learning how to unpack that curiosity and turn it into a spark of wonder is what Duncan excels at both as a mentor and a classroom teacher.

Featuring original music from SOTA Graduates Abbey Meysenburg and Ellia Coggins.

Visit elementsofed.org for more information

This week’s episode of the Essential Element features SOTA teacher and mentor Tristan Towne. Tristan shares about her journey into education through theater, scriptwriting, poetry, improv, and storytelling. From teaching English to Seniors British literature at a traditional high school to teaching writing at SOTA, Tristan is a student of life that is passionate about people and brings that passion into her mentor group in caring for her students. Tristan talks about bringing her authentic self into the classroom as a mentor and how vulnerability and authenticity inspires a trusting culture.

Featuring original music from SOTA Graduates Abbey Meysenburg and Ellia Coggins.

Visit elementsofed.org for more information

On this innagural episode of the Essential Element podcast feautring Christian Paige, Robin Jaecklein shares her experience with being a teacher and mentor at the Tacoma School of the Arts and the Grant Center for the Expressive Arts before that. Christian dives into her passion for dance as an artistic medium and how she uses that passion as an individual to fuel her interest in helping young people find their own passions. Educators bring so much of themselves into the classroom both as people and as teachers, and Robin reminds us that it's a never ending journey of refining that craft and learning how to push yourself to try new and different ways of engaging with students. 

Featuring original music from SOTA Graduates Abbey Meysenburg and Ellia Coggins. 

Visit elementsofed.org for more information