Jordan Supercast

By Jordan SupercastEducation Self-Improvement Kids & Family Education for Kids

Jordan Supercast episodes

March 02, 2023 Episode 182: Teachers Score Big as Utah Jazz “Most Valuable Educators”
They took center court during a recent Utah Jazz basketball game, but it wasn’t to score a point or make a free throw. Two Jordan School District teachers are being honored as “Most Valuable Educators” or MVE’s by the Jazz organization.
On this episode of the Supercast we sit down with Mountain Point Elementary School teacher, Charity Horne and Joel P. Jensen teacher, Mandy Truscott to find out what it takes to be an MVE and what makes them stand out as educators, elevating everyone around them.
Audio Transcription
Anthony Godfrey:
Hello, and welcome to the Supercast. I'm your host, Superintendent Anthony Godfrey. They took center court during a recent Utah Jazz basketball game, but it wasn't to score a point or make a free throw. Two Jordan School District teachers are being honored as “Most Valuable Educators” or MVEs by the Jazz organization. On this episode of the Supercast, we sit down with Mountain Point Elementary School teacher, Charity Horne, and Joel P Jensen, teacher Mandy Truscott, to find out what it takes to be an MVE and what makes them stand out as educators, elevating everyone around them.
We're at Joel P Jensen today to celebrate an award-winning teacher, and we're talking with Aaron Hunter, her principal as well. Aaron, how are you?
Aaron Hunter:
Doing great.
Anthony Godfrey:
I want you to talk a little bit about Mandy Truscott and why she won this award. Tell us a little bit about this award and what's happening.
Aaron Hunter:
Yeah, so the Jazz and Instructure who run Canvas, they nominate, I want to say this is the first year. I'm not sure, it's a pretty new award. But yeah, people nominate teachers throughout the state for the Most Valuable Educator Award. Mandy was nominated and I can wholeheartedly say, I've known Mandy for a decade, and she's an amazing teacher. You can’t see her classroom, there's no kids in here. But if you walked in, you could, you could already tell by the way things are organized that she's a wonderful teacher.
Anthony Godfrey:
It's very well organized, it's exciting. It's bursting with fruit flavor. It's got colors everywhere, it looks fantastic. And I've known Mandy for a long time, so I know she's a fantastic teacher. Aaron, how would you describe Mandy Truscott?
Aaron Hunter:
So, Mandy Truscott is the teacher. Like if we ever, she never fills referrals out. If we ever got a referral from Mandy Truscott, we would know that it was a very, very serious thing because Mandy just does an excellent job at managing her classroom, keeping her kids engaged. As she mentioned, the growth that her students make is incredible. It's awesome.
Anthony Godfrey:
So you talked about the growth. Tell me, what kind of growth do you see in students who have Mandy's class?
Aaron Hunter:
Yeah. An average student that takes Mrs. Truscott’s class on average makes about three years of growth in reading from beginning to end
Anthony Godfrey:
That's incredible. That's incredible. Awesome. So in addition to there being astronauts, it's a time travel situation as well. Yeah. Because you're making up for lost time.
Mandy Truscott:
Well, that's why we say like they've landed on grade level. They do this like jump and I was like, it's like a little hyper speed. They're in hyperdrive and they eventually can get there, but they have to put in the time and effort.
Anthony Godfrey:
So I'm excited to hear that you got this award, Mandy. Congratulations.
Mandy Truscott:
Thank you. It was really exciting.
Anthony Godfrey:
Tell me about your loot. What did you get as a part of this prize?
Mandy Truscott:
There was a thousand dollars to use in my classroom, which was really nice.
Anthony Godfrey:
Great.
Mandy Truscott:
We got tickets to the Jazz game. There were six of us. We gotta stay in the suite, which was really nice as well.
Anthony Godfrey:
Wow.
Mandy Truscott:
And a personalized Jazz jersey, so that was really exciting as well.
Anthony Godfrey:
Really?
Mandy Truscott:
Yeah.
Anthony Godfrey:
Wow.
Mandy Truscott:
I know. My husband's like,’ let's frame it so you can put it in your classroom.’ And I think we might, cause I don't think I'm gonna be wearing it any time, so.
Anthony Godfrey:
I love that. And you can sign the jersey for yourself.
Mandy Truscott:
There you go. I could do that.
Anthony Godfrey:
Tell me, you and I worked together a long time ago.
Mandy Truscott:
Yes. Very long.
Anthony Godfrey:
Yes. A very long time ago. Most of your career ago, I think. You're teaching reading?
Mandy Truscott:
Yes.
Anthony Godfrey:
And tell me about that. What do you love about teaching reading?
Mandy Truscott:
I love teaching reading. So I teach remedial reading. So they're kids that are not on grade level, but they don't qualify necessarily for resource services or special ed services. But they definitely still need some help to get caught up. So we kind of catch them, they get put in my class and then that's what we work on, just trying to get them up to proficient grade level.
Anthony Godfrey:
And I can't think of a teacher who would do a better job of making kids feel great about being in the class that is intended to help them catch up.
Mandy Truscott:
It's something they struggle with, so it's not their favorite class.
Anthony Godfrey:
Sure.
Mandy Truscott:
But I feel like they do, they do like the class. We have a good repertoire, we have a good relationship.
Anthony Godfrey:
I'm sure that part of the reward is seeing the impact on a student realizing they can do something they didn't think they were ever going to be good at.
Mandy Truscott:
Yeah. It's really exciting to see them make so much progress. So we have like this wall of fame, which you're not in the classroom so you can't see it, but we have this wall of fame where like the kids' names get on the board when they level up, when they increase in grade levels, when they get on grade level. We do a lot of incentives to try and motivate them to do that, and it's really exciting to see. So we always are just pushing them to get on grade level. That's our main purpose.
Anthony Godfrey:
Let's look, take us on a tour around your classroom. So I see amazing things happen here. And names of the kids that have landed on grade level.
Mandy Truscott:
Yeah, so those are the students who at the beginning of the year were below grade level, but they have since reached all the benchmarks to prove that they are on grade level. And then we have four other sections in the classroom. So the first time they level up or the first time they go up one grade level, they get their name in the ‘I've leveled up one reading level’ column, and then there's a two reading levels, a three reading levels, and a four or more reading levels. And you can see there's 20 kids already who are on the four or more reading levels. I think that like the numbers may be a little misleading. I think some of those kids, they didn't try super hard on the initial assessment.
Anthony Godfrey:
Yeah.
Mandy Truscott:
Which, you know, surprise, surprise. But they do see this progress. And even if they're making progress on lower levels or levels that may be a little bit below where they should be they're feeling success. And that initial success I think helps them for when they do start to encounter more challenging work and more challenging curriculum.
Anthony Godfrey:
I love how visual the progress is. Student progress is just right out there for everybody to see. And I have no doubt that it's motivating. Tell me about the planets or the moons that the astronauts have landed on, on this wall.
Mandy Truscott:
I tried to really focus on creating a class community. So I did this like a space theme this year. So we have a little planet up there. I don't know if you can see it very well, but it says JPJ 112. My classroom is room 112.
Anthony Godfrey:
Ah, nice.
Mandy Truscott:
So I told them that we are like a class colony and so each student in my class has a little astronaut on the board and in that astronaut, or on the moon I should say, below the astronaut, it lists information about them. So they gotta tell me who they are at the beginning of the year, and that was really helpful. They did that the very first week of school. So I didn't know them very well, but I was able to take that information and they also filled out like this little star cadet intake form that they filled out so I could learn more about them and what motivated them, what they disliked, anything they wanted to tell me basically.
Anthony Godfrey:
What have some of your themes been over the years?
Mandy Truscott:
Oh, besides my space theme? I did an emoji theme one year. But I really like the space theme. I think I'm gonna stick with it.
Anthony Godfrey:
Might stay with it.
Mandy Truscott:
Okay. Yeah. So, we talked about how our learning objective is our mission objective. So we have that over here. Instead of the date, we put the star date.
Anthony Godfrey:
Oh, love that.
Mandy Truscott:
Yeah. Anyways, we did they have these reading response journals, but we call 'em mission log. So they write in their mission log.
Anthony Godfrey:
Oh yes.
Mandy Truscott:
They can earn passport stickers for reading different genres. So yeah, anyways, we kind of did this fun space theme. I kinda ran with it.
Anthony Godfrey:
I see a bit of a cat corner that has nothing to do with reading, necessarily.
Mandy Truscott:
Nothing to do with reading or with space, but I'm a little bit of a cat lady, so we have a little bit of a cat corner going on.
Anthony Godfrey:
I respect that. I respect that.
Mandy Truscott:
The kids will draw me pictures of cats occasionally.
Anthony Godfrey:
They know what you like. That’s a good thing.
Mandy Truscott:
Yeah. They know.
Anthony Godfrey:
Tell me, what was it that initially drew you to teaching?
Mandy Truscott:
I don't, it's kind of a weird story. I did not get my bachelor's degree in teaching. I got my bachelor's degree in political science and I was initially going to join the foreign service, is what I had wanted to do. I interned in DC in the Department of Educational and Cultural Affairs at the State Department. And I became interested in education doing that. And then I came back to Utah, which is where I'm from. And I started to substitute teach just to make a little bit of money and I liked it. And I got a job as a para. And then I decided to go back to school and get a graduate degree in education.
Anthony Godfrey:
Well, I'm very grateful to whoever was sick and needed you as a substitute.
Mandy Truscott:
It was a roundabout way of doing it, but I'm glad I did it. I feel like it was definitely meant to be, definitely what has become my passion and it became my passion really quickly. So I was a paraprofessional in a special education classroom, and so I initially did special education, I did that for eight years and then I transferred over to general ed and now doing remedial reading in general education.
Anthony Godfrey:
Well, having worked with you many moons ago, it's no surprise to me that you won this award and I'm really glad to see that you're still teaching and these are some lucky kids.
Mandy Truscott:
Thank you. Thank you very much.
Anthony Godfrey:
Stay with us. When we come back, we'll hear from Most Valuable Educator Charity Horne.
Break:
Does your student want to become a veterinarian? Commercial pilot? Programmer? Maybe they want to make a difference as a dental assistant. These are just some of the programs offered as part of Career and Technical Education. CTE in Jordan School District. CTE provides the technical skills needed to prepare students for future employment or for a successful transition to post-secondary education. Career and Technical Education provides work-based learning opportunities. We partner with industry experts to offer apprenticeships and internships with students working in the real world at real jobs while going to school. The CTE experience starts in our elementary schools with the Kids' Marketplace and grows through middle and high school. To explore all CTE has to offer in Jordan School District visit cte.jordandistrict.org today and let's get your child started on the pathway to a profession.
Anthony Godfrey:
We're here at Mountain Point Elementary and we have Principal Elizabeth Felt here and Charity Horne, the Most Valuable Educator award winner. We're gonna talk with Charity about her experience, but first Elizabeth, tell me about Charity Horne as a teacher.
Elizabeth Felt:
I can't stop saying wonderful things about Charity. Charity is one of those bright lights here at Mountain Point. She is one of those teachers that goes above and beyond for every single student here in the building. She is well known by all of our parents. She is a cheerleader for everybody. She's in the hall constantly sharing just exciting things that are going on in her classroom. And when she goes out for bus duty, she's the most cheerful person out there. She is waving people down to get them down the lane to pull forward and people love it. They smile at her, which is a great thing.
Anthony Godfrey:
Now that is a remarkable accomplishment. I've worked the curb at elementary schools over the years. That is not a place where love is shared very much. So that's pretty exciting. And from the moment I walked in, I could tell the energy that she has.
Elizabeth Felt:
Absolutely.
Anthony Godfrey:
Charity, tell me about winning this award. How did all that come to be?
Charity Horne:
Well, I got an email and I thought it was spam and I thought, ‘Oh, this has to be a joke.’ So I responded and just said, ‘Hey, is this for real?’ And she responded and said, ‘Yes it is. And you were nominated by some parents for the award and one of the nominations stood out to us. So we chose you.’
Anthony Godfrey:
How nice to be nominated. Now, it's never fun to talk about yourself.
Charity Horne:
No.
Anthony Godfrey:
Tell me what were some of the nominations? Elizabeth, did you get a chance to read those?
Elizabeth Felt:
No, I actually didn't because, like Charity, I thought it was spam. I hadn’t heard of it before.
Anthony Godfrey:
When you get an email that says you won and it has all these exclamation points, you do wonder.
Elizabeth Felt:
Yeah. So I remember debriefing with Charity in the hall and we're like, ‘Did you get this email?’ ‘Yeah, I got this email.’ ‘What do you think we should do?’ ‘Is this real?’ Yeah. And so then when we reached out and we were like,’ okay, I think they wanna do something. So I don't know what that looks like because they're not really sure what it looks like.’ So we're like, okay, well let's just go for a ride and it's gonna be great. We’ll see how it goes.
Anthony Godfrey:
So you thought they were fake prizes at first?
Charity Horne:
Totally. Totally.
Anthony Godfrey:
But what were the real prizes that you ended up winning as a result?
Charity Horne:
Well, I earned a thousand dollars. And then I got to go to the Jazz game with my family and take my boys and we went and got in the suite. Then they gave me a Jazz jersey and the Jazz Bear came to our school and recognized me on stage.
Anthony Godfrey:
A personalized Jazz jersey from what I've heard.
Charity:
Yes.
Anthony Godfrey:
Yeah. And what's the Jazz bear like close up?
Charity Horne:
He is fun.
Anthony Godfrey:
Yeah?
Charity Horne:
Yeah. Yeah. He messed with my hair.
Anthony Godfrey:
Does he smell kind of earthy?
Charity Horne:
Ah, you know, I was so nervous. I didn't notice.
Anthony Godfrey:
So they honored you on the floor during a Jazz game?
Charity Horne:
Yes. They honored me on the floor during the Jazz game as well.
Anthony Godfrey:
That's pretty exciting.
Charity Horne:
It was so awesome.
Anthony Godfrey:
Now tell me what grade you teach first of all.
Charity Horne:
First grade. I teach first grade.
Anthony Godfrey:
First grade. That's awesome. What do you love about teaching first grade?
Charity Horne:
Honestly, just the innocence of the kids. They're just, they're so excited to be here. They're so excited. They just love you no matter what, you know? And they don't judge you. I mean, you cannot comb your hair and it won't matter. You know, adults tend to judge.
Anthony Godfrey:
But they notice everything about you too don’t they?
Charity Horne:
They do. They notice it all. They do. And I'm like, you know what? It's okay. I didn't do, my hair today. Okay, Mrs. Horne
Anthony Godfrey:
So did they ever say ‘What's wrong, Mrs. Horne?’ when you thought you were covering it up?
Charity Horne:
No, but they have pointed out blemishes or zits or anything that's wrong with you.
Anthony Godfrey:
So you have to go in ready a little bit?
Charity Horne:
A little bit, yeah. But they don't care. I mean, they're just, they're excited to be here.
Anthony Godfrey:
Yeah. Now how long have you taught first grade?
Charity Horne:
I've been teaching first grade for six years. This is my sixth year in first grade. And I've taught two years of second grade.
Anthony Godfrey:
So two years of second grade, six years of first grade. How many hugs does that equal over those years?
Charity Horne:
Millions.
Anthony Godfrey:
Millions of hugs.
Charity Horne:
It’s a lot of hugs.
Anthony Godfrey:
That is the good part.
Charity Horne:
Because they move on, but they still love you, so they still come back and hug you.
Anthony Godfrey:
Oh, so it's not just the hugs when they're there.
Charity Horne:
No.
Anthony Godfrey:
It's the after-hugs.
Charity Horne:
Yeah. That's my older students.
Anthony Godfrey:
It's pretty exciting.
Charity Horne:
It's awesome.
Anthony Godfrey:
What would you say to someone who's thinking about teaching elementary school?
Charity Horne:
Honestly, it's a hard job, but you have to have, your heart's gotta be in it. You gotta wanna make a difference and you gotta love helping little kids.
Anthony Godfrey:
What's one of your favorite things to teach in first grade?
Charity Horne:
I like teaching math.
Anthony Godfrey:
Yeah?
Charity Horne:
Math.
Anthony Godfrey:
What are some of the math skills that first graders are learning right now?
Charity Horne:
Adding and subtracting within 20, learning to make a 10, regroup.
Anthony Godfrey:
Regrouping. Yeah. I try to regroup as much as I can. It's good.
Charity Horne:
Yeah.
Anthony Godfrey:
It's a good skill to have.
Charity Horne:
It's a good skill to have.
Anthony Godfrey:
What drew you to teaching initially?
Charity Horne:
Well, I graduated with education and back then, it was too much work, so I was like, ‘I'm not gonna be a teacher. There's no way. It's so much work.’ But so, and quickly after that, I got pregnant with twins. So my life changed to mommy mode and I ended up opening up a daycare and was gonna do a tumbling studio, and all these different branches of life going different directions. And when my daycare kids had kind of moved on and I decided to look at the school and just see if there was a part-time aide position. And I got hired as a math aide. And my Principal at the time, Mandy Thurman, called me and said, ‘Hey, I hired you as a math aide, but I talked to the district about reactivating your license. I really need teachers. What do you think? I think you'd be great.’ And thought about it. And it was just a gut feeling that it was something I needed to do. So I did it and it was a thousand times harder than it was back then.
Anthony Godfrey:
Yeah, it does get harder over time.
Charity Horne:
It does get harder over time, but I think that that hard work just makes you a better person and a better teacher. You'll learn from mistakes, you'll learn from positives, you learn from everything and you just become better. So one of the things I love, I came up with it a couple of years ago. I had heard another teacher was doing it and I thought it was phenomenal, but teaching kids that they can do hard things. And so I came up with a motto that I wanted them to say every morning. And it goes, ‘I can do hard things. I know if I think positive, work hard, and try my best, I will succeed. I believe in myself, I can do anything.’ And it's kind of one of those things that I want them to know. Know that like even in life, not just first grade, life gets hard sometimes. And if you work hard and you just do the best you can, you know you're gonna succeed.
Anthony Godfrey:
I love that. And I'll bet they remember it years later.
Charity Horne:
I have kids, a girl that I taught in first grade at Riverton Elementary goes to school here, I think she's in sixth grade and she's like, ‘Hey Mrs. Horne, how are you? I remember our motto.’ So she still remembers it.
Anthony Godfrey:
And then she recites it for you.
Charity Horne:
Yeah. Well, it was funny cuz I actually went running with one of my first grade parents. And we were going around the track and I hate running, I hate cardio. And so I'm just like, ‘I can't do this.’ And she's like, ‘I can do hard things.’ So we just started running and we were doing the motto. She was like, ‘See, it works for adults too.’ So I just think it's a strong quality that I have just for anybody. Like you can do it. You know, our first reaction is sometimes, ah, that's too hard. I can't do it. But if you just learn that you can do whatever you put your mind to, if you keep working on it, you'll get it.
Anthony Godfrey:
I love that. I would assume that as a first grade teacher, you get to see a ton of progress.
Charity Horne:
Absolutely.
Anthony Godfrey:
From the beginning of the year to the end of the year.
Charity Horne:
That's probably one of my favorite things about first grade, I feel like I do such incredible work. Because if you look at their beginning of the year tests and handwriting and writing journals, and then you go to the end and I'm like, holy cow. I taught them. You know, as a team, we work together to teach narrative, informative, and opinion writing. They can add and subtract. They're just, they're just bright little humans.
Anthony Godfrey:
A school supervisor showed me the other day, what a first grade student had done over the course of the year. They were so excited for the progress they'd made. And they showed, you know, the writing that they did at the beginning of the year and the writing they're doing now. And it's really cool to see, this huge progress kids make.
Charity Horne:
It’s incredible. They make a ton of progress. And even with reading, I mean, they're barely connecting those sounds and letters and putting 'em together. And by the end, they're reading full passages.
Anthony Godfrey:
Well, thanks for spending the time, and most of all, thanks for everything you do to help create a great experience for these first graders.
Charity Horne:
Thank you very much. I appreciate it.
Anthony Godfrey:
Thanks for joining us on another episode of the Supercast. Remember, education is the most important thing you'll do today. We'll see you out there.
21 min
February 24, 2023 Episode 181: Students Celebrate Black History Month with Pride and Performances
It was an evening of reflection, recognition, and celebration. Students from schools throughout Jordan School District came together in song and dance to celebrate Black History Month in a meaningful way.
On this episode of the Supercast, hear from students who participated in the performances and why they are passionate about educating others on the importance of Black History Month.
Audio Transcription
Anthony Godfrey:
Hello and welcome to the Supercast. I'm your host, Superintendent Anthony Godfrey. It was an evening of reflection, recognition, and celebration. Students from schools throughout Jordan School District came together in song and dance to celebrate Black History Month in a meaningful way. On this episode of the Supercast, hear from students who participated in the performances and why they're passionate about educating others on the importance of Black History Month.
We're here at Elk Ridge Middle School for Black Excellence Night. Our Legacy is the name of the celebration tonight, and we're here with three of the students who are participating. Introduce yourselves, and what grade you're in, and what school you're from.
Marc:
I'm Marc. I'm from West Jordan High School and I am the BSU President.
Adjoa:
I'm Adjoa and I'm from Herriman High School. I'm the BSU President as well.
Siriya:
I'm Siriya. I go to Copper Hills High School. I'm a senior and I'm also BSU president.
Anthony Godfrey:
All right, I'm in the presence of three presidents. That's awesome. So tell me, what are you looking forward to tonight? What are you excited about?
Marc:
I'm really excited to see all the other schools cause I haven't been able to see what they're doing. But I'm really excited also to see just the Black Excellence in the auditorium.
Adjoa:
This is my first meeting that I've been to and I'm super excited to just see what it's all about and seeing all the different dances and the different BSUs. My BSU will be hopefully showing up too and will be our first time because our school is just barely new this year, so, super excited.
Anthony Godfrey:
Okay.
Siriya:
I'm also excited to see all the other BSUs or other people that are gonna perform and just Black Excellence altogether.
Anthony Godfrey:
What are the things that you hope the audience takes away from their experience tonight? As they're walking to their cars, they're driving home, as they're thinking about things this weekend, what do you hope they take away from the experience?
Marc:
I want them to be educated. I want them to see that Black Excellence is prominent in Utah.
Adjoa:
It's very important that we help spread just awareness that we are here and that we do have cultures and that we are a community.
Siriya:
I really hope people actually see the diversity of like what Marc said because it's obviously a predominantly white state. And so obviously I hope they take away something from this and they actually leave feeling educated.
Anthony Godfrey:
Now tell me what each of your schools is contributing to the event tonight.
Marc:
So West Jordan High School is contributing a song and a poem done by me. The song and the poem are written by me.
Anthony Godfrey:
Oh, really?
Marc:
Yeah.
Anthony Godfrey:
Tell me what the song and poem are about or the title. Tell me a little bit about it.
Marc:
So the title of the poem is I'm a Black Man and then the song is Freedom.
Anthony Godfrey:
Okay. Great.
Adjoa:
I am the student highlight this year and I will be talking about my BSU efforts in raising money for our school's fundraiser, Hearts of Gold.
Anthony Godfrey:
What were some of the things that BSU did for Hearts of Gold?
Adjoa:
We made a whole bunch of cookies and then we sold those cookies during lunch periods and we decided to do some at a basketball game and we raised money.
Anthony Godfrey:
So this is a chance for you to connect with the community, connect with parents, but as students for you to connect with other schools as well?
Adjoa:
Yes, of course. It's gonna help us out a lot in figuring out different ideas to do.
Anthony Godfrey:
Tell me what Copper Hills is doing tonight.
Siriya:
So my BSU is going to be performing two different dances. So we're gonna be performing an African dance and an African American dance, which has African American artists.
Anthony Godfrey:
Okay. Looking forward to it. So you're all Presidents of the Black Student Union. Tell us about what the Black Student Union does in your school.
Marc:
So, so far this year the Black Student Union has helped a lot with charity season. Our charity this year was Tiny Tim's Toys for Tots. The BSU, we held a social for Tiny Tim's Toys for Tots, and we made these little cars and it only takes $2 to make each car. And so we had people donate money and whatnot. So we got a bunch of money and then each $2, we gotta make one car for that.
Anthony Godfrey:
And I know that BSU is just getting underway at your school, but what are some of the things that you already have going?
Adjoa:
Black History Month is coming up and my BSU is planning on some really fun activities. We've got a whole bunch of posters that we made today and we're going to be putting them up as like a gallery in our library. And so it'll be going all around the library. We have a whole bunch of posters and each poster has several different Black heroes and events that have happened in Black culture and history. And at the end of the month, during like the last two weeks, we'll be doing a spirit week for like the two weeks cuz we have break. So we're just adding those weeks together and so our whole entire school will be involved in dressing up on certain days. Like we have 70s Day, we have Jazz Day, we have Blackout Day where our whole BSU will be wearing our brand new sweatshirts that we just made with our new logo on 'em. And then we'll be having a social on our last day over Spirit Week where everyone from our whole entire school and all the other schools are invited. And we'll also be doing personal invites to the different culture clubs that we have at our school to come and join us so then we can all like, join together and get to know each other.
Anthony Godfrey:
How about at Copper Hills? What has the Black Student Union been up to there?
Siriya:
So we've also been doing fundraisers and the last biggest event thing that we like really did was a clothing drive during the winter for like kids and just families that don't have really like anything. And we just donated a bunch of fleece blankets, and clothes, socks, just everything, and toys. And also with Black History coming up, my school's gonna be doing a pop-up museum with a bunch of Black historical figures and we're so excited for that.
Anthony Godfrey:
So there's a lot of education, a lot of fundraising, a lot of outreach to others, and making sure that you're helping those around you in the community. So, congratulations. It's obviously your great leaders and that wonderful things are happening at your schools as a result of your efforts. So thanks for talking with me and I can't wait to see the performances tonight, so thanks again. Stay with us. When we come back more on the Black History Month celebration.
Break:
In Jordan School District, we like to support students in and outside the classroom along with their families. That's where the Jordan Family Education Center comes in, offering support services and a wide variety of classes for students and their families, free of charge. You can take a class called Blues Busters for children feeling sad or worried. Just Breathe is a class that helps students reduce stress. Or how about a class that supports parents in helping their children make and keep good friends. There are also support groups and free counseling, all provided by Jordan School District school psychologists and counselors. To find out how you can benefit from free family support services offered by the Jordan Family Education Center, call 801-565-7442 or visit guidance.jordandistrict.org.
Anthony Godfrey:
We also have Toni Brown, one of our specialists here. Now you've been involved in all of the planning here, this has been talked about for quite a while.
Toni Brown:
So this kind of program has gone on in other districts, but we're really excited to bring it to Jordan School District for the first time because we have so many active BSUs that have so much to contribute.
Anthony Godfrey:
And tell me about some of the things that are happening tonight. I understand that Black icons are taped to the back of each of the chairs. Talk to me a little bit about that project.
Toni Brown:
We're seeing the Black Excellence Program this year as kind of a kickoff to Black History Month. So on the back of the chairs, there are different Black history makers and icons. People from Rosa Parks, and Beyoncé, to Michelle Obama, and Sojourner Truth, we're spanning gender and time just trying to highlight different people from our history.
Anthony Godfrey:
And what are some of the other activities that are happening? I know there's some dances, poetry, music, and we have a Senegalese food truck as well.
Toni Brown:
Yeah, we're really excited for that. It's gonna be great food. There's gonna be all kinds of flavors and we're hoping that everybody tries it.
Anthony Godfrey:
I'm looking forward to it. We'll give it a try. Senegalese food truck. I've had a lot of corn dog food trucks, but not a Senegalese food truck. Why is this an important night Toni?
Toni Brown:
The Black Excellence Program is important because this is our first opportunity to bring kids from BSUs across the district together so that they can build community, so that they can display their talents, and so that they can celebrate their culture. That's what it's all about tonight. We're here to be together and enjoy each other.
Anthony Godfrey:
That's a fabulous reason to throw a celebration like this and I'm looking forward to seeing all the students. I got to see a little bit of a preview of some of the performances. I think it's gonna be a great night.
MC:
My job right now is to introduce our next performer. He is a student performer. His name is Marc from West Jordan.
Marc:
Freedom
Oh, freedom by God.
Oh, freedom.
Oh, freedom.
Free, free at last.
Into the new day.
Free, free to glory.
Free, I am free now.
Lord, by God.
I am the son of a King.
Thank you all.
Anthony Godfrey:
Thanks for joining us on another episode of the Supercast. Remember, education is the most important thing you'll do today. We'll see you out there.
14 min
February 16, 2023 Episode 180: JATC North Web Design Class Competing for Prestigious National Prize as We Celebrate CTE Month
They are an impressive group of Jordan School District students determined to make a difference and win a national competition with the development of a unique school safety app.
On this episode of the Supercast, we take you inside the JATC North web design class where students are already in the running for a prestigious honor on a national stage because of their determination to help keep students safe in schools across the country. This is just one example of the great work going on in Career and Technical Education as we celebrate CTE Month.
Audio Transcription
Anthony Godfrey:
Hello and welcome to the Supercast. I'm your host, Superintendent Anthony Godfrey. They are an impressive group of Jordan School District students determined to make a difference and win in national competition with the development of a unique school safety app. On this episode of the Supercast, we take you inside the JATC North Web Design class, where students are already in the running for a prestigious honor on a national stage because of their determination to help students stay safe in schools across the country. They want to do it with a specially designed app they hope will give people peace of mind in an emergency.
We're here celebrating CTE Month at the Jordan Academy for Technology and Careers, the North campus at around 90th South and Bangerter, talking with the Web Design teacher. Go ahead and introduce yourself.
Melinda Mansouri:
My name's Melinda Mansouri and I've been at the technology center for the last 11 years and my program is web design. Our students, our goal is entry-level work upon graduation or completion of the program. So our students not only learn about design and code, but they are able to go in and do internships with schools and business partners by the end of the program.
Anthony Godfrey:
So they're ready to work when they graduate from high school and get an entry-level job in web development. Right?
Melinda Mansouri:
Yes. I have students all over the state working as web developers at different universities and schools. It's a great student job, whether they're doing freelance web development or actually doing some work-study jobs at the universities and there's so many websites and there's lots of work.
Anthony Godfrey:
There's a lot of work out there. Obviously, I'm on websites all day long and they all need a web developer. So tell me about what the experience looks like from a student perspective. It's four classes out of your high school schedule. It's available to juniors and seniors, is that correct?
Melinda Mansouri:
All of that's correct. Next year we also have what's called a Code Boot Camp that is specifically for some of our high schools that aren't able to offer Programming I that will help bridge the students from those high schools into the full programming that's offered here at the JATC or they can stay and be web developers, in which case they would have the chance to get more skills and more experience.
Anthony Godfrey:
And how do they get more information about the summer program?
Melinda Mansouri:
Oh, if you go to the website at jordantech.org there is all sorts of program information and there's an apply button. Everyone has to apply to come to the tech center, but don't be afraid of that. The apply is just a way for us to gather information and be able to add you into our programs. But don't be intimidated by it. It's pretty easy. It's just a Google form.
Anthony Godfrey:
And there's a morning option and then an afternoon option.
Melinda Mansouri:
Yes. And our students spend the other half day at their home high school doing what they've been doing. And so we also have transportation and so don't feel like you have to have a car to come to the tech center. You can ride the bus. We have buses from every high school and you can arrive by bus at your school and then take the tech center bus or the opposite on the way home.
Anthony Godfrey:
So if this is something of interest there aren't really obstacles in the way, jump in and give it a shot. Now tomorrow you're out at schools giving students some real-world experience. Tell me about that.
Melinda Mansouri:
Yes, each student is placed at a different school in Jordan District, whether that's with counseling center websites or different websites at all of the different schools. And they work in partnership with the person who's in charge of web at the school. We do updates, sometimes if they have a big project like a directory that takes a lot of hours of time, we'll help with some specific projects. Not every school has someone trained in website development, and so it's a real win-win. My students are working on the professional skills needed and we are so lucky to have Jordan District, everything from teachers to administrators, who are their mentors and helping them gain professional skills.
Anthony Godfrey:
And we benefit from the students' creativity and newfound skills.
Melinda Mansouri:
Yes, it's a win-win. And then the students head out into some type of a business internship fourth quarter. They spend a minimum of 40 hours doing real website work for a real business so that they've built their portfolio so that they're ready to work.
Anthony Godfrey:
They can show actual work they've done for a company and it doesn't have to be something they want to do as a lifelong pursuit. It can be like you were saying earlier, a side job or just something to get them through school, kind of a part-time job, or it can turn into a full-time career.
Melinda Mansouri:
It's a great place to start. And even if your intention is to do something else, whatever business you work for will have a website, and that ups your value if you can help work with the web developer for that website. An know if a change is a small change or if you're asking for a big change. Clients don't often know which they're asking for. So these are just great skills to have in today's job market in general.
Anthony Godfrey:
Fantastic.
Stay with us. When we come back more with Melinda Mansouri and her tech savvy students
Break:
In Jordan School District, we like to support students in and outside the classroom along with their families. That's where the Jordan Family Education Center comes in, offering support services and a wide variety of classes for students and their families, free of charge. You can take a class called Blues Busters for children feeling sad or worried. Just Breathe is a class that helps students reduce stress. Or how about a class that supports parents in helping their children make and keep good friends. There are also support groups and free counseling, all provided by Jordan School District school psychologists and counselors. To find out how you can benefit from free family support services offered by the Jordan Family Education Center, call 801-565-7442 or visit guidance.jordandistrict.org.
Anthony Godfrey:
We're talking now with three of the students in the Web Development program. Go ahead and introduce yourselves and what high school you're coming from.
Amanda:
My name is Amanda and I come from West Jordan High.
Dalton:
My name is Dalton and I come from Riverton High.
Jacob:
I'm Jacob and I come from West Jordan High.
Anthony Godfrey:
Now tell me about this app that you've developed. First of all, it sounds pretty interesting.
Dalton:
So it's a tracking app for schools, so in an emergency, they can find students quickly and potentially save or reduce injuries in schools.
Anthony Godfrey:
Tell me what was the inspiration for creating an app like this?
Amanda:
Well, I think basically how the situations we've been through in our schools, like when there is a fire or something like that and people can't get out safely or quickly enough, and that's where it came from, I think.
Anthony Godfrey:
So just out of concern for student safety. Tell me about the mock-ups and where are the ideas taking you right now.
Jacob:
So right now using Adobe XD, which is a mockup program, we've kind of made a layout of what we want the app to look like, and we've made paths and we've made notifications that will pop up when there's an emergency. And so we're using this to kind of formulate how it's gonna work. We've also made an actual physical website, like just using a code editor, me and my partner Aiden. And so it will, like, it's a working prototype. It doesn't have any of the backend stuff that will actually notify people yet.
Anthony Godfrey:
So it sounds like developing an app is a lot more complicated than some people might think.
Jacob:
Oh, yes. Extremely complicated. And we're also, another part of this is setting up actual hardware on doors. That is going to be a challenge because we're developers, not really engineers, so we're gonna have to find a way to do that.
Anthony Godfrey:
So tell me, ultimately what will the app accomplish based on the concept that you're working on right now?
Dalton:
So currently we have it set up for it, there's a potential for it to work as a kind of attendance system, which kind of incentivizes students to carry their ID badge with them so that we can actually track them in an emergency. So for example, there's an earthquake and part of the building collapses where students can't get out of the building and there's potentially more debris falling down in the building. First responders need to get there quickly so that they can get the clear out of the way for students to get out and so they don't get hurt.
Anthony Godfrey:
So in other words, we're able to find students in an emergency using hardware mounted above the door as long as students are wearing an ID badge and if we use the ID badge for attendance purposes, then students are required to wear the badge and then the system works in case of emergency. If you were trying to sell me on the app and it was fully developed, what are some of the things you would tell me about why we ought to use this app?
Amanda:
I would say for safety to keep students more safe in the schools, basically.
Anthony Godfrey:
So is this mostly an app that's designed for administrators and emergency service workers? Anyone who's responsible for tracking students in case of emergency?
Amanda:
Exactly, especially for them.
Anthony Godfrey:
Now, if this app were to take off, there are tens of thousands of schools in the country. So it has a really big potential and student safety is always first on our minds and on everyone's mind across the country. What are some of the obstacles that you've run into? Obviously, it's a complicated process and I think you talked with some of our own security personnel. What are some of the difficulties that you've come up against as you've explored this idea?
Jacob:
So yes, we have talked with the district safety advisor and he gave us some really good advice. So one of the biggest concerns right now is security and privacy. So if we're tracking where kids are in a building, like that information won't be compromised and used to someone's advantage. And that's a really big concern. But we have we have combatted that by having, when someone like logs into the system, it will send out an email to, I mean, hypothetically it will send an email out to all the parents whose students are involved. So they know not only that someone's logged in, but if their child is safe or in danger. We've also thought about automating like the 911 call. When someone logs in it automatically calls 911 so that no one is just logging on for fun or for their personal gain.
Anthony Godfrey:
Okay. So the 911 kind of becomes the alarm system that's connected to anyone logging in. So you'd log in only in case of emergency? Is there a parent application so that parents could track where their child is throughout the day?
Jacob:
Again, we're still in the beginning phase just working stuff out. We have thought about that. We have thought about even having students have an app that they could log in themselves to track or even have their phone be their badge that they sign in with. But we're not really sure. We're still kind of working it out, but we got possibilities open.
Anthony Godfrey:
Okay. I love the way you're exploring the idea.
Dalton:
One concern with allowing parents to track students is it becomes a security problem, whereas someone who isn't their parent might be able to figure out login information and access where the child is in the building. So if someone were to specifically target an individual student, they might end up being able to just track them with our system, which is a big problem with enabling parents to track their own students.
Anthony Godfrey:
Yeah. And you're doing a nice job obviously of thinking through all the security concerns. And have you thought about an opt-out for parents where parents could choose not to have their student participate?
Amanda:
Yeah, that's basically, yeah, we have this idea that maybe some parents wouldn't like their students to be tracked and we would give a form out to parents and they could sign if they want their student in or not.
Anthony Godfrey:
Okay. All right. You're entering this app and this concept into a contest sponsored by Samsung. Tell me about how that's going.
Jacob:
So yeah, Samsung has given us $2,500 right now in Samsung products. And we're gonna use that I think for phones, for mobile development. And so then we can actually test our app on phones and the next phase will give us, I think it's like 10 grand with an additional like video media kit so that we can actually film and document our stuff.
Anthony Godfrey:
So when will you find out the next level of the competition?
Dalton:
It'll be February 15th.
Anthony Godfrey:
Have you submitted everything?
Dalton:
It's all done, yeah.
Anthony Godfrey:
Okay. Well, I wish you luck. Tell me what's the name of the competition?
Amanda:
Samsung Solve For Tomorrow.
Anthony Godfrey:
So we've talked about the app, tell me more about the class. Of course, you're creating this app as an offshoot of the things that you're learning here, but tell me about the class in general, especially for those who might be considering enrolling.
Jacob:
So yeah, this class is awesome. We not only do coding for development, we also do the design and learn how to make a beautiful website.
Anthony Godfrey:
So the art and science of it?
Jacob:
Yes, art, yes. And that's what differentiates us from computer programming is that we also do Digital Me in this class. We all certify in Photoshop and Illustrator in the first couple of months and that helps us prototype and design websites.
Anthony Godfrey:
And do you look at websites differently now that you're seeing things from the design end?
Dalton:
Yeah, it's quite a bit different. When I took programming here last year and in that class, it's all about the code, and when I wasn't expecting the amount of art that goes into designing a website and how much time it takes just to get a simple website set up.
Anthony Godfrey:
So maybe there's a better appreciation for the websites that you access knowing how much work it takes?
Amanda:
Totally.
Anthony Godfrey:
Thanks very much for spending time with me. I'll let you get back to your projects. Good luck in the competition and my fingers are crossed for you.
Thanks for joining us on another episode of the Supercast. Remember, education is the most important thing you'll do today. We'll see you out there.
17 min
February 09, 2023Episode 179: Chinese Dual Language Immersion Students Head to Chinatown for Fun Day of Learning & Discovery
It is a program designed to help students learn in new and effective ways while enhancing cultural awareness.
On this episode of the Supercast, we visit with Chinese Dual Language Immersion students and teachers at Southland Elementary School to find out why they love learning another language. Find out what happens when we follow the students on a fascinating field trip to Chinatown in South Salt Lake City.
Enroll your Student in the Dual Language Immersion Program
Audio Transcription
Anthony Godfrey:
Hello and welcome to the Supercast. I'm your host, Superintendent Anthony Godfrey. It is a program designed to help students learn a language in new and effective ways while enhancing cultural awareness. On this episode of the Supercast, we visit with Chinese Dual Language Immersion students and teachers from Southland Elementary School to find out why they love learning another language. Find out what happens when we follow the students on a fascinating field trip to a Buddhist temple.
We're here with two teachers from Southland Elementary School on the field trip to the Cambodian Buddhist Temple. Thank you very much for letting me join you. Go ahead and introduce yourselves, please.
Xiaoyu Fan:
This is Xiaoyu Fan. I'm the fourth-grade teacher at Southland.
Jia Wei:
I'm Jia Wei, the Southland sixth-grade teacher.
Anthony Godfrey:
Tell me what is the purpose of the field trip here? It's been really interesting hearing from them about the Buddhist religion, about and about the temple. Tell me about what you hope the students gain from this experience.
Xiaoyu Fan:
So we feel like this field trip provides a great opportunity for the students, not only in the immersion-like environment in the school but also brings that immersion experiment like experience for them outside school as well. And the purpose of coming to the Buddhism temple is to let them know, because Buddhism is the most people worship in China, it's their major religion. So we would like to have the students have an opportunity to not learn, not necessarily learn about the religion, but to expose them to the more diverse culture.
Jia Wei:
I agree with what Ms. Fan said. I think it's important for students to be more open-minded to the cultures and the philosophies and realize we can work together with other people also.
Anthony Godfrey:
It was fascinating to watch the kids. I got to sit up front. They were rapt with attention. They were paying close attention. They're fascinated by all of this. So I think it's really a rich cultural experience for them to be able to do this. So thank you for going to the work to make this possible.
Xiaoyu Fan:
Thank you. It's an honor to have you to be here.
Anthony Godfrey:
Tell me about teaching here in the United States and teaching in the Dual Immersion program.
Xiaoyu Fan:
It's, to me, it's such an eye-opening experience because in China usually you have one subject taught by one teacher. But here we have, we get to teach all different subjects in our language, in Chinese. And I think it's definitely seeing how much students learn, seeing how much students are able to say in Chinese, and see how much students love about the culture and learn about the culture and really immerse in that culture. It's very fascinating
Anthony Godfrey:
Learning a foreign language for me has always been important. My father was a foreign language teacher, but I still am always impressed when I see a teacher stand in front of children this young and speak rapidly and they understand and they respond. It's really, really remarkable. So thanks for doing such a great job with them.
Xiaoyu Fan:
Thank you. Thank you.
Anthony Godfrey:
Tell me about your experience teaching in the United States and in the Dual Language program.
Jia Wei:
I think the best part is to grow with my students together to understand the language. I think my students taught me more than I taught them in the language immersion program. And they helped me to understand myself and the cultures.
Anthony Godfrey:
Students grow very close to each other when they're together. I know that they mix up the classes somewhat, but you pretty much get to know the same kids through those elementary years in particular. Tell me about the value that you see in that.
Jia Wei:
The value is to be, to find out who they are, and to find out what we can do for the world.
Anthony Godfrey:
Well, this is an exciting program. It's an exciting experience. Thank you for everything that you're doing to make this such a great learning environment for kids.
Xiaoyu Fan:
Thank you so much. Thank you.
Jia Wei:
Thank you.
Anthony Godfrey:
Hi Kimball. What grade are you in?
Kimball:
I'm in sixth grade.
Anthony Godfrey:
Kimball, tell me about your experience here today.
Kimball:
It was pretty cool. It was fun.
Anthony Godfrey:
What are some of the things that you learned?
Kimball:
I learned that the monk, like anyone can be the monk. I thought just males should be the monk, but girls can also be the monk.
Anthony Godfrey:
And what did you learn about what it's like to be a monk? What is a monk's life like?
Kimball:
You can't eat. Like you have to eat only at like 12:00 or like 12:00 or under and you can't eat anything after that.
Anthony Godfrey:
It was the fasting all afternoon and evening that made me decide. I don't think that's my path.
Kimball:
Yeah. Seriously.
Anthony Godfrey:
It's pretty impressive though. Tell me about being in the Chinese Dual Immersion program.
Kimball:
It's great. You speak Chinese, the teachers are awesome. They're so kind and if you don't understand anything they're like really welcome and like help you.
Anthony Godfrey:
You're in sixth grade now. Do you remember what it was like in first grade when you were just starting out?
Kimball:
I do.
Anthony Godfrey:
What was that like?
Kimball:
At first, it was kind of weird. I remember the first day I was sitting there and I was like, can I speak English? Is that okay? Cause I don't know any Chinese and they were really nice.
Anthony Godfrey:
They were nice about it.
Kimball:
Yeah.
Anthony Godfrey:
And now do you need to speak any English in class?
Kimball:
Not really, no.
Anthony Godfrey:
Do you start to think in Chinese when you're not even in class?
Kimball:
Yeah. Well, but when I'm in English, I think in English. But when I do Chinese I'm thinking in Chinese and saying Chinese.
Anthony Godfrey:
So you're able to switch back and forth?
Kimball:
Yeah.
Anthony Godfrey:
Great. Teach me a little bit of Chinese here.
Kimball:
Nǐ hǎo is hi.
Anthony Godfrey:
Nǐ hǎo
Kimball:
Zàijiàn is goodbye.
Anthony Godfrey:
Zàijiàn
Kimball:
Zàijiàn.
Anthony Godfrey:
Zàijiàn. Okay. And what’s your favorite word?
Kimball:
I like Píngguǒ.
Anthony Godfrey:
Píngguǒ.
Kimball:
Píngguǒ, it’s apple.
Anthony Godfrey:
That's cool. Yeah. Okay. Very nice meeting you Kimball.
Kimball:
Yeah. Nice meeting you too. Thank you.
Anthony Godfrey:
And tell me your name.
Eden:
My name is Eden.
Anthony Godfrey:
And Eden, what grade are you in?
Eden:
Fifth.
Anthony Godfrey:
And what do you like most about being in Chinese Dual Immersion?
Eden:
I don't know. I really love being in Chinese Immersion cuz it's so fun to see what we have in common with Chinese culture. And also it's really fun to learn new things cuz it's like you can always learn new things and have something to look forward to.
Anthony Godfrey:
Do you think it keeps your brain firing a lot to be learning Chinese every day?
Eden:
Yeah it does take a lot of like thought and stuff to like learn Chinese, but like after doing five years of Chinese, it's like getting slowly easier.
Anthony Godfrey:
Have you been surprised at how much Chinese you've been able to learn?
Eden:
Yes, I am really surprised. I remember when I was like in first grade and I couldn't understand Chinese at all and now I can understand and whenever I hear someone at like the grocery store speaking Chinese, I can understand them. It's really cool.
Anthony Godfrey:
It's kind of like a secret language that you get to use with your friends, right?
Eden:
Yeah. My dad has been learning it and sometimes we talk at home with him and my mom is just like, waka, waka, waka.
Anthony Godfrey:
She just doesn't even know what to say.
Eden:
Yeah.
Anthony Godfrey:
That's really fun that you have your own language. What would you say to parents who are thinking about putting their kids in a Chinese Dual Immersion program?
Eden:
I'd say they should try it. It's okay if it's not like that easy for them, but I always like to try new things and I'm so glad that I tried it. It was really awesome. It may be hard at first cuz like it's a whole new language, you know, but like I know that if you can just keep going with it and try it then you can do it. But like, if it's way too hard then that's okay.
Anthony Godfrey:
I love your curiosity that you always wanna learn new things. That's awesome. Thanks for talking with me.
Eden:
Thank you.
Anthony Godfrey:
Please introduce yourself.
Raymond Hour:
My name is Ray. I am the director at Utah Cambodian Community Buddhist Temple. And my job is to coordinate, help the monks and the priest and the community what they need for our temple in terms of operation and that kind of stuff.
Anthony Godfrey:
Thank you very much for allowing our students to come and visit today. You had some great questions from them.
Raymond Hour:
I do. The student here they ask very good question. Then some of them look like they understand the philosophy and the basic one. And hopefully when they grow up they study more and then they have very open-minded.
Anthony Godfrey:
I like when you asked them about karma. Tell me about their answers.
Raymond Hour:
Oh, they are so good. They understand and say, do good thing in life, many thing come back in return. They call good karma. Do bad thing in life, many bad thing might come back. And he say that the bad karma. I say, wow, you understand it so good.
Anthony Godfrey:
I remember the first student said if you do bad things, that will come back to haunt you. I thought that was a pretty good summary as well.
Raymond Hour:
That is correct. Always. That's why I try to encourage students and other members, Hey, just do good, help each other. Whatever. You can even talk to an elderly. Donate a little bit. It makes you feel good. That's called good karma.
Anthony Godfrey:
Well, thank you for being so welcoming and allowing our students to be here.
Raymond Hour:
Oh, you're welcome. It's very good education.
Anthony Godfrey:
Thank you.
Stay with us. When we come back more with our Chinese Dual Language Immersion students and a trip to Chinatown.
Break:
Hello, I'm Tracy Miller, President of the Jordan School District Board of Education. There are seven members on the Board of Education, one in each voting district. We are committed to listening and serving our constituents as we work together to provide the best possible learning environment for the students we serve. As members of the Jordan Board of Education, we believe it is our duty and responsibility to: increase student achievement; provide parents with the choices they deserve and desire; recognize and reward quality in educators; empower school leaders through policy governance and professional development; and communicate with the public, legislators, business leaders, cities, and parents. We invite you to get to know the Board member who represents you in your voting district and to please join us at our monthly board meeting held on the fourth Tuesday of every month. Or listen from the comfort of your home, on our live stream. For more information and to find your Board member, visit jordandistrict.org. With parent and community input and support, we will continue our work to give students every opportunity to succeed in Jordan District schools and beyond. Thank you for your support. We look forward to seeing you soon.
Anthony Godfrey:
Now we are at the Chinatown Market. Is that correct?
Jia Wei:
Yeah, that is absolutely right.
Anthony Godfrey:
All right. Now tell me, this is a large grocery store with all Chinese products.
Jia Wei:
Yes, it is the biggest one in the whole county.
Anthony Godfrey:
And tell me what is the activity that the students are engaged in right now?
Jia Wei:
So students going to learn the Chinese food and the merchandise, whatever they interested and they're gonna bring something to the class and talk about that in a Kiva.
Anthony Godfrey:
So do they get to kind of choose what is most interesting to them?
Jia Wei:
Yes.
Anthony Godfrey:
And then come back and explain it?
Jia Wei:
Yes.
Anthony Godfrey:
Can we go take a walk down the aisle and you can show me something?
Jia Wei:
Absolutely.
Anthony Godfrey:
All right. Let's walk through. If they wanted to stop by, where is the market located?
Jia Wei:
Okay, it's on the State Street in South Salt Lake.
Anthony Godfrey:
Let’s see what we've got. I see belt fish here. I've never had belt fish.
Jia Wei:
I've never seen that before.
Anthony Godfrey:
How about turbo fish?
Jia Wei:
Nope.
Anthony Godfrey:
No turbo fish. Okay. So it's full of surprises for you as well?
Jia Wei:
Yes, yes.
Anthony Godfrey:
What are some things that you might have expected to find here that you can't see elsewhere?
Jia Wei:
Maybe some spices or chopped meat.
Anthony Godfrey:
Okay.
Jia Wei:
They have a very thin sliced pork for the Chinese New Year Hot Pot.
Anthony Godfrey:
Looks like we have pork heart and pork liver as well.
Jia Wei:
It's called fish meatball, I think.
Anthony Godfrey:
A fish meatball. Fish ball with dried mushroom. I had that for breakfast.
Jia Wei:
Really?
Anthony Godfrey:
No, I'm just kidding. Okay, so we're on the candy and cookie aisle, it looks like here in this market. Are you seeing anything that looks good to you?
Student 1:
Well, they're these cookie things that look like straws or just like any cookie things, they just look very good. They just look good because I have something called Piroulines. If you know what those are, and they're just really good.
Anthony Godfrey:
How about this right here? It looks like it's bursting with fruit flavor.
Student 1:
I don't really like jelly.
Anthony Godfrey:
You don't like jelly?
Student 1:
No.
Anthony Godfrey:
So that's not gonna work?
Student 1:
No.
Anthony Godfrey:
Anything else? What else looks good here? How about you? Egg rolls. Egg Rolls. Crisp is what it says. Do Crisp Egg Rolls sound good in a canister with a smiley face on it?
Student 2:
I like the ducks. It's really cute.
Anthony Godfrey:
Okay, so the cute package. Maybe you can judge a snack by its package. Anything else look good to you guys?
Student 3:
These like weird rice things. They just look kind of like interesting to taste.
Anthony Godfrey:
They do look interesting. Just kind of an odd cereal kind of stuck together.
Student 3:
Because for me I like trying new foods. That's why it's like so fun to try Chinese candy and things because I've never had it before.
Anthony Godfrey:
Does it surprise you that all this is available here? Not that far from where you live?
Student 3:
Kind of. I didn't know Chinatown was even a thing in Utah.
Anthony Godfrey:
Can you read the label for me?
Student 3:
Reading Chinese labels
Anthony Godfrey:
What does this one say?
Student 3:
I don't know.
Anthony Godfrey:
I think this one says you should buy this. It will taste really good in your tummy. I mean, that's a rough translation.
Student 3:
I don't think it says that, but good job you tried!
Anthony Godfrey:
All right. Thanks for making me feel good. All right. Good luck shopping.
Student 3:
Okay, thank you.
Anthony Godfrey:
All right. We're talking with one of the parents here, volunteering on the field trip. Introduce yourself.
Amy Nicholson:
My name's Amy Nicholson.
Anthony Godfrey:
Amy, you and I've met before, but you have several students in this program over the years, right?
Amy Nicholson:
Yes, I do. I've had two of my own and then I've had three nieces and nephews that I take care of after school that have been in the program.
Anthony Godfrey:
And tell me what impact this program has had on them.
Amy Nicholson:
Oh, it's amazing. It's fantastic. They have been able to move forward quicker in college and they've been able to use it in some job settings and they love to use it at restaurants and be able to communicate. So I think it's a great asset for them.
Anthony Godfrey:
Have you seen an impact on their learning generally?
Amy Nicholson:
I think that they did pick up reading better and I think their communication skills are better.
Anthony Godfrey:
I think it gets the brain firing in a different way and opens you up to additional learning for sure.
Amy Nicholson:
Yeah. I agree.
Anthony Godfrey:
Well, it's an exciting field trip, so let's get back to it.
Amy Nicholson:
All right. Hey, thank you.
Anthony Godfrey:
We're on the cookie and candy aisle it looks like. Tell me, what should I be paying attention to? What's the best stuff here?
Xiaoyu Fan:
Since you're American, you probably wanna pay attention to sweet stuff.
Anthony Godfrey:
Oh, the sweet stuff.
Xiaoyu Fan:
And you're at the right spot.
Anthony Godfrey:
All right, perfect.
Xiaoyu Fan:
We have chocolate, we have mochi, we have vanilla wafers, we have that one is called ChocoPie, but they're kind of like Ding Dongs in the states and they're all really good.
Anthony Godfrey:
Yeah, the ChocoPies look good. Okay. What would challenge me the most?
Xiaoyu Fan:
Seaweed.
Anthony Godfrey:
Seaweed.
Xiaoyu Fan:
How about you try this one?
Anthony Godfrey:
This one. The seaweed. The big roll of seaweed.
Xiaoyu Fan:
Yep. Big roll of seaweed.
Anthony Godfrey:
Okay.
Xiaoyu Fan:
That's like an entrepreneurial level.
Anthony Godfrey:
Okay.
Xiaoyu Fan:
It's like an entry level.
Anthony Godfrey:
Entry level. Alright.
Xiaoyu Fan:
Yeah. Next level up for you will be spicy. Something spicy.
Anthony Godfrey:
Alright.
Xiaoyu Fan:
Like a dried octopus or dried squid.
Anthony Godfrey:
Spicy dried octopus.
Xiaoyu Fan:
Would you like to try that?
Anthony Godfrey:
That is out of range for me a little bit. That's not on this aisle, right?
Xiaoyu Fan:
It’s not on this aisle.
Anthony Godfrey:
What is the spicy dried octopus section?
Xiaoyu Fan:
It's over there on that aisle. I'll take you there.
Anthony Godfrey:
Okay, let's take a look. Oh wow.
Xiaoyu Fan:
This might be the next level for you. It's a little bit spicy. It's called salted salmon. A salted egg salmon skin.
Anthony Godfrey:
Salted egg salmon skin. Wow.
Xiaoyu Fan:
So they take this huge salmon and they skin it, and then they dry the skin and they put some salted egg yolks on the outside for coating. And they dry for a long time. And that's what it becomes like. It tastes like a fish chip.
Anthony Godfrey:
Yeah. Wow. And then we see these chips are the lobster on the front. Yes. What are the lobster chips?
Xiaoyu Fan:
Supposedly they're made with lobster flavor. They're like lobster chips.
Anthony Godfrey:
Okay. Yeah. All right.
Xiaoyu Fan:
They're good too.
Anthony Godfrey:
Well, there are lots of great delicacies here and I can tell the kids are really excited to experience some different things.
Xiaoyu Fan:
Yes, they are loving it. This is a great experience for the students to immerse themselves, not in the classroom setting, but also in the real setting. All these stuff that they see, they see in books, but they don't know what they are. They don't know what they look like. So bring them here. It's like dream come true.
Anthony Godfrey:
Yeah. Do you think some of them will come back and bring their family and continue to explore different foods here?
Xiaoyu Fan:
For sure. Actually, before we came here, some of the students, because right now it's during Chinese New Year, they already brought their parents back here. And some of them actually made dumplings at home. They take picture and send it to me. They're like, Mrs. Fan, look, we made dumplings at home. We celebrate Chinese New Year.
Anthony Godfrey:
Oh, that's awesome.
Xiaoyu Fan:
So some of them actually already very familiar with this place. I see some students, they are like tour guide. They're touring their groups, telling them this is what it is, this is what it is. This is really good. So it's really fun.
Anthony Godfrey:
It's fun for the kids to be tour guides for their family, like you said. The learning goes well beyond the classroom. Congratulations. That's fantastic.
Xiaoyu Fan:
Thank you so much. Thank you.
Anthony Godfrey:
Thanks for joining us on another episode of the Supercast. Remember, education is the most important thing you'll do today. We'll see you out there.
19 min
February 02, 2023 Episode 178: A Parent’s Guide to “Health and Wellness Day” Activities for Students
It is a full day set aside for students, teachers, and staff in Jordan School District to prioritize their health and wellness at home and in school. The second annual Health and Wellness Day is Friday, February 10 and while there will be no school for students that day, they are invited to participate in the Wellness Quest with family and friends.
On this episode of the Supercast, we explain what the Wellness Quest is and how something called the “SELFIE’” model is at the heart of the Wellness Quest curriculum.
Audio Transcription
Anthony Godfrey:
Hello and welcome to the Supercast. I'm your host, Superintendent Anthony Godfrey. It is a full day set aside for students, teachers, and staff in Jordan School District to prioritize their health and wellness at home and in school. The second annual Health and Wellness Day is Friday, February 10th. And while there will be no in-person school for students that day, they are invited to participate in a Wellness Quest with family and friends. On this episode of the Supercast, we explain what the Wellness Quest is and how something called the "SELFIE" model is at the heart of the Wellness Quest curriculum.
We're here in our little studio talking to Casey Pehrson, the school psychologist at Herriman High School. Casey, thanks for joining us.
Casey Pehrson:
Glad to be here. Thanks for having me.
Anthony Godfrey:
Health and Wellness Day is coming up. It's our second annual Health and Wellness Day, which is set aside to focus on the health and wellness of our staff members, our parents, and our students educated with Jordan School District. And we're just excited for that day and we want to really talk about how we can each focus more on our own personal health. Casey, you've developed a program called the “SELFIE" Method that you've presented over 150 times. You presented it to our administrators in our opening conference and it's an acronym that reminds us of all the things we ought to be doing to help keep ourselves healthy. So can you go through the acronym? Tell us a little bit about where it started and tell us about yourself as well.
Casey Pehrson:
Yeah, so as was mentioned, my name's Casey Pehrson. I'm the school psychologist and I'm at Herriman High School. And this is my eighth year at Herriman High but my ninth year in Jordan School District, so I've also worked at East Lake Elementary and South Hills Middle School. So the "SELFIE" method is an acronym that was actually kind of developed based on experience at all three levels of education. So in elementary, middle school, and high school. But in "SELFIE" the ‘S’ stands for sleep, the ‘E’ is for exercise, ‘L’ is for light, ‘F’ is for fun, ‘I’ is for interaction and ‘E’ is for eating right. And these are kind of elements of self-care. But really, I call it your ticket to thrive because when you do these things you feel better. But a lot of times these things fall to the bottom of the list. We don't take time for them.
Anthony Godfrey:
Yeah, they're at the bottom of my list I'm afraid.
Casey Pehrson:
You’re not the only one.
Anthony Godfrey:
They need to move up. They need to move up. So that's why we're here. Let's talk about let's just work our way through the list. Let's start with sleep.
Casey Pehrson:
Yeah, so sleep. We as a society, we stink at sleep. We're really bad at it. And we tend to stink at sleep in one of three distinct ways. So the number one way that we all stink at sleep is we don't get enough. So if you're not getting enough sleep at night, you're in the majority because that's a lot of us. So for elementary-age kids, they need 9 to 11 hours of sleep per night. For adolescents, they need 8 to 10. That's the window. Research shows that 9.25 hours of sleep is optimal for most teens. And then adults we need 7 to 8. Research leans us a little more towards 7, but 7 to 8 is about the window. So if you're not getting enough, you're in the majority. So the number one way that we stink at sleep is we don't get enough.
The number two way that we stink at sleep is some of us try to splice it. My high school students are really good at this. Where they'll come home from school and they're so exhausted after the school day that they'll crash into a two-and-a-half-hour power nap. And I'm here to bust that myth. There's no such thing as a two-and-a-half-hour power nap. It sounds like I'm against naps though. I'm not against naps. I'm pro nap. Go nap. But you gotta do the power nap right. So in order to actually be a power nap, it needs to be 25 minutes or under, that's your power nap zone. If you're taking a two-and-a-half-hour nap, it's gonna actually exhaust you and steal from your nighttime sleep. Some of my students are doing this so they're falling asleep after school for two and a half hours and then they can't fall asleep for the night until 3:00 AM and a vicious cycle ensues. So splicing your sleep doesn't work. You need to get all of your sleep in one go.
Anthony Godfrey:
I've never heard that term for it. I've heard it termed falling asleep on the couch while you're doing email and letting your iPad fall to the floor.
Casey Pehrson:
That's it too, yes.
Anthony Godfrey:
That’s what we call it around my house.
Casey Pehrson:
That makes sense.
Anthony Godfrey:
And then you wake up, you're up for a while and then you try to get back to sleep and the sleep is disrupted. So that makes a lot of sense. And if you take a short nap, like a 20-minute nap, 25-minute nap, then you don't get pulled down into the abyss that I get pulled into if I nap or fall asleep. It's really hard to recover from that and your night's kind of shot.
Casey Pehrson:
Exactly. The number three way that we stink at sleep is sometimes we get too much. And there's kind of a law of diminishing returns with sleep. It's like Goldilocks, you wanna get the just right amount. If you get too much, you're gonna start negating some of your benefits of sleep. So that just right zone is what we're seeking.
Anthony Godfrey:
Now let me ask you about this. I've read over the years, I seem to recall, that you can actually catch up on sleep a little bit over a weekend. So I have been really open to my 13-year-old sleeping pretty late on a Saturday morning when it's possible. Is that true? Can you kind of catch up and make up a little bit for lost time?
Casey Pehrson:
Not a ton. To some extent you can, ultimately though sleep hygiene's important, and in order to achieve that, you kind of need to go to bed at the same time and wake up at the same time every day to get your body in that sort of natural circadian rhythm.
Anthony Godfrey:
That's it Thomas, you're not sleeping in anymore. It's over. Game's over.
Casey Pehrson:
You can still sleep in on the weekends.
Anthony Godfrey:
Okay, okay. Next. What's the ‘E’?
Casey Pehrson:
So exercise. And there's actually a magic of exercise. You're gonna release endorphins in your body and the best way to describe what endorphins do, they make you feel good. And the best way to get those going in your system is to move your body. We have to make kind of active, conscious choices to put exercise in our day. A lot of the research that I've done, it's talked about how our ancestors they had physical exercise built into their day. It was part of their livelihood. All their jobs involved movement. And so it wasn't really a choice for them. They had to, as part of their survival, they had to go move. We don’t. Like a lot of my work, I do, you know, sitting in a chair talking with people or a lot of people have jobs where they're in front of computer screens and they don't move. And so we've gotta make a little more of a conscious active effort and choice to plug exercise into the day.
Anthony Godfrey:
Sure, and finding the time for that is difficult. Is there an optimal time to exercise during the day or is it really a personal choice?
Casey Pehrson:
It depends on what you're trying to do. So for weight loss you're gonna wanna exercise first thing in the morning on an empty stomach. For just general like mood-boosting it doesn't matter as much the time of day. So yeah, it depends on what you're trying to do.
Anthony Godfrey:
And I would guess that you ought to just start somewhere.
Casey Pehrson:
Yeah, exactly.
Anthony Godfrey:
Try to stretch it beyond, say walking back and forth from your car to the office.
Casey Pehrson:
Yeah, and building it into what you're already doing as part of your day is crucial. So yeah, even the little things like parking a little further away, those little things can add up.
Anthony Godfrey:
Talk to me about ‘L’.
Casey Pehrson:
So the ‘L’ is for light and that's sunlight exposure. And so what gets activated through sunlight exposure is vitamin D, but vitamin D is not a great name for it. Vitamin D isn't even a vitamin, it's a hormone and you have enough of it in you, but it doesn't wake up to do its jobs in you until the sun wakes it up. So in the summertime, super straightforward, 10 to 15 minutes of direct sunlight and vitamin D wakes up and it does all of its jobs in your body and in your brain. It has a bunch of jobs in your body and brain, in your blood, in your immune system, in your heart, in your brain in your bones. Vitamin D has a lot of responsibilities, but it can't do those while it's asleep, while it's dormant. So wintertime we get knocked flat backward here, especially in Utah, you've probably heard the winter blues or seasonal affective disorder, which is aptly acronymed SAD because that's how we feel a lot of times in the wintertime.
Seasonal affective disorder. A lot of that has to do with our lack of sunlight. So the workarounds, how do we get that vitamin D into our system? It's still possible through the clouds and the inversion and the yuck that's outside. But it takes twice as long in the wintertime than it does in the summertime. So 20 to 30 minutes instead of 10 to 15. Ain't nobody got time for that and ain't nobody wanna stand out in the cold for that. So workarounds for winter, you can ingest vitamin D, meaning you can eat it. There are certain vitamin D-fortified foods and a lot of people, they actually get prescribed a vitamin D supplement because a lot of us are running around vitamin D deficient in the winter time.
Anthony Godfrey:
I never thought about vitamin D as being activated by the sun. I knew we needed to do it and get a little sunshine every day. I didn't realize the full impact of winter and the long list of responsibilities that vitamin D has.
Stay with us when we come back more on the "SELFIE" method. Find out how the ’F’, ‘I’ and ‘E’ can help improve a student's personal health and wellness.
Break:
Hello, I'm Sandy Riesgraf, Director of Communications for Jordan School District, and we want to invite you to connect with us. So many exciting things are happening in your child's school, your neighbor's school, in every school here, every day. Don't miss out on following the fun or simply staying informed when there's important information we need to share. Join us at jordandistrict.org, or follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram @jordandistrict. We can't wait to connect.
Anthony Godfrey:
All right, let's get to ‘F’.
Casey Pehrson:
The ‘F’ is for fun and we need fun. We need relaxation, we need laughter, we need to be able to enjoy. Fun fact is in Portugal they just passed a law where employers can get fined for bugging their employees outside of work hours. So, and this is actually, it's really bad for us to be on all the time, right? And that's kind of what modern-day jobs have become. And so we need to be able to take that time to separate actually, and relax, laugh, enjoy, just be in the moment instead of being on all the time in work mode.
Anthony Godfrey:
So part of fun is separating from work and really having a life separate from that, even for a few moments or for an hour or just for a small stretch of time. I also heard recently that even if you aren't looking at your phone but it's right near you, you still have a connection to it that prevents as strong a connection to the people and events around you.
Casey Pehrson:
Absolutely. Yeah. When those phones are around, they can create a barrier toward human connection.
Anthony Godfrey:
My phone listener is in my shirt pocket right over my heart as we speak and I'm getting my alerts the whole time so I know exactly what you're talking about. I'm very connected to my phone. So just fun that disconnects us from work and allows us to connect with the people around us.
Casey Pehrson:
That's right.
Anthony Godfrey:
Okay, take me through ‘I’.
Casey Pehrson:
And that actually is a great segue into ‘I’, which is for interaction. And we need each other. We are social animals and I've learned to be careful how I talk about this with students because some students have called me out and they say, Casey, ‘when you talk about phones, you sound like an old person complaining.’ And I'm like, ‘oh, I don't wanna sound like that.’ So I try to tell them in a way that doesn't offend anybody. And so far this has been the rule of thumb that hasn't offended anybody. So I tell students, ‘Hey, if you interact with other humans in real life, in real-time, you use your texting and social media as a supplement to that, then you're okay. But if you never interact with humans in real life, in real-time, you use your texting and social media as a replacement to real-life social interaction it's not gonna do what it's supposed to.’ So the us being social animals, it's actually science. When you are in the presence of other human beings having a caring, connected, cooperative experience with other humans, your body actually rewards you for it. It releases a chemical called oxytocin. And oxytocin it makes you feel good. You get that from being with other people, having caring, connected, cooperative experiences, not through text and not through social media.
Anthony Godfrey:
I've never heard it put quite that way, and I really like that. So as long as your primary interactions are in person, then having secondary interactions online is still healthy as long as you keep it in check and it's a supplement or a support to the real-world interactions with other humans.
Casey Pehrson:
Absolutely. Yes. Nailed it.
Anthony Godfrey:
So, so far, as long as we're interacting with others, we've got the oxytocin, we get little sunlight, we're activating the vitamin D, and then we exercise and we get those endorphins flowing. Our body is saying, thank you very much for taking a "SELFIE".
Casey Pehrson:
That's exactly right.
Anthony Godfrey:
All right, let's talk about ‘E’.
Casey Pehrson:
Yeah. So ‘E’ is for eating right.
Anthony Godfrey:
Eating right, yes.
Casey Pehrson:
We need to be very careful about what we're putting in our bodies and keep in mind our food is our fuel. So a lot of times I'll ask my students, I'll ask 'em, ‘did you eat breakfast?’ And you can imagine the answer that I get 85% of the time. It's no. 10% of the time my students are like, yeah, I had a Reese's Peanut Butter Cup and a Gatorade. And I'm like, oh, how do you feel? And they're like, great. And I'm like wait till 10 when that sugar kind of runs out of your system and dumps you off. So we're trying to sustain ourselves on things that aren't designed to sustain us. So we gotta, it's not like if somebody told me, Casey, you can't ever have ice cream again. I'd be like, then no more happiness. Like that would be a terrible thing for me. But we've gotta like kind of balance things out and pay attention to remembering your food is your fuel. And so that's what's gonna fuel you through your day.
Anthony Godfrey:
As long as our primary nutrition comes from healthy foods, we don't have to cut out the secondary foods of ice cream or some other things that we really enjoy. We want to firm kind of base that we build our nutrition on, and then we can have some other things as well. Build those relationships on personal, direct, in real-life relationships and then supplement that online. So it's about where we're focused predominantly. And with sleep too. Get your sleep at night. If you need a short nap, take a short nap, but don't make a nap a main part of how you're getting rest.
Casey Pehrson:
That's a great way of saying it. Yeah.
Anthony Godfrey:
As you've talked with people over the years as you've done this training, I'm sure a lot of people come up to you afterward and tell me about some of those stories that you've heard over the years.
Casey Pehrson:
Yeah. One of my favorites, so I was, I'd been working with a student for over a year and he came in one day with his mom and he just looked different in a good way. And I called him out on it. I was like, Hey. I was like, you look brighter. I was like, you are carrying yourself different. You have just a cool energy about you right now. I was like, what's going on? I was like, what are you even doing? And he looked at his mom and his mom looked back at him and said, well, tell her. And he goes, Casey, he's like, it's my "SELFIE". I've been taking care of my "SELFIE" and it works. So things like that when people can see like, I can actually do this and feel the difference. That is so exciting. And that's the cool part about teaching this is this stuff works.
The problem with teaching this though is none of this is revelation. You're not going out of here like what? Exercise? Nobody has ever told me exercise is good for me or I didn't know nutrition mattered. We've all heard this stuff, we all know this stuff, but there's a gap between what we know and what we do and that's the problem. So we've gotta be able to bridge that gap between what we know and what we do. There's a phrase that I love. Information is not transformation. And so how do we make that information? Our transformation is sort of the quest and the challenge in "SELFIE".
Anthony Godfrey:
I was gonna mention what you have already said, and that is that none of this is a shiny new object. It's not a new 90-day challenge where you eat broccoli only from 3:00 to 3:15 every afternoon and suddenly your body changes. It's the stuff we've always known. But I think doing those things in combination and probably making just small incremental changes to start with, instead of completely trying to shift everything all at once can really make an impact. I think sometimes my own problem is that I think, you know, I'm doing fine, I'm making it, I'm, you know, I feel okay, so why am I going to invest? You know, I'm surviving. So I'm not sure that we always see how much of an improvement we could experience if we just take that first little step of committing to an improvement.
Casey Pehrson:
Absolutely. And that's another testimonial that has come in. Actually, a student said, Casey, I didn't realize I could feel better than, okay, I've been feeling okay this whole time. And that was sort of my max. I feel better than okay doing this stuff
Anthony Godfrey:
Better than okay. That's a pretty good slogan.
Casey Pehrson:
Yeah. So you mentioned the science of "SELFIE" before and I give this presentation a lot. And I have a whole, usually there's 40 minutes that's devoted to the science of "SELFIE", but I'll summarize it. So I'll spare you the 40 minutes and put it in a sentence. So "SELFIE" is science, there's your sentence. When you're doing this "SELFIE" stuff, all those things that you mentioned, the endorphins, the vitamin D the oxytocin, the vitamins and minerals from food and then others that we didn't talk about. So the glymphatic system, which is involved in your sleep and we get serotonin and dopamine and all sorts of other things that we didn't even discuss yet. All of these things do the same thing. They give you energy and they boost your mood so they make you feel better and energize you.
Anthony Godfrey:
There's a reason that it's called the "SELFIE" method instead of the "SELFIE" experiment.
Casey Pehrson:
That's right.
Anthony Godfrey:
We know it's gonna work.
Casey Pehrson:
Yeah. Oh, absolutely.
Anthony Godfrey:
You do these things, you're gonna feel better, you're gonna be better off things are gonna be easier. Your mind's gonna be clearer, connections are gonna be deeper and problems don't go away, but you're sure gonna be better equipped to handle them.
Casey Pehrson:
For sure. Yeah, and it's an acronym for your physical health, for your mental health, for your social health. And it works in all of those ways.
Anthony Godfrey:
Well, hopefully, we can all do a little better and feel a little better and have a great health and wellness week.
Casey Pehrson:
Absolutely. I’m into that.
Anthony Godfrey:
Yes, thanks very much.
Casey Pehrson:
Thank you.
Anthony Godfrey:
Thanks for joining us on another episode of the Supercast. Remember, education is the most important thing you'll do today. We'll see you out there.
21 min
January 26, 2023 Episode 177: Riverton Elementary Sixth Grade Students Take Pride in Becoming Published Authors
It is something you don’t hear about very often, sixth grade students becoming published authors. But that is exactly what has happened at Riverton Elementary School.
On this episode of the Supercast, we take you inside Cassie Crandell’s classroom where students wrote and illustrated a picture book telling the true stories of trees surviving tragedies and natural disasters. The book was inspired by a survivor tree at the 9/11 memorial in New York City. Meet the young authors and find out where you can now buy their book.
Audio Transcription
Anthony Godfrey:
Hello, and welcome to the Supercast. I'm your host, Superintendent Anthony Godfrey. It is something you don't hear about very often, sixth grade students becoming published authors. But that is exactly what has happened at Riverton Elementary School. On this episode of the Supercast, we take you inside Cassie Crandell's classroom where students wrote and illustrated a picture book telling the true stories of trees surviving tragedies and natural disasters. The book was inspired by a survivor tree at the 9/11 Memorial in New York City. Meet the young authors and find out where you can now buy their book. We're here in Mrs. Crandall's classroom at Riverton Elementary, talking with her sixth graders and with her about a very special project they've been working on. Tell me about that.
Cassie Crandell:
So we started this project called The Tree of Hope, and what we did is we wrote a narrative fiction book about five survivor trees, and my students did all of it. I gave them the trees and they researched them, learned about how they survived, what they went through, and then they narrated the stories and they gave each of the trees a character and a struggle. The whole idea of this book was to create the power of hope and resilience. And then what we did is we created a schoolwide mural. So my students painted a tree, and then they went and explained the project to each class, and each student got a circle and a color that they colored or drew or something that represented hope to them, or just colored it in for the younger kids. And then we put it up on the tree. Then we invited each of the classes to come down and we read them our book about the Tree of Hope and the power of hope and resilience.
Anthony Godfrey:
So what was the impetus for starting a project like this?
Cassie Crandell:
I knew I wanted to do something. I wanted to create something with my students that would be beneficial to not only them but to our community as a school. And now it's kind of reaching out into the community, which I think is amazing. I love the tree from the 9/11, the survivor tree from 9/11. I visited the monument years ago, and I always thought that that was such a powerful story. And I feel like our kids, with everything that they've gone through and the things that continue to happen, sometimes the world can just feel really heavy. But I felt like we could create something that would be beautiful and give hope to not only my students but to the whole school and the community.
Anthony Godfrey:
So tell me how this has been organized and what the creation of the book and publishing and distribution of the book have looked like.
Cassie Crandell:
Yeah. So I essentially gave my students the idea. I told them the idea and asked them how they felt about it and if they wanted to do it. And they were really excited from the beginning. And then I picked five survivor trees. I split them into five different groups, and they got with their groups and they did everything. They did the research, they wrote the narratives. I met with them, I would listen to their stories. I gave them feedback. They met with other groups and got feedback from them. They did multiple revisions. And then we split into new groups after we'd all written. And so then I had another group that wrote the introduction and the conclusion and information about the actual trees. I had another group who was working specifically on just the formatting. I had a group of illustrators who illustrated and met with the writers and what their ideas were, how they wanted the story to be portrayed through pictures. And then I had a group of students who worked just on the mural and designing the tree and taping it up and putting all the circles on. And then I had another group of students who actually went to all of the classrooms and met with the teachers and collected the circles and explained what was going on, wrote the email to the teachers, explaining it and all of that. And so they really have, like, I've just kind of been the director of all of it, but they have really taken it and just done this amazing thing.
And then as far as publishing, they formatted the book. I made a few simple formatting changes and put it into an online website that I found. And then we were able to publish the book and it's available for anybody to buy if they wanted it. And so I know that some of the students' parents have bought the book and it's been a really cool thing. I've seen their confidence in their writing grow. But also this idea that they can make a difference and actually do something that can affect people for good has been awesome.
Anthony Godfrey:
It is wonderful for students to get that sense of efficacy. I can do something and it has an impact in a positive way on the lives of others. I love the Hope Tree, we walked by that. Now, sixth graders generally rule the school, but this way, they're leading the school as well by being in classrooms and sharing a message. What was the reception like from teachers when they heard about this idea?
Cassie Crandell:
They were really excited about it. They were really willing to help. And they've been, I mean, they've been willing to take time out of their class to come and have us read the book to them. All of the teachers that I talked to personally were really excited about the project. They were really impressed with what my kids created. And were really willing and helpful and just supportive through the whole thing.
Anthony Godfrey:
What are some of the things that you hope your students have learned through this project?
Cassie Crandell:
First and foremost, I hope that they have learned the power of hope and resilience. Life is not an easy thing and these kids have been through a lot. You know, they've been through a pandemic and war and inflation, and that's not it. That's not gonna be the only things that they deal with. And my hope is that through these stories and through doing this project, that they will really realize that they are resilient. And that they can choose to find hope, and that they can have that hope and keep that hope. They don't know this, but my husband recently lost his job. And it was a really, really hard thing. And as I sat there struggling with it, I remembered this project that I had done with my students and the power of hope that we had talked about. And it was such a good reminder to me to remind myself that what I had tried to teach my students and what we have been trying to teach the community, that when we rise together, when we work together, when we come together, we can always find hope. And it doesn't necessarily mean that everything's the way we want it to be, but it does mean that we can be okay.
Anthony Godfrey:
It's had a huge personal impact for you, obviously.
Cassie Crandell:
It has. Yeah.
Anthony Godfrey:
And for these students, I think it has probably shifted the way that they view the world and their own capacity for making it better.
Cassie Crandell:
I hope so. That's the hope.
Anthony Godfrey:
There are a lot of academic concepts embedded in this project as well.
Cassie Crandell:
Oh yeah.
Anthony Godfrey:
Absolutely. Talk to us about that.
Cassie Crandell:
Yeah. So this is my first year doing any kind of project like this. So in sixth grade I teach narrative writing and generally, we write a personal narrative. So this was kind of a different shift on that, but it was such a fun experience. And I feel like my students have really grown as writers and they really see themselves as writers because they were able to take these stories and really narrate them. And so each of the trees actually has something that real people might struggle with. Depression, anxiety, overconfidence, the innocence of youth, and the loss of family members and friends. And so they were able to take real-life things and put it into a narrative and use descriptive language, and dialogue, and all of these really great narrative techniques. And then on top of that, bringing in the art, and writing the emails, and the formatting, and working with groups, and the revision, and the editing, and just all of that has been so amazing to see my kids really take on the process of a writer and what that really looks like, rather than just writing a paper.
Anthony Godfrey:
I like the way that you described that they get to see themselves as writers, so they envision something beyond what they might have otherwise. Because too often we may look at just the assignment in front of us, instead of what that means about us, the fact that we're engaging in this activity.
Cassie Crandell:
Right. I agree. I think it's been really good for them.
Anthony Godfrey:
It's amazing that you're giving them such great experiences to have this deep emotional connection to their learning as they're helping other people and really connecting to the work that they do in class. So thank you for providing that opportunity.
Cassie Crandell:
Thank you. I appreciate it. It's really important to me. I think academics are obviously why I'm here, but at the end of the day, if my students can walk out better people and better citizens and didn't learn as much math as they needed to, or didn't score as high as they wanted to on a test, then I still feel like I've done my job as a teacher.
Anthony Godfrey:
Well, connecting the academic learning to learning how to be a better person makes both types of learning last even longer.
Cassie Crandell:
Right, exactly.
Anthony Godfrey:
Stay with us. When we come back the book’s authors share their story and excitement over being published authors.
Break:
Hello, I'm Sandy Riesgraf, Director of Communications for Jordan School District, and we want to invite you to connect with us. So many exciting things are happening in your child's school, your neighbor's school, in every school here, every day. Don't miss out on following the fun or simply staying informed when there's important information we need to share. Join us at jordandistrict.org, or follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram @jordandistrict. We can't wait to connect.
Student reading aloud from the book:
The ground started shaking and the tides seemed to retreat from the shore. On the horizon, I saw small waves slowly growing and marching across the ocean.
“Tsunami! Earthquake!” The lifeguard shouted, jumping up from the shade of my branches.
All I could do was hope as the wave shortened the distance between us. Wave after wave, quake after quake, my family fell around me.
“No!” I wailed as my close friend fell. “Why?”
The salty water felt like my tears. It sickened me to know that my family was falling without me. I had known that the tsunami was coming. I was the only one that knew. When the dominant wave finally washed back, the devastation was real. Entire buildings crumbled. Families separated. Nothing was as it was before. It would never be the same again.
Anthony Godfrey:
Tell me exactly how would you define a survivor tree?
Cassie Crandell:
I think a survivor tree is a tree that has survived against the odds in a natural disaster or even a manmade disaster. Some of these were bombs that were dropped, those obviously weren't natural disasters. Some of them survived earthquakes and tsunamis and hurricanes. And while most of the other trees were lost, these trees were nurtured back to health. Mostly because people came and found them and saved them. And I think that that's a really important lesson, that because often it's hard to find hope alone, but we can find hope in those around us, and this with the support of others. And so, like one of my students mentioned one of the trees did end up dying, but it was still a symbol of hope because it did survive initially. And I think a survivor tree gives hope to us because if a tree can survive, then so can we.
Anthony Godfrey:
Anyone who wants to buy the book, how do they do that?
Cassie Crandell:
It's on a website called Bookemon. Like Pokémon, but Bookemon.
Anthony Godfrey:
Oh, okay. Gotta catch 'em all.
Cassie Crandell:
Yeah, that's right. And it's called Trees of Hope by Mrs. Crandall's class. There's a link that I don't know if you want it.
Anthony Godfrey:
We'll put a link in the show notes.
Cassie Crandell:
Yeah, you can put a link in the show notes. I know that the Riverton Journal is doing an article on it as well, and they'll have a link to it as well. But yeah, it's a great book. And obviously, we don't make any profits from it. We're just here to kind of spread hope and joy.
Anthony Godfrey:
I'll hop on and get a copy. Thank you.
Cassie Crandell:
Thank you.
Anthony Godfrey:
Now let's talk about the trees that you guys covered. Tell me your name.
Parker:
My name is Parker.
Anthony Godfrey:
All right. Parker, what tree did you write about?
Parker:
I wrote about the Oklahoma City bombing tree. It was about it happened in Oklahoma City in a big work building and a truck pulled up with a bomb in the back. And then when the bomb blew up, basically the entire building was destroyed. But the tree was like the only thing left.
Anthony Godfrey:
And you wrote from the tree's perspective as a narrator in the story, right?
Parker:
Yes.
Anthony Godfrey:
What issues in the story was the tree dealing with?
Parker:
The tree was really dealing with anxiety a lot because it was like a near-death experience and in the tree's mind we tried to convey that the tree was riddled with anxiety forever but still could get over it because it had hope.
Anthony Godfrey:
What were some of the things that you learned from this project?
Parker:
I learned that hope is a very powerful thing and that you shouldn't give up on things. Even though it's hard, you should always keep on trying, keep on fighting.
Anthony Godfrey:
Does this make you want to keep writing?
Parker:
Actually, yes it does. I really like this story. It was a lot of fun to create.
Anthony Godfrey:
Great. Thank you. Tell me your name.
Ellie:
My name is Ellie.
Anthony Godfrey:
And Ellie, what tree did you write about?
Ellie:
I wrote about the Miracle Pine.
Anthony Godfrey:
Tell me about the Miracle Pine.
Ellie:
The Miracle Pine was one of the thousands of trees that survived a tsunami and an earthquake in Japan. And sadly it died a few years later, but they're rebuilding a monument of it so that everyone can still come visit and see.
Anthony Godfrey:
What did you like most about this project?
Ellie:
What I like most about this project is that I was able to explore more of my writing capabilities cuz I've hardly ever written true stories.
Anthony Godfrey:
And does this make you want to do more of that?
Ellie:
Yeah.
Anthony Godfrey:
Okay, great. Thank you. Tell me your name.
Sophie:
My name is Sophie.
Anthony Godfrey:
And, Sophie, what was your tree?
Sophie:
I did the Puerto Rico banyan tree.
Anthony Godfrey:
Okay. Tell me about a banyan tree.
Sophie:
The banyan is a kind of fig tree and the one in the story was by the San Juan Gate in Puerto Rico. And Hurricane Marina came through and tore it and threw it into the sea, pretty much.
Anthony Godfrey:
And what did you, what did you learn going through this project?
Sophie:
I learned that hope is powerful and it can save lives.
Anthony Godfrey:
Okay, wonderful. Thank you. Tell me your name and what tree you covered.
Wyatt:
My name is Wyatt and I covered the bonsai tree in Japan that survived the atomic bomb in Hiroshima. The bonsai was like in its outdoor nursery and it was like surrounded by walls. And then when the bomb was dropped it exploded the walls around it. But the wall protected it from the bigger blast. And like, it didn't feel the blast much, it just felt the pieces of rocks from the wall.
Anthony Godfrey:
Okay. And what did you learn from this project?
Wyatt:
I learned that, like Parker said, hope is a very powerful thing and you can learn lots of things from it and you should never give up on things even though they might seem hard.
Anthony Godfrey:
Okay. Awesome. And tell me your name.
Claire:
I'm Claire.
Anthony Godfrey:
And Claire, what tree did you cover?
Claire:
I did the 9/11 Callery pear tree.
Anthony Godfrey:
And tell me about the Callery pear tree.
Claire:
It is a tree and it was during 9/11. It was around 30 years old and about eight feet tall. In the book, the tree is living its perfect life and nothing hard or anything. And then terrorists took over two planes in New York City and crashed them into the Twin Towers and it covered the 9/11 tree in debris. He lost all hope and his perfect life just vanished in a few moments, but people found him and like nurtured him back to health, and he survived.
Anthony Godfrey:
So what did you learn from being a part of this project?
Claire:
I learned that like Parker and Wyatt said, hope is very powerful and it can save you from the most difficult circumstances. And whenever you are in a hard spot in your life, you can always find hope.
Anthony Godfrey:
Wonderful, does this make you want to do more writing?
Claire:
Yes, definitely.
Anthony Godfrey:
Okay. Had you been doing much writing before this project?
Claire:
Kind of, but this project has really made me wanna write more.
Anthony Godfrey:
Awesome. All right. Thanks you guys. Fantastic.
Thanks for joining us on another episode of the Supercast. Remember, education is the most important thing you'll do today. We'll see you out there.
20 min
January 19, 2023 Episode 176: Mountain Ridge High Special Education Teacher is Women’s World Arm Wrestling Champion
She is a champion for students with special needs in her classroom at Mountain Ridge High School. Now, Sarah LaFond has risen to the top in something else she is passionate about. Sarah recently became the women’s world champion in arm wrestling during a competition in France.
On this episode of the Supercast, we head to Mountain Ridge High where we meet this dynamic educator and athlete who is a powerful force in and outside the classroom.
Audio Transcription
Anthony Godfrey:
Hello and welcome to the Supercast. I'm your host, Superintendent Anthony Godfrey. She is a champion for students with special needs in her classroom at Mountain Ridge High School. Now, Sarah LaFond has risen to the top in something else she is passionate about. Sarah recently became the women's world champion in arm wrestling during a competition in France. On this episode of the Supercast, we head to Mountain Ridge High where we meet this dynamic educator and athlete who is a powerful force in and outside the classroom. Find out what it takes to make it to the top as a world champion for both right arm wrestling and left arm wrestling.
We're at Mountain Ridge High School with Sarah LaFond, world champion in left and right hand arm wrestling. Sarah, thanks for taking time to talk with us.
Sarah LaFond:
Thank you for having me.
Anthony Godfrey:
When you're not arm wrestling, you're also a special education teacher here at Mountain Ridge. Tell us about your career.
Sarah LaFond:
I've been teaching, this is my sixth year teaching. I've always done math resource at a secondary level. So I teach the kids with mild, moderate disabilities the high school math content.
Anthony Godfrey:
And what made you want to become a teacher?
Sarah LaFond:
I'm dyslexic. Had a hard time learning to read and so I guess I saw the difference a good teacher could make and wanted to be that teacher for some kids.
Anthony Godfrey:
And you ended up with math as the focus?
Sarah LaFond:
Yes, definitely. I have always preferred math to language arts.
Anthony Godfrey:
Okay. Fair enough. Now let's talk about arm wrestling. First of all, what got you into arm wrestling in the first place?
Sarah LaFond:
Okay, so I've lifted a very long time. I started out lifting when I was a young teen with my dad and have lifted for most of my adult life. And it got to a point where I felt like I was strong enough and not doing anything with the strength that I was building. So I kind of started researching different options. My upper body's always been my strength and so I thought breaking into arm wrestling would be easy. There was a local team and so I just started going, that was only about a year and a half ago, so I'm pretty new to it.
Anthony Godfrey:
So you've only done it for a year and a half and you're world champion?
Sarah LaFond:
Yes.
Anthony Godfrey:
That feels pretty awesome I’ll bet.
Sarah LaFond:
It's pretty good. Yeah.
Anthony Godfrey:
So how did you find out there were teams to start with?
Sarah LaFond:
My dad really, cuz I was talking to him about different competitive outlets and he was like, you should look into arm wrestling. So I googled it, you know, found a Facebook group.
Anthony Godfrey:
Okay.
Sarah LaFond:
Yeah. That's pretty much it.
Anthony Godfrey:
Are you generally a competitive person?
Sarah LaFond:
I'm very competitive.
Anthony Godfrey:
Okay. Yeah. So you needed an outlet for that?
Sarah LaFonda:
Everything's a competition.
Anthony Godfrey:
Okay, you knew you had to compete somehow, somewhere.
Sarah LaFond:
Yes.
Anthony Godfrey:
Tell me about the equipment that you, when you, if you walk into the club or the competition, what does the table look like? What does the equipment look like? I've pictured in the past someone, you know, having to hold a post with one hand and then wrestle with the other. So will you describe that?
Sarah LaFond:
Yeah. So you've got a table that's just, at least on me, just above hip height. There are certain requirements, but I actually don't know 'em off the top of my head. And then you've got these square pads that your elbow has to stay on at all times. So your elbow's always on the pad and then you've got a peg off to the side that your other hand has to be on. So, like the main rules, if you had to say what are the rules, is you have to have one foot on the ground and one hand on the peg, elbow on the pad. Right? And then you're just trying to pin the other person. There's a pad just next to you that you're trying to pin their hand to.
Anthony Godfrey:
Okay. So are you sometimes trying to pull people off of those rules to get them to break the rules?
Sarah LaFond:
Oh yeah.
Anthony Godfrey:
Not necessarily just win, but disqualify them because they break the rules?
Sarah LaFond:
Yeah, so you can win based on elbow fouls, right? So if their elbow comes off the pad, they get an elbow foul. And if that happens twice, you win. So you can win with elbow fouls and you can definitely do that. I mean, it takes a lot of lat strength, but it's a strategy to just elbow foul 'em out. You just pull 'em off the pad.
Anthony Godfrey:
So do you do research on people as they come into this and now, okay, this is a person where lats are a strength and they may try to pull me off the pad. I'm gonna be ready for that.
Sarah LaFond:
Yeah, absolutely. Like you try to know your competition, right. And to see kind of, so there's different methods. The main two are top rolling and using a hook. Right? So you like to know if they're a top roller or use hooks and how you can combat that. So you go into it trying to know how they're gonna attack you.
Anthony Godfrey:
Okay now I instantly have to know what top rolling and using hooks are, so tell me about that.
Sarah LaFond:
Of course. Okay. So the top roll is what you would see in Over the Top, right? So you're kind of trying to pronate your hand and drag your elbow back to essentially attack their fingers and just win your hand straight.
Anthony Godfrey:
To attack their fingers? Can you show me kind of what that would look like?
Sarah LaFond:
Yes. So if I were to grip up with you, what I'm doing here is instead of just going sideways, I'm coming through here and attacking your fingers.
Anthony Godfrey:
Oh, so you're kind of pulling my arm and hand toward you. I see. I can see you’ve done that before.
Sarah LaFond:
Uh huh, and then a hook you want to go ahead and you're gonna actually hook your wrist together and then you're just trying to drive them that way. So they're almost opposite.
Anthony Godfrey:
Yeah. Hook the hand again, because when you hook it, you're kind of pulling toward me a little bit, aren’t you?
Sarah LaFond:
Yes, uh huh. And then I'm just gonna drive my bone into your bone there.
Anthony Godfrey:
I can see that that would be very effective. So because they're opposites, you kind of have to think what are they gonna try to do? And if you're defending for one, you're actually opening yourself up to the other.
Sarah LaFond:
Definitely. Yep. And you have to kind of know, cuz I mean, speed is huge. So if you're a top roller and they use hooks, if you're faster than them, you'll probably beat 'em. But if you're not, a hook's gonna beat a top roll. Right.
Anthony Godfrey:
So, how much of the competition is about matchup then? Is there, if you top roll and they hook, does that make that more difficult or?
Sarah LaFond:
It really, at that point, it's just gonna depend usually on speed. Right. Whoever hits first is probably gonna win. If you're going a top roll against a hook.
Anthony Godfrey:
So I have so many questions. So do you go fast and hard or, I mean, is that the strategy?
Sarah LaFond:
Almost always. Right. Unless you're significantly stronger than your opponent and you kind of just wanna get a feel for 'em, otherwise you wanna hit. so it's called the ready go. Right. You can go as soon as they say go, right, but you get a warning if you go before the go. So, ready go, you wanna hit, you wanna make sure you get the advantage because as soon as someone's wrist breaks, not breaks, but just like cracks so to speak, that person's probably gonna win, right?
Anthony Godfrey:
So when the wrist gives, they’re gonna lose.
Sarah LaFond:
Yeah, you've got 'em. Almost always, almost always. I did that in the finals on left hand. I came back from a bad wrist position and won. But it doesn't happen very often.
Anthony Godfrey:
Have you experienced injuries over the last year and a half as you've been arm wrestling? And what kind of injuries are possible?
Sarah LaFond:
Okay, so I mean, I just have basic like tendon pain, right? Like, and that's super common. Just your elbow's not really meant to go that direction, right? It's a hinge joint and you're trying to make it go every which direction. So that's just tendon pain. But that's just, if you just rest it, usually it gets better. And your tendons get better at enduring it so that I don't get a lot of pain anymore. But I've seen spiral fractures. So if you aren't good, you gotta be careful, right? I've seen guys have, so that's just up here in their humerus. It's just they're pushing one way and the other person's pushing the other way and their humerus just is a spiral fracture. So just twists in the two different directions and snaps. It's a loud noise.
Anthony Godfrey:
I'll bet it is. Yeah. Is that kind of a stubbornness, like it's not going your way? Or does it just happen out of nowhere?
Sarah LaFond:
No, you know, if you're, if you're doing it right, it won't happen. So you have to just look at your hand. That's like the first rule. Like you pretend there's a pencil from your thumb to your nose, and if you stay there, you're never gonna get a spiral fracture. But if you let your shoulder get in front of your arm like that, then it can twist. If your technique's good, it shouldn't happen.
Anthony Godfrey:
So do those who are just starting out sometimes do that and pull their shoulder to try to get a little more leverage?
Sarah LaFond:
Definitely, yeah. They think that it's gonna make 'em stronger. It gets you in a weaker position, but it's just natural to try to pull your whole body to try to win, you know, so you just have to practice it.
Anthony Godfrey:
I feel like I do that with a golf swing. I do things that feel better, but actually make my swing worse.
Sarah LaFond:
Yep. We all do it.
Anthony Godfrey:
So do your students know about your arm wrestling and does the faculty know?
Sarah LaFond:
Yes. I'm somewhat prideful about it. I have my arm wrestling awards displayed in my classroom, so my students know it's a point of pride for me.
Anthony Godfrey:
Oh, that's fantastic. You should show it off. Absolutely.
Sarah LaFond:
I do, all the time.
Anthony Godfrey:
And what is their reaction?
Sarah LaFond:
Well, when I get new students, they're always like, what are those for? And I say, arm wrestling. And usually they don't believe me. Right. And then I'm like, no, go read 'em. You know, and they say arm wrestling all over 'em. And then their immediate reaction is, will you arm wrestle me?
Anthony Godfrey:
So what does an arm wrestling trophy look like?
Sarah LaFond:
Oh, most of the time they're medals. I do have a couple belts in my closet but I don't know how to display those so they just stay in my closet.
Anthony Godfrey:
Okay. Stay with us when we come back. Sarah LaFond helps me up my arm wrestling game.
Break:
In Jordan School District, we like to support students in and outside the classroom along with their families. That's where the Jordan Family Education Center comes in, offering support services and a wide variety of classes for students and their families, free of charge. You can take a class called Blues Busters for children feeling sad or worried. Just Breathe is a class that helps students reduce stress. Or how about a class that supports parents in helping their children make and keep good friends. There are also support groups and free counseling, all provided by Jordan School District school psychologists and counselors. To find out how you can benefit from free family support services offered by the Jordan Family Education Center, call 801-565-7442 or visit guidance.jordandistrict.org.
Anthony Godfrey:
Tell me about coaching. Who's your coach? How does that work? And what are some of the things you've learned from them that you can share? Don't share any secrets.
Sarah LaFond:
Okay. Yeah. So I kind of have three coaches I would say. Bob Brown, he's really big in the arm wrestling community, trained for a very long time with Brzenk, which is what over the top is based off of. Brzenk's like the goat. Right. So, they're good friends. And so I train with Bob Brown and he's really well known in the community. I train at his house. And then I have Craig Tullier and he's now back in, I think Louisiana, I can't remember. He was out here for a while and he trained me. And also Luke Pulscher and he's in ooh, Minnesota maybe? And so those are more like remote, you know, they'll give me tips and stuff like that as they're watching live streams. They can text me and stuff like that. Bob, I train with all the time.
Anthony Godfrey:
What percentage of success is based on strength versus technique? I know, I know it's a 100% mental also.
Sarah LaFond:
Right, right. Oh, there's lots. But I would say if I were to say a percentage probably 30/70. 30% to strength and 70% to technique. Cuz I think I'm, and not to be boastful, I think I'm stronger than most of my opponents, but my technique's not as good because I'm new. And so they can sometimes beat me out in that way. So I think usually technique's gonna win. If you're even in strength, even if you're a little stronger than someone, but their technique is better, they'll probably beat you.
Anthony Godfrey:
But with your level of strength and the focus you've had on lifting for a long time, over time you're going to continue to hone that technique so you are going to get the full benefit of your strength at a certain point.
Sarah LaFond:
Yes. Eventually, hopefully. They say usually kind of around two to three years is when you really kind of hit your stride. So we're getting closer.
Anthony Godfrey:
Wow. Yeah. That's fantastic. Now let's talk specifically about the national competition. Where was this held and how many rounds did it take to get to the finals?
Sarah LaFond:
Okay, so Nationals was in Texas over the summer. Dallas. And I went there and I was uncontested, meaning there was no one else in my weight class. So it's a weight class sport, just like wrestling is. So I was 57 kilograms, which is around 125 pounds. And so there was just no one else in my weight class. It's a small sport, not a lot of women in it. And then, you know, if you get down into the really finite weight categories, there wasn't anyone. So I was by default the state's 57 kilogram female arm wrestler.
And so then I went to this past September, end of September, beginning of October was Worlds and that was in Dieppe, France which is like an hour outside of Normandy, off the coast. Super pretty area. So I went there, got to explore Paris a little bit, and then went down to Dieppe and there we had a more sizable pool of females. It's a double round elimination tournament. So if you lose twice, you're out. So left hand, I lost to the first girl, her name was Fia. So I was on the B side of the bracket cuz I had lost once and beat everybody else. So then you come back for finals and she hasn't lost any. So in order to beat her, I have to beat her twice. Because she's beat me once, so I have to beat her twice to be better than her. So I did, I came back, I beat her twice. That was left hand, and then right hand, I stayed on the A side of the bracket. So I didn't lose any, I was just won 'em all.
Anthony Godfrey:
So let's talk more about left hand. You have to come from the B bracket and come back and beat the person twice.
Sarah LaFond:
Yes.
Anthony Godfrey:
That you'd lost to. How many matches is that, and in what period of time are you doing that?
Sarah LaFond:
So at worlds, it was very fast just cuz they're efficient, they've gotta get through a lot of people. Right. And so I had to go and win three matches in between to get to her. Which sounds like not much cuz they're so fast. But you'd be surprised by the adrenaline and how exhausted you are. And then sometimes it's an immediate turnaround. You do a pull and then you're the next person up at the next one. So you get one minute, you know, they give you 60 seconds.
Anthony Godfrey:
How can you do that with the same arm? It does not sound easy at all.
Sarah LaFond:
No, it's exhausting. It's exhausting.
Anthony Godfrey:
It sounds, it sounds absolutely draining.
Sarah LaFond:
It is. And it can be frustrating sometimes, you know, you go and you have a really big battle with someone and then you're up next on the bracket again and then you lose to someone who you might not have just cuz you're totally beat. Right. So sometimes it's luck of the draw with the bracket. That's just how it goes.
Anthony Godfrey:
And it's a little bit about how much energy you have to expend to get to the finals so that you're as fresh as possible against your most difficult opponent. Tell me about the right hand in this competition.
Sarah LaFond:
Yep. Right hand. So I actually didn't go up against the girl who gave me more trouble left-handed. She elbow fouled out with one of her first opponents. And so she got eliminated before I ever pulled against her. She was from Sweden, so left hand, the final was against Sweden and then right hand my final was against a woman from Poland. And she was a battle too, but I always felt in control of that one. The one left hand, I wasn't sure how it was gonna go for me. I was surprised by the outcome. Right hand went a little bit smoother for me. I think just confidence was boosted, maybe by left hand, I was able to keep my calm.
Anthony Godfrey:
So it was maybe good to do left hand first, maybe.
Sarah LaFond:
Yeah.
Anthony Godfrey:
Which hand do you prefer?
Sarah LaFond:
Usually I'm more confident left hand. I'm right hand dominant, but my strength is pretty even and most people are weaker left hand, so I just tend to perform a little bit better left, but right went well. So I won't complain about it.
Anthony Godfrey:
That makes sense. Well, congratulations again. That's awesome. Let's talk about this video. This is your left hand video?
Sarah LaFond:
Yeah, this is the final.
Anthony Godfrey:?
Can we start this over?
Sarah LaFond:
This is Fia from Sweden, so she slips, right.
Anthony Godfrey:
Oh, okay.
Sarah LaFond:
That was an intentional slip because, you see, I was in a winning position, so then our hands get strapped. Right. If you slip, you get strapped. And then she beat me in the strap.
Anthony Godfrey:
Oh yeah.
Sarah LaFond:
And this is just another girl from Sweden. So that was my first loss, my first pull. Then I beat this girl from Sweden.
Anthony Godfrey:
Is it harder when it's strapped?
Sarah LaFond:
It depends. Some people are really good in the strap. I'm usually good in the strap, but I did not get it that time. So then here we come back, this is finals. We actually slipped and got into the strap. And so I beat her in the strap this first round. So now we're even, she's won one, I've won one, and I have to win one more to beat her. And so this is our last pull here. And you can see she definitely gets me right there.
Anthony Godfrey:
Oh, it looks like she's got you. She's leaning way in.
Sarah LaFond:
And like coming back from something like that. It's a, I mean.
Anthony Godfrey:
Right here. Did you think you had a chance to come back?
Sarah LaFond:
I didn't, but I just was gonna give it my all the whole time.
Anthony Godfrey:
Oh that is so cool. That is so cool. She is leaning in, she's got her whole body going. She's got one foot down, one foot down.
Sarah LaFond:
You’ve got one foot up, one foot down. Lots of people ask me about that. So, but I was able to yeah pull her back from that.
Anthony Godfrey:
Oh wow. You just crank, crank, crank. It's like three cranks and she's down.
Sarah LaFond:
Yep.
Anthony Godfrey:
What did it feel like to win two world championships left and right?
Sarah LaFond:
It was amazing. I did not go into it expecting that. I went in expecting to go two and out, especially being that I didn't have anyone to compete against at nationals. I was just like, I was the default person, you know? So I didn't feel like I had really a, and being new to the sport, I just thought, well, this will be a good experience. I won't win. I didn't even think I'd win a single match, you know? And so then once I saw, you know, I stood a chance, it changed my mindset a little bit after pulling a couple girls and then that left hand win, that was, that was an unparalleled feeling cuz I came back from the B side. I came back from a losing position. It was my, you know, first world's champion win. It was, yeah, it was unreal. Definitely. Like, just the adrenaline was unbelievable. And then obviously right hand was great too. It was just that left hand. Yeah. That was an unparalleled moment.
Anthony Godfrey:
Well, that's pretty remarkable. Congratulations again. Maybe we need to submit a request to the state to start an arm wrestling class here at Mountain Ridge.
Sarah LaFond:
In Sweden they have an arm wrestling high school so…
Anthony Godfrey:
An arm wrestling high school? Oh my.
Sarah LaFond:
We're way far behind in the States compared to Europe.
Anthony Godfrey:
We are behind the Swedes once again. In another area. Oh wow. Okay. That's something. I'm looking that up. That's incredible. I know that you don't arm wrestle students, do you arm wrestle superintendents?
Sarah LaFond:
Ooh, I don't know.
Anthony Godfrey:
Not with full intensity, but just kind of show me. Let's do a reenactment. Let's do a reenactment. So show me how it felt when you, on the left hand when you were back. So first of all I'm not gonna give a spinal or a spiral?
Sarah LaFond:
A spiral fracture?
Anthony Godfrey:
First of all, I'm not gonna get a spiral fracture, am I?
Sarah LaFond:
No. Nope. Keep your eyes on your hand and you're good.
Anthony Godfrey:
All right.
Sarah LaFond:
Okay. So you just wanna feel kind of how I do it?
Anthony Godfrey:
Yeah.
Sarah LaFond:
Slow motion. Okay. Yeah. So I'm gonna go like this.
Anthony Godfrey:
Oh wow.
Sarah LaFond:
And then I would come down here. Okay.
Anthony Godfrey:
Wow. I instantly had no ability to stop you.
Sarah LaFond:
Right, with the top roll, cuz I'm attacking your fingers, you can't use hardly anything up there. It's all about your hand strength and I’ve got you in an amazing position right there.
Anthony Godfrey:
Right, it’s hand strength only and I have no strength whatsoever. Wow. Yeah. I was going down, you were taking me down. There is no question about that. So what was the other move? That was the top roll. Sarah LaFond:
That's the top roll. And so the other one's a hook. So that'd be, I'd go in here and then the goal would be to just push against your bone. Right? With my bone.
Anthony Godfrey:
I could feel, that does not feel great. That's like I am going down again. That's incredible. Well, congratulations. I know you've got some secrets too.
Sarah LaFond:
Of course.
Anthony Godfrey:
That's very, very cool. Very cool. So, well thank you for taking the time and for explaining all this to us. It's fascinating. Congratulations on your success and thanks for being a great teacher here at Mountain Ridge.
Sarah LaFond:
Thank you. I enjoyed talking with you guys and I love being a teacher here at Mountain Ridge.
Anthony Godfrey:
Thanks for joining us on another episode of the Supercast. Remember, education is the most important thing you'll do today. We'll see you out there.
22 min
January 12, 2023 Episode 175: Meet the Safety, Health and Wellness Team Hard at Work in JSD
They are a top-notch team of professionals devoted to promoting the individual growth and well-being of students, teachers, staff and families throughout Jordan School District.
On this episode of the Supercast, we sit down with the District’s Student Services team to hear about the important work they do on a daily basis supporting the overall social emotional wellness of students in and outside of school, empowering them to achieve academic success, along with college and career development.
Listen and learn about services available to support your child and your family.
Audio Transcription
Anthony Godfrey:
Hello, and welcome to the Supercast. I'm your host, Superintendent Anthony Godfrey. They are a top-notch team of professionals devoted to promoting the individual growth and well-being of students, teachers, staff, and families throughout Jordan School District. On this episode of the Supercast, we sit down with the district's student services team to hear more about the important work they do on a daily basis, supporting the overall social emotional wellness of students in and outside of school, empowering them to achieve academic success along with college and career development. Listen in and learn about services available to support your child and your family.
I'm excited to have our Student Services department here with us today. We're gonna start with Travis Hamblin, the director of the department. Just a few years ago, this department did not exist in this form. Travis, Student Services covers a wide range of student needs and district services. Everything from maps and enrollment to behavior and other services. Services through McKinney Vento for students who are experiencing homelessness. Let's focus on talking about the health and wellness and mental health aspect of what you and your department are responsible for.
Travis Hamblin:
We have an amazing group of people that provide a countless number of resources and supports for students. We have McKinley Withers with our Health and Wellness, he works with everything from our clinical support staff to prevention. We have Fulvia Franco, who is our consultant for Guidance, which are all of our psychologists and our Jordan Family Ed. We have Stacee Worthen, who works with all of our school counselors, K-12 and the Comprehensive Guidance program and working with them to provide direct services to students. It should be noted that all three of those individuals work with professionals in the mental health field that work directly with students to help them in whatever area or need that they may have, whether it's academic, whether it's social, whether it's emotional or mental health, any of those areas. We also have student support personnel people that work with our students that have concerns with truancy or any other areas. But specifically, we work a lot with our mental health for students and staff.
Anthony Godfrey:
We talk about student health and wellness. We talk about bolstering health and wellness, but we also talk about responding to emergencies and difficulties and hard situations when they do occur. So let's talk about prevention. I think people have looked at prevention over the years in silos. There's suicide prevention, there's bullying prevention there's school safety and prevention of school violence. How does that all fit together now, the way that we're looking at things in Jordan?
Travis Hamblin:
The prevention efforts that we're doing now, look at everything holistically. We see things not just in a bucket of preventing and responding, but in a holistic view of doing that all at the same time. The example would be this, is if there is a student that's in suicidal crisis, we're not only looking at, okay, how can we respond? But we're also looking at how we can look at preventing or addressing the unknown factors that are out there. The students that we don't know about, and supporting them in a wide variety of manners so that we can address students who may be suffering in silence and those that we don't know about. So it's not just about addressing one side of an issue or another. It's about saying, okay, we do, we know we have students that are struggling in certain areas or in many areas. So how do we address it holistically, both from an adult perspective, but also from a kid-centered perspective?
Anthony Godfrey:
And I think all of those issues overlap when we address one issue, we're really addressing others, bullying, suicide, school violence, all of those are interrelated. And really, if we're addressing the health and wellness of students early on, then we're able to prevent a lot of issues rather than simply respond to them. So I wanted to go around the room and talk with each of you about some of the efforts that are in place to address both aspects of the issues that we encounter. How are we helping prevent problems in the first place? And then how are we responding to them when they do occur? Let's talk with Stacee Worthen, who works with all of our school counselors. First of all, let's talk about the expansion of school counselors in our schools.
Stacee Worthen:
Yeah, that's pretty exciting. So we've expanded to a true K-12 program. So we've been able to lower our school counselor to student ratios in the secondaries from about 1 to 350 to about 1 to 300. So we added a half-time position in every middle school. So we have a ratio of one school counselor to about 300, in some cases even 250 students per counselor. So that's actually really exciting. What that does is it allows our counselors a little bit more time to create connections. And that's really what we're focusing on is, in the secondary level, trying to build relationships with our students so that they feel like they have an adult that will connect them to the school. And so that's a prevention piece that we're really trying to focus on. Is there one adult in that building that they really feel like they can come and talk to about academics, about mental health issues, about you know, if the student’s in crisis, who is that adult that they feel like they can trust in that time of need? And in the high schools, we have about a 1 to 300 ratio with the support of our principals in lowering that ratio.
The other exciting thing is that Jordan School District has approved hiring one elementary school counselor for every elementary school. We have been able to hire 12. Those school counselors are working with their students. Anything that the teachers and the principals feel like that community needs within that school, then that's what that school counselor is focusing on. But then they're also working with those kids by providing groups. Grief groups, friendship groups you know, all sorts of different needs that these kids have. They're really working on helping them so that they fill those supports with their school counselors.
Anthony Godfrey:
I'm really excited about our elementary school counselors, but we've also added some supports at the district level as well. So we're providing greater support to our counselors out in the schools, additional training. And that's a trend that's been in place for several years now. I think the role of counselor is more important than ever, and there's more access than ever to counselors for students. The elementary role really allows everyone to get a chance to do their job. I think that need has always been there, but now that there's a counselor at the elementary level, that reduces or shifts the workload on a school psychologist and on administrators so that those unique roles can be fulfilled, and the unique needs of students can be met even more effectively.
Stacee Worthen:
That's right. And we've had really great success with our school counselors working with our school psychologists. They've been really successful in providing group opportunities for students. So we've been able to really meet the needs of more kids because they've been working as a team. And also with our social workers. They really are a team of school clinicians that can provide a lot of different opportunities for our students. That really creates a connection to the school and a lot of opportunities for us to really put in a lot of preventative measures so that these kids are successful.
Anthony Godfrey:
The point that you made there is really important, I think, because we've had part-time positions here and there over the years for psychologists, and for counselors, and for assistant principals. It's very difficult to be effective in building those relationships when you're only there Monday, Tuesday, and half of Wednesday. So I'm excited to see the changes already this year in the connection that we have with students and with parents.
Stacee Worthen:
That's exciting.
Anthony Godfrey:
When talking with parents, if parents are concerned about their students, a great place to start is with a school counselor or school psychologist. Just call up, make an appointment, have a conversation. Speaking of which, Fulvia Franco, talk to us about our school psychologist and what's happening there.
Fulvia Franco:
With our school psychologists, we do do assessment, but we do direct service to students. We provide individual and group counseling. We do crisis intervention, crisis counseling with students. We do post-crisis postvention kinds of things to support children who've been impacted by a crisis in their lives. We also provide services at the Jordan Family Education Center. Jordan School District is unique in having a center like the Family Ed Center in that, that center, was established 44 years ago. We provide parenting classes, we provide intake assessments. That's where a parent, if they have a concern about their son or daughter, can come in, meet one-on-one with a school psychologist or school counselor who's trained to do clinical intake assessments to try to determine what the nature of the concern is and make recommendations to the parent. Those recommendations can range anywhere from something we'd like schools to implement, some support in mental health areas at a school level, or working with our clinical support staff in connecting families with community resources.
One of the biggest things that I've seen change with Student Services is that Travis Hamlin has been instrumental in bringing us together to be school-based mental health teams. For years, we've read in the research that we need school-based mental health services. Well, Jordan District, to me, is doing it the right way in that we put staff directly into the schools. We have full-time allocations for school counselors, K-12, as well as school psychologists. Our secondary, middle and high schools all have clinical support staff, whether they be social workers or clinical mental health counselors. We are doing so many things to support children's needs and students needs, and in that we help parents.
Anthony Godfrey:
And again, I would say it's hard for parents perhaps to imagine all the resources that are available. I would just say make that call. Connect with the professional at the school, and they can really open some doors. Stay with us, when we come back more with the incredible Student Services team.
Break:
Are you looking for a job right now? Looking to work in a fun and supportive environment with great pay and a rewarding career? Jordan School District is hiring. We're currently filling full and part-time positions. You can work and make a difference in young lives and education as a classroom assistant or a substitute teacher. Apply to work in one of our school cafeterias where our lunch staff serves up big smiles with great food every day. We're also looking to hire custodians and bus drivers. In Jordan School District we like to say people come for the job and enjoy the adventure. Apply today at employment.jordandistrict.org
Anthony Godfrey:
McKinley, let's talk with you now about some of the things that we're doing to connect students to outside resources if they need longer term care or more specialized care. Because as we just talked about, we've got a lot of great people that can help with many issues and concerns that would be facing families, but sometimes families don't know where to go next for outside services that they would seek as a family. Tell me about how we connect them to the right people.
McKinley Withers:
Over the last few years, we've established a partnership with several, I guess 19, community-based mental health providers that are partners with our district. And through our Mental Health Access program, we can facilitate access to one of those community mental health providers that have, you know, clinicians that speak a specific language that a student might need, that might provide specialized treatment that a student might need. And by being able to have an existing partnership with our community resources, we can better match a student to their need.
Anthony Godfrey:
Over the last few years, we've also added clinical support staff to all of our secondary schools and some of our elementary schools. Can you tell me what role they play in the lives of students?
McKinley Withers:
So these are individuals that have outside of school mental health experience. So these are DOPL licensed mental health clinicians who, the intent is to have them meet with students who have more severe mental health needs, and to be a bridge between those students and their needs and the community resources that would best match those needs.
Anthony Godfrey:
So that's their focus is to work on maybe some of the more severe needs. But counselors and psychologists work every day with students with severe needs and help them make the most of their school experience and help them make the progress they need to be making.
McKinley Withers:
Yes.
Anthony Godfrey:
Talk about some of the things that we're doing to prevent suicide, bullying and violence in the district.
McKinley Withers:
So again, there are a variety of efforts within Student Services and within Health and Wellness specifically. We've worked with schools to create their own unique but district supported Prevention Plan that addresses each of those topics. And the foundation of good prevention work is understanding and acknowledging that, like you mentioned earlier, prevention of suicide and what characteristics or components are essential to that kind of prevention, are the same characteristics that prevent school violence, those same efforts. So trying to connect all of those efforts under one umbrella, a comprehensive prevention plan. Where if you're making an everyday effort in your school to deepen connections with students, to notice them, to know names, to have added staff, like has been mentioned, so that there are more adults to connect with students. That's going to be prevention effort across the board, whether it's suicide, bullying, or violence.
So because prevention shares common characteristics, each school can create their own unique plan about how they are meeting students' unique needs on building skills, social skills, so they can have quality relationships with peers and adults, and building skills for emotion regulation. Those two things, those two skill building opportunities commonly are referred to as social and emotional learning. So how are we intentionally building skills, providing opportunities for students to practice skills in real time for problem solving, relationship building, emotion regulation. Those are all efforts that lead to prevention in all of those areas. So it's giving people throughout the system the skills for making an everyday effort to enhance students' skills for life.
Anthony Godfrey:
And I like the way you described that, and you described it to principals the same way in a recent meeting, that there's a school-based plan that's district supported. So there's some consistency across the district, but there's also specialization and customization based on the specific needs of a school. And it's pulling a team together around that common effort of prevention and promoting health and wellness in students.
McKinley Withers:
Yeah. And some of those district-wide systems. So district-wide, all of our schools are on the Safe UT app, which means any student in any of our district schools, if they notice something, they hear something concerning, about a friend wanting to hurt themselves or others, or they themselves were bullied. They can submit tips through Safe UT and it will get to the school staff and they can respond accordingly. So all of our district schools are on that Safe UT app. Within the app, students can connect directly with professional crisis worker. So if they themselves are feeling intense emotions, don't know what to do, they can chat or call using the app. And then also our district has implemented a content monitoring system. So on the student accounts, specifically, if a student types in an email or a document or you know, is chatting to a friend about wanting to die, wanting to hurt someone, or an incident that has happened that is concerning we are alerted of that so that we can respond and intervene.
Anthony Godfrey:
Many layers to help prevent and respond to difficulties in our schools. Travis, you've assembled an amazing team of people and it's really exciting for me to watch the progress that we've made as a district and as we referenced earlier, just how we've been able to empower every adult in this district to be a part of helping support our students and promote their health and wellness. Anything you'd like to add about the efforts of Student Services?
Travis Hamblin:
Well, I would say one of the biggest things that we operate on is that relationships don't support the learning, they are the learning. So we focus on helping the adults and helping all of the staff members to build meaningful relationships with students to ensure that we know of the needs that they have, that we can respond, that we can prevent, and that we can assist them through their journey to whatever their journey is going to end in academically, socially, and any kind of wellness activities. We are focused on ensuring that we provide the support that every student needs to succeed. At the end of the day, that's why we get up. We are passionate about making sure that our students have everything they need to succeed.
Anthony Godfrey:
And the bottom line is in the short term and long term lives are being saved.
Travis Hamblin:
Every day, every day.
Anthony Godfrey:
Well, thank you for your hard work everyone. Thanks for taking the time. And just another reminder, call your school, call your counselor, call the psychologist, talk with your administration, ask for help because there's a lot of help out there and a lot of great people who can support your student.
Thanks for joining us on another episode of the Supercast. Remember, education is the most important thing you'll do today. We'll see you out there.
22 min
January 05, 2023 Episode 174: Bingham High Students Get Creative in Marketing Competition Called “Miner Tank”
It was a real-life lesson in creating and marketing a new business. Some Bingham High School students partnered with entrepreneurs in the community to compete in something called “Miner Tank,” based on the reality TV show “Shark Tank.”
On this episode of the Supercast, we take you inside Andrea Call’s CTE Business and Marketing class, where four groups of students competed to get financial backing for their business ideas which included “Germ a Phone,” “My Creature Teacher,” “Dock Hero,” and “Demon Time.” Find out which potential business was deemed best and scored some big financial backing.
Audio Transcription
Anthony Godfrey:
Hello and welcome to the Supercast. I'm your host, Superintendent Anthony Godfrey. It was a real-life lesson in creating and marketing a new business. Some Bingham High students partnered with entrepreneurs in the community to compete in something called “Miner Tank'' based on the reality TV show “Shark Tank”. On this episode of the Supercast we take you inside Andrea Call’s CTE Business and Marketing class where four groups of students competed to get financial backing for their business ideas, which included “Germ a Phone”, “My Creature Teacher”, “Dock Hero”, and “Demon Time”. Find out which potential business was deemed best and scored some big financial backing.
We're talking now with Andrea Call, the Business and Marketing teacher here at Bingham High School, who has organized “Miner Tank”. Thanks for taking a few minutes.
Andrea Call:
Sure.
Anthony Godfrey:
This was an exciting day in your classroom.
Andrea Call:
It was a big day. Yeah. It was really awesome. All the kids were able to pitch for the Jordan Education Foundation, so it was exciting to see them realize all of their work and be able to have questions from the mentors and the Board. And I was really proud of all of them.
Anthony Godfrey:
What gave you the idea to want to make a “Miner Tank” experience? Because that's going above and beyond, that's a lot of extra work obviously.
Andrea Call:
It has been a lot of work, but I really believe that we learn best in real world opportunities. I was trying really hard to make a business and marketing lab where we could have the opportunity to give students real money and let them really try to start these businesses because when you sit in a classroom, you're really limited on the application piece. But if we can get community partners to come in, that opens the doors for us to have these real world experiences for students. So this is something that, luckily, Mike Haynes from Jordan Education Foundation was like in 100% and helped just really drive this engine.
Anthony Godfrey:
I know this is something that is aligned with what we're trying to accomplish in all of our classes. A level of creativity, real world learning. Kids can tell when an experience isn't authentic. And this is as authentic as it gets, pulling in the community the way that you did. So, congratulations on providing an incredible learning experience. It was awesome to see.
Andrea Call:
Thanks.
Anthony Godfrey:
It's obviously had a huge impact on students as well. Tell me about the impact that you've seen over the years when students get a chance to be creative in an entrepreneur class.
Andrea Call:
Yeah. I think creativity, I think the more opportunities we can give for kids to have choice in their learning and to be creative in the way that they express and demonstrate learning, the more that learning becomes very real and something that they actually remember.
Anthony Godfrey:
Well, this was an emotional experience for every team. Because they're working together, and that's the other aspect of it. This is group work at its finest. And I know that you paired people up intentionally to be sure that they learned from each other and from the experience. So this is really fabulous to see because I think teamwork is something that seems to be missing in our society more and more, so for kids to get this type of experience is really valuable.
Andrea Call:
Yeah. Yeah. And it was also really important to me that they have the opportunity to work with a mentor, because I see so many kids who don't know an adult to put as a reference. They don't know another person to write a letter of recommendation for them. And so the other piece that really matters to me is that now all of these kids know all of these entrepreneurs, and have their email addresses, and can call up someone like Shaun Stevenett, who has been incredibly successful and he knows them well enough to write a letter of recommendation and help them in the future, because that network is really important.
Anthony Godfrey:
So it's not just about how it feels in this class to win and have that investment. You've paved a path forward for them through the connections they create so that they can continue to be successful as an entrepreneur or simply having support from an adult that they didn't have a connection with before.
Andrea Call:
Yeah. That was my hope. That was my hope.
Anthony Godfrey:
Well, congratulations. This is fantastic.
Andrea Call:
Thanks.
Anthony Godfrey:
It's the deep learning that we hope to see everywhere and I'm just thrilled with the work you're doing.
Andrea Call:
Thanks. I appreciate it.
Anthony Godfrey:
We're talking with one of the mentors here who is involved in Shark Tank at Bingham High School. Introduce yourself and tell us a little bit about your experience.
Shaun Stevenett:
Oh, man. Okay. Well, I'll give you the short introduction. So Shaun Stevenett and I am originally from Alberta, Canada. I've been here since I was nine years old. And I come from a family of entrepreneurs. My father was always self-employed, his dad was always also self-employed, goes back, and then I just caught that bug when I was 25 years old. So I've had a few different companies and I was invited with Bingham at this entrepreneur class. I didn't know exactly what it was, but as soon as I saw the passion with these students, and what they were doing and learning, real life experiences as far as like what it takes to start a business or even come up with the ideas and whatnot, I got excited and so I was on board as soon as I entered the classroom.
Anthony Godfrey:
What are some of the things that you offer as advice to students and others who want to be an entrepreneur?
Shaun Stevenett:
Oh, man. I think the biggest advice is get your relationships. And if you have strong relationships, and even if you've got a good business idea, there's definitely things you cannot do alone. And one of it is starting a business. So as long as you've got those right relationships, and relationships sometimes go bad, I get it. Especially like if you're best of buddies or best friends or whatnot. But you kind of keep at those relationships until you find the right ones and then you can succeed together.
Anthony Godfrey:
As an entrepreneur of many years, and, like you said, it's a tradition in your family. What do you think of a program like this?
Shaun Stevenett:
I wish they could do this in every school, not just here in Utah, but across the country.
Anthony Godfrey:
What was it about the presentation from these two in the product that made you want to jump on board? You said, I am all in, you were enthusiastic in, in your mentorship with these two. Tell me about what, what made the difference for you?
Shaun Stevenett:
I think the biggest difference was that these girls, I quickly realized that, the first time that I met them, that there was something special about them. I knew that quickly that they were friends and I asked them that. I said, are you guys friends? And they quickly said, yeah, we're best friends. And so that told me everything right there. And not only that, but they had a fine definition as far as like what each of them did as far as like how they were gonna bring their ideas together. So they, they both had their own responsibilities, and I think that was kind of cool to see that they recognized where each other strengths were early on.
Anthony Godfrey:
You're a great supporter of Jordan District. You're a member of the Foundation Board. You also, I know, are involved in a lot of other charitable endeavors. So that's an important part of a business model for you obviously.
Shaun Stevenett:
Gotta give back. So if you're not giving back, I think that you're not gonna be given to. So if you are giving back, whether it's time, money, or even introducing individuals to other relationships to help others, because you might not be as strong in that field, but you've gotta get back. I've seen it over and over again, that by just giving back other things happen in your life. You've heard karma. So karma is a real thing. And then once you catch that bug, or actually take that step, sometimes it's very, very difficult to be able to do that because you know, I did this, I made this, blah, blah, blah. But as soon as you start kind of giving back you wouldn't believe how many more doors open, especially this experience. Right? Like, I wouldn't have been able to, if I didn't give back and I didn't get involved with the Jordan Education, and I wasn't introduced through it to it, I wouldn't have had this awesome experience today.
Anthony Godfrey:
Well, I love that you were here to mentor them. Thank you for everything you do for Jordan, and thanks for being a great example to them. Just your being here shows them the importance of being connected to the community as an entrepreneur and as a businessman. So I really appreciate it.
Shaun Stevenett:
Thank you so much.
Anthony Godfrey:
Stay with us when we come back. We are very excited to talk with the winners of “Miner Tank”.
Break:
In Jordan School District, we like to support students in and outside the classroom along with their families. That's where the Jordan Family Education Center comes in, offering support services and a wide variety of classes for students and their families, free of charge. You can take a class called Blues Busters for children feeling sad or worried. Just Breathe is a class that helps students reduce stress. Or how about a class that supports parents in helping their children make and keep good friends. There are also support groups and free counseling, all provided by Jordan School District school psychologists and counselors. To find out how you can benefit from free family support services offered by the Jordan Family Education Center, call 801-565-7442 or visit guidance.jordandistrict.org.
Anthony Godfrey:
We're here at Bingham with the two students who just won “Miner Tank.” I'm going to ask them to introduce themselves and talk about their company and their product.
Rylin:
My name's Rylin.
Mary:
I'm Mary.
Rylin:
And we're the founders of My Creature Teacher.
Mary:
Yeah. So My Creature Teacher is basically this product that we designed that's a little stuffed animal toy that comes with a book and some accessories, and it's designed to help teach children valuable lessons that they can learn through auditory and visual learning.
Mary:
So the one that we started with today for Miner Tank was Bedtime Lion. It's a little stuffed lion that comes with a book that teaches kids the major, most important steps of getting ready for bed to make parents' lives easier.
Rylin:
And make it fun.
Mary:
Yeah. Something that we did with our product that we really like is we put a special effect with it. Bedtime Lion actually has lavender in the stuffing to help your kids fall asleep. Not only with teaching, but showing, and that helps it as well.
Anthony Godfrey:
The Lavender Lion
Both students:
Oh, yeah. Yeah.
Anthony Godfrey:
I have trouble going to bed, so I should probably read this book. I think I need this product.
Mary:
We’ll send one your way.
Rylin:
I'm not even joking. I've read the book and I'm like, ‘oh, I guess I’ll brush my teeth now’. I'm like, dental hygiene .
Anthony Godfrey:
Yeah. So what gave you the idea to choose the book and the stuffed animal as a product?
Mary:
Yeah, so Rylin and I both work with kids. I come from a really large family, so I have tons of nieces and nephews that I'm constantly babysitting and then Rylin nannies. Yeah. And so we both are just bouncing ideas off of each other, kind of come up with something. And Rylin had the initial idea, and then we just started building on it together. We wanted a toy that just was made, made learning more fun for kids.
Rylin:
Yeah. Especially because when I do, like, when both of us take care of kids and it's time to put 'em to bed, we know how much of a hassle it is. Especially with like the two to five year old, they're like tornadoes and they don't wanna go to bed. All they wanna do is play and play and play. Barbies, dinosaurs, anything you can think of, they wanna play with it. So that's why we created this, to help us go through that bedtime process.
Anthony Godfrey:
And how did the book come together? Who wrote it? Who illustrated? It looks fantastic. I had the chance to look through it.
Rylin:
So I actually wrote it and then, yeah.
Mary:
So then I helped edit it, and then I started the illustration and then Rylin helped vet my process through it. So we just kind of worked together on both of the processes. So that just kind of was both of our child.
Rylin:
Yeah, it really is.
Anthony Godfrey:
So you didn't outsource any of that book?
Mary:
No, no, we did it all.
Anthony Godfrey:
That's fantastic. It looks really good.
Both students:
Oh, thank you.
Anthony Godfrey:
Now tell me about the stuffed animal that accompanies it. How did that come to be? It's a great looking lion.
Rylin:
Oh, thank you. So actually what we did is originally, because we did wanna do these stuffed animals, I have a connection to Minky Couture Blankets. So the way we did it is we took leftover scraps from like blankets that weren't big enough to be made into a blanket anymore. And we took those and pieced them together and we found a pattern just for our original prototype. And Mary sewed it up for us.
Mary:
Yeah. And then I went to my sister, who's just the most amazing seamstress, the most generous, charitable person I know. And I was like, ‘Hey, do you wanna help me out with this? It can be an early Christmas present. Teach me how to sew this.’ And she helped me out. And it was, it took a long time. I mean, it's kind of a complicated little pattern, but I mean, it was so worth it. And it all came together really, really well.
Rylin:
Yeah.
Anthony Godfrey:
Well, they look fantastic and now you have a mentor who is investing in your company. So tell me what's happening next.
Rylin:
Yeah, so we had Shaun, he's literally the best mentor ever. He helped us through so many different things, and so did his brother Mark. He helped us with the name and everything for our company, which, you know, is pretty important to have a name to your product. So next, I mean, we're gonna start producing these, we're gonna get patterns, books, and everything ready so that we can start selling these.
Mary:
I mean, the first step is really just taking it to a larger scale. I mean, we're gonna start looking at graphic design, commissioning our own pattern and that kind of stuff that can really actually start us making a product.
Rylin:
Yeah. So we can actually start selling it.
Anthony Godfrey:
So you're gonna continue to work with Shaun and his brother? And they're investing in the company to get you started off. Are you excited? There's a lot of work ahead.
Mary:
Yeah. I mean, scared and excited, I think.
Rylin:
Scared, scared and excited. Yes. Cuz just these couple weeks or this quarter that we've been doing this has been insanely busy and stressful. And it's all been worth it in the end. And I think that's what's gonna get us through the next part, is we know how this victory felt. So I think it'll be helpful to know that like, if we do all this work, a new victory's coming.
Mary:
Yeah, totally agree.
Anthony Godfrey:
And it's not just the product, it's the process. It's what you've learned along the way. Do you feel like you're thinking in a different way because of approaching this project the way you have?
Mary:
Totally. I mean, I was just telling Miss Call the other day, our teacher, like, even if nothing came out of this, this is before we knew that we won. But even if nothing came out, I was so grateful for this experience because it's taught me so much about being a better, like team player and just thinking about things in a more logistic way and just, I feel like the way I think about things is so much more broadened and so much more logically put than just pure what I wanna do. And then learning to work with Rylin, like could totally be a struggle at times, but then my goodness, also, like, I'm so grateful because now, now I feel like I can work with anyone.
Anthony Godfrey:
Now that you've worked with Rylin, you can work with anyone.
Rylin:
Oh yeah. I'm the worst.
Mary:
No.
Anthony Godfrey:
Well that's a big hurdle to overcome.
Mary:
Yeah. Yeah.
Rylin:
So Shaun introduced us as best friends, and we totally are, but I mean, through parts of this, I mean, one of our documents that we used for this was, ‘I'm pretty sure we wanted to kill each other in this moment.’
Mary:
What it's titled.
Rylin:
Yean, it's what the document's titled, because that's the mood we were in. Like, we were just trying to figure out problems. And I was like, ‘Mary, just listen to me.’ And she's like, ‘just listen to me.’ And then like we, it was definitely a struggle through it all, but I'm so glad that we figured it out in the end.
Mary:
It worked out so good. I'm just so grateful, and I'm so grateful Rylin was my partner. I couldn’t have done it with anyone else.
Rylin:
Yes. Mary is the best partner. Are you kidding?
Anthony Godfrey:
Well, and Mary, I think you're the only student to have a repeat performance on the Supercast, so that's another big win.
Mary:
It’s true. Dogs and lions, kind of the same. Animal themed for sure.
Rylin:
They’re somewhat related.
Anthony Godfrey:
Animals are always involved, yes. You mentioned your teacher Miss Call. Tell me about her and the class.
Mary:
Oh, I mean, Miss Call is just the bomb. If I am ever having a problem with anything, I just go to Miss Call. I'm like, help me solve this. And then Miss Call, like the really, really kind of amazing thing about her is like, she's so brilliant that she does not have to be a teacher. And she was saying the other day, we were joking, we were like, well, we're just gonna hire Miss Call as our marketing director and then we won't have to do anything. And she just like, completely serious. Like, you couldn't afford me. Which is so true because she is so brilliant. She knows so many things, but she does like teaching because she wants to help us and like she's our DECA, we're both in DECA together and she's our DECA instructor. And I mean, she just goes the extra mile every single day, every single week to just help us become better people. And it's sometimes for no reward, honestly.
Rylin:
And then we also owe a lot of our project to Miss Call. She actually put groups together and all of the other groups are three and four. And she put me and Mary just as a duo and she was like, you guys can do it, right? We were like, yeah. And I think she definitely believed in us more than we did cause we were like, this is a lot.
Mary:
She had to tell us to keep going sometimes.
Rylin:
Oh yeah. Yeah. She was like, you guys need to relax and just like get through this. And we were like, I don't know. But it's pretty stressful. But yeah, she's super helpful with all sorts of different aspects of life.
Mary:
Yeah. The most amazing teacher for sure.
Anthony Godfrey:
Having a teacher that believes in you makes a big difference.
Both Students:
So much. So much. Yeah.
Anthony Godfrey:
So what advice do you have for those who are hearing this and thinking, well, maybe I have an idea and maybe I could become an entrepreneur.
Rylin:
Yeah, for sure. So something I would say is just, you gotta, it's hard to do on your own. You need backup, you need support from other people around you. Because I know if I had to do this all myself, it probably wouldn't be done for the next five years. So I think it was super helpful to have someone that was here to do it with me, with Mary, and Shaun, and Mike, and Anne, and Miss Call. We had so many different people helping us in like the, the most absurd ways. Like, it didn't even have to relate to this, but in so many aspects they were really helpful.
Mary:
I think what I would say is just like, if you have an idea and you think it's worth something and you care enough about it and you have enough passion to do it, just do it. It doesn't really, it's not gonna cost you something to research into something and to see if this is a plausible thing, even if you don't, you know, enter it in some competition or whatever. But I mean, just do, if you care about it that much, go as far as you can.
Rylin:
Yeah. Cuz I think we were told today that one of the reasons that we did win this competition was because of our passion for this product. And I think even though all the other groups, they had amazing ideas and they were passionate about it, we had personal connections to ours, totally through kids. Like my future career I want to do with kids, Mary is with kids literally almost every day. I think since our connection was so personal, it made us have such a strong passion for it.
Mary:
The product mattered so much to us because we were like, this could help us too. This is in our favor.
Rylin:
We're not just gonna design something that doesn't help the people that we care about.
Mary:
Yeah. Exactly.
Anthony Godfrey:
Well, I admire your passion. I admire your bravery, and I admire that you worked so hard on this, and that friendship survived this process.
Rylin:
Yeah. I'm glad too.
Mary:
We didn't kill each other. We're still here.
Anthony Godfrey:
No. Congratulations. And I can't wait to see where it goes.
Both students:
Thank you so much.
Anthony Godfrey:
Thanks for joining us on another episode of The Supercast. Remember, education is the most important thing you'll do today. We'll see you out there.
21 min
December 29, 2022 Episode 173: Copper Hills High Female Wrestler Making History in Sport
She is a two-time Utah State Champion female wrestler, a five-time All-American, and placed in the top six at three national wrestling competitions.
On this episode of the Supercast, meet Copper Hills High senior Anya Hatch who is also a World Wrestling top-ten champ. To make her story even more incredible, Anya joined the sport of female wrestling just shy of two years ago.
Audio Transcription
Anthony Godfrey:
Hello and welcome to the Supercast. I'm your host, Superintendent Anthony Godfrey. She is a two-time State Champion female wrestler in Utah, a five-time All-American and has placed in the top six at three national wrestling competitions. On this episode of the Supercast, meet Copper Hills High senior Anya Hatch, who is also a world wrestling top-ten champion. To make her story even more incredible, Anya joined the sport of female wrestling just shy of two years ago. How is she accomplishing so much in such a short amount of time? Let's find out.
We’re here with Anya Hatch, a female wrestler here in Jordan School District, who has been traveling the world showing people her skills. Anya, thanks for taking time to talk with me today.
Anya Hatch:
Yeah, of course.
Anthony Godfrey:
Tell me about what got you into wrestling?
Anya Hatch:
What got me into wrestling? Well, at first I did volleyball and then my sophomore year wrestling came out for Utah, cuz like it wasn't a thing. And my dad asked me to come out, and at first I was like, “no”. And then he asked me again and I was like, “Fine, I'll come try it out”. So I went, and like I told myself I was gonna just practice for a week and like, I'm done. Like, I'm out.
Anthony Godfrey:
And your dad knowing you probably knew better than to think that you were only going to do it for a week.
Anya Hatch:
At first, I was like, no. Like there's no way I'm gonna touch someone else. Like I cannot be physical.
Anthony Godfrey:
Volleyball is not a contact sport.
Anya Hatch:
Uh huh, volleyball is like a team thing.
Anthony Godfrey:
Bump set, spike, it seems very, you know, aggressive but organized.
Anya Hatch:
It is, and just knowing that like, I had to do this by myself. I didn't want to, but a week passed and I was really interested. What caught my attention was just the moves and just making new friends.
Anthony Godfrey:
Did you feel in the very first week that you did it, could you tell that you had some talent for it?
Anya Hatch:
Yes, I did. When I first started, I didn't know what I was doing, but I'm like a really fast learner. For a lot of people it was difficult, and for me it just came naturally.
Anthony Godfrey:
Yeah. I can tell you that athletic events for me do not come naturally. I have to think about every single move. Nothing seems natural, so I'm always envious of people like you who are able to just jump in and pick up a sport. Volleyball, wrestling, what other sports do you participate in?
Anya Hatch:
When I was seven, eight years old I played soccer. And then when I got to my freshman or sophomore year, I did track. So soccer, track, and volleyball, and wrestling.
Anthony Godfrey:
That’s awesome. Not to say it doesn't take a lot of hard work, but it's great when you have that natural ability to kind of connect with what you're supposed to be doing. So what are some of the things that you've learned? You've only done this for less than two years, right?
Anya Hatch:
Yeah.
Anthony Godfrey:
Tell me about some of the things you've learned as a wrestler.
Anya Hatch:
As a wrestler, I learned it's tough. It mentally gets me stronger. I learned that like a lot because I'm mentally preparing, like by myself when it comes to a match. And I'm not used to that because for volleyball, it's like a team thing. If like, for volleyball, if I'm just playing by myself, then it's not gonna work out right. But for wrestling, like I'm mentally preparing and sometimes I warm up by myself. When I travel, I don't have a partner, so I'm just warming up by myself. And yeah.
Anthony Godfrey:
When you're on a volleyball team and you're looking at other team members, you're analyzing what happened, what went right, what went wrong. But when you're on your own on the wrestling mat, all you can do is look inside. Try to figure out what you need to do differently.
Anya Hatch:
What I need to do, yeah.
Anthony Godfrey:
What's your favorite move when you're wrestling?
Anya Hatch:
My favorite move is head throws. And a double blast.
Anthony Godfrey:
A double blast? Yeah. You gotta tell me what a double blast is. It sounds like a drink at 7-Eleven.
Anya Hatch:
A double blast is where like, I'm like running through their legs, but as I'm running through, I'm picking up, but I'm level changing and I'm like, double blasting.
Anthony Godfrey:
So you're running through picking them up and lowering?
Anya Hatch:
Yes, I'm lowering my level change and I'm like double blasting through.
Anthony Godfrey:
Stay with us when we come back more with Anya Hatch.
Break:
Hello, I'm Tracy Miller, President of the Jordan School District Board of Education. There are seven members on the Board of Education, one in each voting district. We are committed to listening and serving our constituents as we work together to provide the best possible learning environment for the students we serve. As members of the Jordan Board of Education, we believe it is our duty and responsibility to: increase student achievement; provide parents with the choices they deserve and desire; recognize and reward quality in educators; empower school leaders through policy governance and professional development; and communicate with the public, legislators, business leaders, cities, and parents. We invite you to get to know the Board member who represents you in your voting district, and to please join us at our monthly board meeting held on the fourth Tuesday of every month. Or listen from the comfort of your home, on our live stream. For more information and to find your Board member, visit jordandistrict.org. With parent and community input and support we will continue our work to give students every opportunity to succeed in Jordan District schools and beyond. Thank you for your support. We look forward to seeing you soon.
Anthony Godfrey:
Now we have your dad here so that I don't make you brag about yourself. I'm gonna let your dad brag about all of the titles and trophies you've been winning.
Jay Hatch:
Thank you. Yeah, Anya's very, very humble that way. She doesn't like to talk about herself. In fact, she gets really embarrassed. One of the funny things is being her coach and father at the same time. People always joke because whenever she wins a championship, she walks off the podium, comes right down and hands me the medal and walks off like she doesn't even care about it and tells me to put it in her drawer at home. So no, this last year was special for Anya. She became a three-time All-American last year, or this last summer, she competed in Folkstyle Nationals in Colorado Springs, Freestyle Nationals in Las Vegas, Nevada, and in the United States World Team trials in Dallas, Texas. And she placed top six at all three.
Anthony Godfrey:
Wow.
Jay Hatch:
If you place top eight, they're considered all American. So she's a three time all American this year. She had the opportunity to go down to Las Vegas and live down there for three months training with a club where they went and competed with the Mexican Olympic team where she, in about 25 seconds, pinned her Olympic opponent from Mexico.
Anthony Godfrey:
Wow.
Jay Hatch:
But they were down there for about 10 days training, and just learning, and growing, and everything. And then when she of course went to Rome. She didn't place top three, which, which she was really trying hard to do. But she placed top 10. She took 10th at the World Championships in Rome. But I think the biggest accomplishment she had there was five weeks before she went to Rome, she was in the Western States National Finals here in Farmington, Utah. And that's the double blast that she was talking to you about earlier.
She came down kind of awkwardly. She was beating the girl from Hawaii that she was wrestling, but she came down awkwardly and dislocated her right arm so bad that we had to aircast it and we had to go to the emergency room. The doctors had to put her under to put it back in place. And so that was literally five weeks before she was supposed to get on the airplane to Rome and a lot of people were like, there's no way. She's not gonna be able to compete. She's not gonna be ready. And so just through a lot of
Anya Hatch:
Yeah. People were like, you're crazy. You're not going to, like, she's not going to.
Jay Hatch:
A lot of healing and a lot of just a lot of prayers, a lot of different things. Right? I mean, it looked like she had a baseball in her elbow. Five and a half weeks later, she stepped on the mat in Rome, taped up like no other, and just said, I'm gonna go for it. And she went out and she lost a match to a girl from Croatia who had just finished winning the bronze medal in the European Championships and she lost a close match to her. And that right there was for us was the biggest victory of all. Is that she made it. She went out. She never made any excuses and she just went out and competed hard. But outside the international and national travel, she's a two time State Champion here in Utah. She's a senior this year, so she’ll be trying to get her third.
Anya Hatch:
And I'm gonna make it three.
Anthony Godfrey:
You're gonna make it three?
Anya Hatch:
I'm gonna make it three.
Anthony Godfrey:
I like your chances. That's really cool. Now tell me about training in Las Vegas. First of all, you were there for how long?
Anya Hatch:
I was there for three months.
Anthony Godfrey:
Wow.
Anya Hatch:
Actually it ended up being four months.
Anthony Godfrey:
And so tell me why the training looks like that. Get up maybe 11:30? Watch some Netflix for a couple of hours?
Anya Hatch:
No, no. We don't have time for that.
Anthony Godfrey:
Stop by In-N-Out Burger. No?
Anya Hatch:
No, I wish we had that, but we had three sessions every day and it was tough for me because usually, I'm a relaxed person and I like to watch Netflix, eat. I'm like a big snack eater, and I couldn't have that in Vegas. So like, I was cutting hard down there and it was real. I struggled. Yeah.
Anthony Godfrey:
So tell me about what conditioning looks like.
Anya Hatch:
Our conditioning is, so first we start off with warmups and then we, like, we do sprinting drills. Like we do sprawl, sprint, and then like sprawl, shot, sprint. And then we're doing drills where we’re working a move over, and over, and over, and over, over again. And then our workouts go like go for two hours. And then we have a next session, we have three sessions and it's like two hours. Two hours. Two hours.
Anthony Godfrey:
What do you do to get psyched up before a match? Is there music you listen to or something you repeat in your head or something you tell yourself? What do you do to prepare moments before competition?
Anya Hatch:
I think positive. Like I tell myself, like, I think in my head like wrestling, like when I'm wrestling, I'm winning. So I'm like, in my head, I'm wrestling.
Anthony Godfrey:
Yeah, I like that. I like that.
Jay Hatch:
We've got an incredible lady that's over Utah USA Wrestling by the name of Geneva Gray. And she taught these girls a year ago that as they're getting prepared for their matches, what Anya's talking about, is to go through some actual matches in your head with you winning and what moves you're gonna do and how you're gonna beat the next girl.
Anthony Godfrey:
Now by doing that and going over the moves in your head and then having repeated those moves over and over, does the muscle memory kick in and when it's time to do it, you just know what to do and you, and you just click into that mode?
Anya Hatch:
Yeah.
Anthony Godfrey:
Tell me what it's like competing in Rome. Is that your first international competition?
Anya Hatch:
Yes.
Anthony Godfrey:
It is. To take top 10 in a world competition, the first time you're competing out of the country. That's pretty special. Did they do like in Hoosiers and measure the mat so that you can see that it's the same size?
Anya Hatch:
No. Their mat was really different. It was really slippery.
Anthony Godfrey:
Oh, it was different.
Anya Hatch:
It was different. It was slippery. It wasn't a normal mat that we usually have at every tournament. It was like a mat and then like, it was like foam under and then like something over it, like a cover. And it was very slippery. So like when we did warmups over there, like I would slip.
Anthony Godfrey:
How did you adjust?
Anya Hatch:
I just didn't think about it. I didn't worry about it, so I just did what I had to do.
Anthony Godfrey:
Good. That's impressive. Tell me about traveling to Rome. What did you think of Rome?
Anya Hatch:
I thought Rome was really beautiful. I love the pizza. It's great. Sorry, I had to bring up pizza.
Anthony Godfrey:
Did you get some pasta as well?
Anya Hatch:
Yes. It's like amazing.
Anthony Godfrey:
That's good.
Anya Hatch:
The best part.
Anthony Godfrey:
It's great that you got to have that experience combined with wrestling.
Anya Hatch:
Other than the food. I went on tours like about the Colosseum and it was just like amazing. Because in high school I would learn about the Colosseum and like be like amazed and like, I was just like so amazed because like I'm right there in front of it. Like it was just so cool.
Anthony Godfrey:
Now you were representing the country of Tonga while you were there, is that right?
Anya Hatch:
Yes, I was.
Anthony Godfrey:
That's awesome. And were there other wrestlers from Tonga? Because I understand you're the first to achieve that level, or are you the first from Tonga to compete at all at that competition?
Anya Hatch:
I'm the first woman to ever compete for Tonga.
Anthony Godfrey:
Well, congratulations on that. That's fantastic. So what's in the future? What's next for you?
Anya Hatch:
I think just, I'm still gonna be going out to like national stuff and I'm not sure what college I'm gonna go to. But I am thinking of going to college and wrestling.
Anthony Godfrey:
So national competitions for the time being and looking forward to college from there.
Jay Hatch:
There is one big competition coming up that she's still trying to figure out and to sign on, but they have what's called the Oceanic Games. Every country is divided up into a region for the Olympics. Right. So for example, not every country can just send a woman to the Olympics to wrestle, right? There's only 16 women that qualify to go to the Olympics every four years. And so Tonga is part of the Pacific Island group that includes Africa and Australia. And so in May, on May 26th, you know, in Sydney, Australia is the Oceanic Games where you pre-qualify for the Olympics for your region. And so we're still figuring that out. We're still still trying to figure out if that's something she really wants to do. But that would be the next international event if she decides to. But we've got national events in high school coming up soon in less than a month that we're excited about.
Anya Hatch:
Yeah.
Anthony Godfrey:
I was going to ask about the Olympics and see if that was something on your radar, but you’d just have to think through whether that's where you want to go.
Anya Hatch:
I've been thinking Yes, I have been thinking.
Anthony Godfrey:
Tell me about your dad helping you discover wrestling and become a wrestler.
Anya Hatch:
He's been really supportive. And I love that about him. Just having him there when I'm here competing just really like, helps me a lot. Like not overthink. It makes me work harder because I know my dad's watching, you know, and I just, yeah.
Anthony Godfrey:
How does it feel to have her competing at this level?
Jay Hatch:
It's great. I mean, I was a wrestler in high school. I had college opportunities when I was coming out of high school. When my oldest son back in 2008 came out of West Hills Middle School and said, ‘Hey dad, the wrestling team is having tryouts. Can I wrestle?’ I was a little bit surprised, I’d never really thought about it for my own kids. And so I got into coaching at Copper Hills back in 2008 and when all girls wrestling came around and Principal Veazie and others came to Scott Pace and I, and said, ‘Hey, will you guys start our new girls program?’ It's exciting for me to do a change, although I'd never coached girls before. I'd only coached boys for the last 13 years. And the first thing I thought of was, oh my gosh, if I'm gonna do this, then Anya's gotta do it.
And so when we got her in there, I was, I was hoping she'd stick with it. She never told me that she was planning on quitting after a week. She didn't tell me that until after she'd done really well. But you know, as a father, I'm super excited by her success. I mean, of course you always wanna see all of your children have success in whatever their life path is, and what they choose to do. But I think more importantly, even than her athletic successes, which Anya's one of those kids that could pretty much do anything athletically. I mean, I've had lacrosse coaches, girls football coaches, girls rugby coaches, you name it, call me and try and recruit her under their teams when she's never even done it before. But I think the most impressive thing, at least for me as a parent and as a father with her, is just who she is. I mean, she's just an amazing person. I mean, she's just a great kid. She's a wonderful daughter. She's loving, she endears people around her. She's a born leader. She just, people are drawn to her just because of her personality.
Anthony Godfrey:
Well, it's obvious talking to her that all of that is absolutely true. And it shows just in the way you approach your sport and the hard work that you've done. So congratulations on being who you are and on this new part of your athletic life.
Anya Hatch:
Thank you. Thank you very much.
Anthony Godfrey:
Thanks for joining us on another episode of The Supercast. Remember, education is the most important thing you'll do today, and we'll see you out there.
18 min