Transcription of Rethinking Education #190
Speaker 1: You’re listening to Love Maine Radio with Dr. Lisa Belisle, recorded in the studio of Maine Magazine at 75 Market Street, Portland, Maine. Dr. Lisa Belisle is a physician trained in family and preventative medicine, acupuncture, and public health. She offers medical care and acupuncture at Brunswick Family Medicine. Read more about her integrative approach to wellness in Maine Magazine. Love Maine Radio is available for download free on iTunes. See the Love Maine Radio Facebook page or www.lovemaineradio.com for details.
Now here are a few highlights from this week’s program.
Zeo Weil: I want to know that I did my best that I strived to truly be a good and kind person. That’s with this way of thinking allows us to do, that’s really rewarding not to mention that it creates a more peaceful and kind world. Don’t we all want that for ourselves, for your children, for your grandchildren?
Steve DeAngelis: If your students know you care about them and you want to do your very best for them, that empowers them, that motivates and without that you can have the best standards in the world, all kinds of testing standards, and it’s not going to work for you, you got to have that relationship.
Speaker 1: Love Maine Radio is made possible with the support of the following generous sponsors: Maine Magazine, Marci Booth of Booth Maine, Apothecary by Design, Mike LePage and Beth Franklin of RE/MAX Heritage, Harding Lee Smith of The Rooms, and Bangor Savings Bank.
Lisa Belisle: This is Dr. Lisa Belisle and you are listening to Love Maine Radio, show number 190; Rethinking Education. Airing for the first time on Sunday, May 3, 2015. Education is a multifaceted process and one that we may not feel strongly about. It is also an intrical aspect of wellbeing both present and future. Today, we speak Zoe Weil, Founder of the Institute for Humane Education and long time Maranacook teacher, Nordic ski coach and Dean of students, Steve DeAngelis about their perspectives on education. Thank you for joining us.
Many years ago I picked up a book called, ‘Above All Be Kind’. This was during a time when I was raising my children. I’m still raising my children, they’re older now. This book is raising a humane child in challenging times and it’s by Zoe Weil. Today, I have across the microphone from me, Zoe Weil, so it’s pretty great that I’ve actually been able to make this loop come full circle.
Zoe Weil is Cofounder and President of the Institute for Humane Education and is considered a pioneer in the comprehensive Humane Education movement. She’s the author of six books, including the Nautilus Silver Medal–winner “Most Good, Least Harm: A Simple Principle for a Better World and Meaningful Life” and two books for young readers, including Moonbeam Gold Medal-winner “Claude and Medea.” Her first TEDx talk; the world becomes what you teach is one of the most watched of all TEDx talks. Thanks so much for coming in and being here with me today.
Zeo Weil: It’s a pleasure, thanks for having me.
Lisa Belisle: Now, before you … I started talking on air, we were talking about our sons who are both 21, and I’m wondering how much of an influence was your son on your decision to start working in the field on humane education?
Zeo Weil: None because I’ve been working in the field long before he was born. I would say though that being a humane educator and teaching about how we can make a more humane, sustainable and just world was more deeply motivated when I had my own child and I had to do the best that I could to make a better world for him.
Lisa Belisle: Tell me about humane education. It seems like people would hear that term and know what it means, but it has some very specific elements for you.
Zeo Weil: It does, so the word humane literally means having what are considered the best qualities of human beings. What are those qualities? I don’t need to tell anybody what they are because we all generally agree on them and, in fact, I’ve asked thousands and thousands of people what are the best qualities of human beings and the lists are always very similar. Nobody says greed or violence or hatred. We generally agree on the best qualities of human beings, but how do we live according to those best qualities, especially in a globalized world in which all of our choices are affecting other people, animal and the environment all over the globe?
Humane education links the issues of human rights, environmental preservation and animal protection with the goal of helping people to understand how they can make a difference or the word that we like to use is how they can be Solutionaries for a more just, sustainable and peaceful world for everyone.
Lisa Belisle: You have a Divinity degree from Harvard. What’s the relationship there for you?
Zeo Weil: Well, I was all over the map when I was in college. I actually went to college pre-med and I abandoned that career unlike you. I ended up going to law school very briefly and I wound up in divinity school because I was fascinated by people’s belief systems and their values. I was studying comparative world religions really trying to understand what are people’s core values and beliefs, and what are those impacts of those values and beliefs in the world.
I actually at the time imagined that I would become a college professor and teach world religions. I ended up going down in a different path. Everything was slowly but surely leading me toward humane education, although what I do didn’t exist when I was in college or graduate school, so I had to create it.
Lisa Belisle: This has been an interesting process for you and one that you’ve undertaken while living in Maine. Most people would have a big idea and head towards the big city. You didn’t.
Zeo Weil: Well, I grew up in the big city. The biggest one in the United States, I grew up in New York. I went to college in Philadelphia and I also lived in Washington, DC and Boston, so until was 35 years old I lived in some of our biggest cities at least here in the east coast.
When I was first a humane educator it was in the Philadelphia area. I was going into school in a 60 mile radius in and around Philadelphia. I was reaching about 10,000 students a year, and I realized that if we wanted to really transform the world, to make the world a just, peaceful and healthy place for everybody that we needed a massive movement to transform education. Education is the root system that underlies every other system and if we educate young people to have the knowledge, tools and the motivation to be Solutionaries we will be able to solve the problems that we face in the world.
I was watching the tremendous power of this education in the Philadelphia area. I would go into schools, I would watch kids after a single presentation that I gave start a school club and then go on to be advocates, activists and do all sorts of incredible things and I have so many stories I could tell you.
I thought we really need a movement and so I cofounded the Institute for Humane Education primarily to train other people to be humane educators. We created the first graduate programs in humane education and they were online long before online education was as popular as it was.
Really, we could be anywhere and why not be an incredibly beautiful, wonderful place like the State of Maine, and so our graduate programs they started their online except for one week and our students they come here at Maine, they fall in love with this incredible place from all over the world.
Then, we started doing more, we do workshops. I would travel and lead workshops all over the country and overseas as well. Also, online courses that were shorter so you didn’t have to do a whole graduate program and then we created a free downloadable resource center on our website. It’s an award winning resource center.
We have teachers, advocates and activists all over the world who are downloading those resources, so we could really be anywhere. Now, we’re in the process of creating the first Solutionary School and our plan is to open it in New York City and create a totally revolutionary, totally innovating K through 12 curriculum that will be free and shareable to the world. Whether I’m in Maine or not won’t matter because this is going to be the wave of the future of education.
Lisa Belisle: I like it. I was on your website I was looking at the ideas behind a Solutionary School and it is K through 12 so it’s going to be complete. You’re going to start when they’re very small and get them in a good place before they head off to college. Why New York City?
Zeo Weil: Well, New York City is one of the many places where we want to see this school happen. We had a number of people who were in New York, some of are graduate students are New York, and so when were looking for a place where there were going to be a lot of people who wanted to be involved in making this happen, we had those people in New York City and, of course, if you can make it there you can make it anywhere, right?
Bringing the first Solutionary school to New York City is a way to really showcase this kind of education, but the goal is not a single school. This will be a flagship school, but it won’t be the single. It will be a model for replication everywhere, so I’m really looking forward to Solutionary Schools opening here in Maine and across the world.
Lisa Belisle: Solutionary is an interesting word because I think often when we are dealing with problems, we’re dealing with problems we’re not dealing with the answers to the problems, but you are right up front saying we are people who want to actually move things forward in a positive direction. We want to be the Solutionaries, so how did you come to this place that you’re calling it Solutionary School?
Zeo Weil: Well, the word came up from our former Executive Director of ours who just came up with that term Solutionary and I just love it. I said, “That’s it. That’s the word we’ve been looking for.” That really explains who we want to be and who we want young people to be. One of my frustrations with … We’ll our society in general certainly with government and with the media is that so many issues are presented to us in either or terms, and we’re … Even in schools, we have debate teams and students are often assigned one side or another of what’s … Sometimes a fabricated either or, or sometimes is a problem but it’s presented in black and white terms. Students are taught to research it, argue it and win for their side, even if they don’t agree with their side.
Now, I see the value in becoming that kind of critical thinker and learning persuasive skills and articulation skills. That’s all good, but is that really the best we can do? It occurred to me when I was listening to NPR one day in my car and one of those NYU debates was airing. The issue was, was the United States responsible for Mexico’s drug wars?
It was … Again presented in either or terms and I was … I think my jaw dropped. I thought that is a very complex issue and question. Why would we want to argue one side or the other? Why wouldn’t we put the great minds together to talk about how can we end Mexico’s drug wars? What are the solutions to that terrible problem?
I thought what if instead of having debate teams in all these schools in the United States, we add solutionary teams so students would be able to find a problem; it wouldn’t be a assigned to them, They could find a problem, it could be a small problem, it could be a problem in their school, it could be a problem in their neighborhood, it could be a global problem. The goal would be that they would work together collaboratively using their various skills and interest and they would come up with solutions to the problem and they could present those solutions.
We’re a very competitive society, so if we want to have those teams compete they can still compete for the most innovative, the most practical, the most viable, the most cost effective solutions to real world problems. They’re going to gain the same critical thinking skills, strategic skills, wholistic thinking skills, system skills, but they’re also going to be able to solve a problem and the best ones where we could implement them. Wouldn’t that be amazing?
Lisa Belisle: That’s a great idea. I think about my own children and watching them evolve through the school systems. It is a black and white often. It’s often … We’re training kids that they can be right or wrong. They can win or they can lose. That’s not really the way that the world works. Having worked with the Maine Media Collective now for several years, writing for the magazines and doing the radio show. It is a collaborative project. It is everything that comes out of this office is touched by many people, so you need to actually solve problems as a group. I don’t think that those skills are something that necessarily are fostered all the time in education.
Zeo Weil: I don’t think they’re fostered much at all. Competition is happening constantly in education. At every turn, right? Even grades are often just competitive, right? If kids are graded on a curve that’s competition right there. The goal isn’t really to make sure that every student gets an A because that means they’ve mastered the content. We would just say, “That’s grade inflation. Grades don’t mean anything anymore.” Everything is a competition.
While we pay lip service to collaboration because businesses, industries, everybody wants collaborators. Collaborators are really key and nobody wants to hire somebody who’s not a good collaborator and yet where do we teach it? We don’t. We often if we just throw kids into a group they’re going to collaborate but they haven’t been taught how to collaborate. It’s a really important skill.
Just to go back to the solutionary teams, on our website which is HumaneEducation.org, people can download a solutionary team toolkit, so any teacher who’s listening to this who want to create solutionary teams can just go to our website, it’s free and you can start a solutionary team in your school.
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Lisa Belisle: The title of the book that I first read of yours, ‘Above All Be Kind’, raising a humane child in challenging times. I know this is not your latest book but it’s the one that I first read. I was drawn to it because of the idea of kindness and a compassion, but not in a passive way and I think that’s often what we think of when we think of being compassionate. We think of not speaking ill of other people or being nice, but you’re talking about a very active, mindful approach to being kind. You’re talking about really taking into consideration how everybody is impacted. Everybody meaning every creature, every living thing is impacted by any given decision and moving forward with that knowledge. That’s an interesting … That’s interesting because it’s not easy.
Zeo Weil: No, it isn’t easy, but it really feels good to try and you’re right kindness is not the same thing as being nice, right? Being nice does feel more passive to me. Kindness is compassion in action to me. It means really being aware of the effects of one’s choices, and proximal kindness, that is, being kind to people with whom you interact, that’s hard enough. We have enough trouble with that. I mean, we have all of these anti-bullying programs in schools because people have challenges just being kind to each when they’re interacting.
How much harder is it then to be kind when the food you eat or the clothes you wear or the electronics you use or the products you buy may have come with so many effects on other people, on other species, on the environment. It could have been terribly cruelly produced, terribly environmentally destructively produced and it takes a real active will to say I’m willing to learn about that. I’m going to find out about the effect of my choices so that I can truly be kind in a very extensive way.
People listening to this might think, “Well, that’s overwhelming. I don’t want to know if it’s going to mean that I have to constantly be looking at all my choices.” I get that and yet there is something deeply satisfying about striving to live with integrity. I often think to myself, I have to look at myself in the mirror everyday and one day I’m going to die. I want to know that I did my best that I strived to truly be a good and kind person. That’s with this way of thinking allows us to do. That’s really rewarding not to mention that it creates a more peaceful and kind world. Don’t we all want to that for ourselves, for our children, for our grandchildren?
Lisa Belisle: I think we do and I also think you’re right that people can feel overwhelmed by it because there are people that … I’ve been in this situation myself where you really want to do what’s best, but sometimes what’s best over here is not best over here, and something that you’re trying to do that’s good for the plants and the animals sometimes it’s hard on the people and it’s a challenge. It’s a challenge to weigh all of those decisions.
Zeo Weil: Yes, and this gets to the reason why humane education is so important and Solutionary Schools are so important because we need to address the interconnected systems. So often, we look at problems in isolation and when we do that, that means that we solve them in isolation and that means that you may cause harm and suffering somewhere else as you’re trying to solve a problem over here.
Becoming a deep systems thinker when we have so many systems that intersect. For example, in a unit that we are creating for the Solutionary School. This is a sixth grade, six week unit around this question. What are the connections between public health problems and the dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico?
Now when you hear that … Well, first you might think I don’t know what the dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico is, so what it is is it’s an area in the Gulf of Mexico where life no longer exists and it’s because there’s … Oxygen has been depleted in that area. Now, why did that happen? It happened because of runoff from the Mississippi river. What’s in that runoff? Nitrogen fertilizer primarily also sometimes treated sewage is a problem there. Where does all that nitrogen fertilizer come from? It comes from the way we do agriculture.
You get into so many different ways of thinking and the new systems. Now, what is all of that have to do with public health? Well, the way we do agriculture is affecting public health. We are eating too much meat and dairy products. We are eating too much junk food and most of that is food that comes from the area around the Mississippi that is just sprayed with pesticides, massive areas of feed crops which are then fed to animals which produce only a small amount of beef back or chicken back or dairy back from the amount that we put in. We have all of the corn that’s been grown that goes into all of that junk food that we eat, and all of that is contributing to the health problems.
Then we have our healthcare system, we have our economic system, we have our advertising system, our agricultural system, our political system, our subsidy system, our tax system. There are so many intertwining systems with a question as simple as what are the connections between public health problems and the dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico?
Now, imagine a sixth grader learning about all of these interconnected systems and realizing that there is no quick solution. They have to be system thinkers and think about … All of these systems and then what are they going to do? Well, imagine if some of them learn these things they go to their legislators and they say, “Why is it that we are subsidizing certain agricultural products? Why is it that a fast food cheeseburger and an organic Apple cost the same amount? How is that possible? How is it possible that soya milk costs more than dairy milk when dairy milk is produced from cows who are fed crops like soya beans and the conversion rate is a terrible conversion rate? How are these things possible?
Then they’re going to find out about tax subsidies and then they’re going to be talking to their legislators saying why do we do that. Some of them maybe will become legislators themselves or they’ll draft legislation or they’ll become advocates in their community and they’ll try and actually solve these problems at the source. Another kid might be going to the school cafeteria and saying, “Hey, we need to make sure that the foods that we eat here in our school are healthy, just, humane and sustainable. How can we do that?”
Lisa Belisle: I’m listening to you I’m thinking about the actual spiritual roots of what you’re describing. I’m thinking about the Buddhist tradition which is not a religion, but it is a tradition. The idea of interconnectivity and the idea of everything being related, did any of these come into your mind as you were thinking about humane education?
Zeo Weil: Yes and no. Well, first I will say that I love the Dalai Lama’s line, ‘Kindness is my religion’. I think that’s beautiful. I would say that I found it fascinating when I was studying world religions. To learn about different traditions and their … What they taught about our relationship to the natural world, our relationship to other animals, I did find that very interesting to learn about.
I wouldn’t say that any of my humane education work stemmed from any spiritual or religious beliefs. It definitely stems from my ethical beliefs and the principle that I try to live by is the MOGO principle; MOGO being short for Most Good. How can we do the most good and the least harm to people, animals and the environment and ourselves are included in the category of people? How can we do the most good and the least harm? That to me is the ethical principle by which I try to live and I think that humane education at its core is inviting people to figure that out for themselves.
Lisa Belisle: What about the Quaker tradition? You were in Pennsylvania for your education. Obviously, there’s a strong Quaker influence in Pennsylvania and when we had Billy Shore, who is the founder of Share our Strength; the childhood hunger relief organization. He was on our show. He actually sent me some books that were written by a teacher who has a Quaker background. Did any of that … I mean, obviously, this is its own thing, but were you aware also of that?
Zeo Weil: Well, I was certainly aware of the Quaker tradition. I have given presentations and talks in many Quaker schools in the Philadelphia area because there’s so many of them. Again, though, I would say that my values and thinking around these years intersected with, but were not informed by the Quaker tradition.
Lisa Belisle: Well, I just think it’s interesting as you’re talking about systems and I always think when I’m asking people questions about where they came from and what their influencers were. I think it’s interesting that you have synthesized something that is entirely new; this MOGO principle, the idea of humane education and Solutionary sSchool. It does … There are some echoes I guess …
Zeo Weil: Right.
Lisa Belisle: Of things that have been around. That maybe in some ways I would think that might be helpful for some people because they already have a framework in their mind. They’re already familiar with some of these other things, so that maybe they can start connecting with what you’re describing.
Zeo Weil: Absolutely, because at our core, it’s like what I said at the beginning about if you ask people what are the best qualities of human beings, the lists are always so similar. These are innate to human beings. We agree that kindness, integrity, generosity and courage are good qualities. I don’t think anything that I’ve said is all that new. I mean, the MOGO principle? Sure, I coined the phrase, ‘MOGO’ for what’s worth, but the idea of doing the most good and least harm is very ancient. To me, I liken it to the golden rule, “To do unto others as you would have them do unto you or do not do unto others what anathema to you.” I mean, both of those versions of the golden rule are in every religious tradition.
Every human has tradition. They’re deeply embedded in our value system as human beings and I would just say that the MOGO principle asks us to take that golden rule and really apply it in a systematic way in a complex globalized world.
Sometimes, I think people could hear this and say do I have an agenda that I’m trying to push on young people? I would say, yes, the agenda is to do the most good and least harm but that’s where it ends. I’m not going to tell anybody what they should think, what they should do, but I’m going to ask people to think and to consider what they do in relationship to this principle. I’ve asked thousands and thousands of people, do you think that this principle of doing the most good and least harm is a good principle by which to live? Unanimously, people say, yes, nobody has ever said, no, that’s not a good principle by which to live.
We agree on the principle. We’re going to disagree on how we manifest that principle, but at least let’s do it honestly and with integrity. That’s what I think schools need to enable students to do. I mean, we live in such a different world from when you and I were in school. It’s changing so dramatically and yet schools haven’t changed that much.
Our children need to be able to graduate and negotiate this very complex world in which all of the information, all of human knowledge is available to them in a device that fits into their pocket and yet we still have them memorizing the names and dates of Presidents, right? Let’s have them actually doing work, thinking about real world issues and trying to solve what are potentially catastrophic problems that we’re facing.
Now I’ve very optimistic. I actually believe that we are living in less violent, less discriminatory and less cruel times than ever before in recorded human history and there’s so much evidence to back that up if somebody wants to research that.
I’m not poliansh about, but the evidence is there. At the same time the threats that are facing our children are pretty frightening threats. Climate change is a frightening threat. We have over seven billion people that number is continuing to grow. Every single person on this earth needs access to adequate food and clean water, a home, an economic opportunity.
We face some really big issues. We are depleting so many species of sea animals in the oceans. We are in the midst of what people are calling the sixth extinction. We are losing so many … Species we don’t even know exist, we are losing them. This is frightening. We could potentially lose half of all species on earth by the end of this century if we don’t figure out how to live more sustainably and live more ethically. This is so important and this is what young people need to be able to learn to do.
Lisa Belisle: Zeo, how do people find out about the Solutionary School that you are starting; your flagship Solutionary School and the Institute for Humane Education?
Zeo Weil: People can go to our website HumaneEducation.org. They’ll find links to everything; our graduate programs, workshops, free downloadable resources, the Solutionary School, our blog, all sorts of things there and they’ll also find links to my TEDx talks. I’ve done six of them and people can find out everything in one place; HumaneEducation.org.
Lisa Belisle: We’ve been speaking with Zeo Weil, who is the Cofounder and President of the Institute for Humane Education and who’s considered a pioneer in the comprehensive humane education movement and author of six books including the one I have on my lap. I’m going to have you sign it before you leave. People, who are listening, please do take the time to learn more about this. I think it’s an important thing that Zoe is doing and know it’s crazy you’ve taken the time to come all the way down here and talk with us, so thank you.
Zeo Weil: Thank you, it’s been really fun.
Lisa Belisle: As a physician and small business owner, I rely on Marci Booth from Booth Maine to help me with my own business and to help me live my own life fully. Here are a few thoughts from Marci.
Marci: When was the last time you took a break from what you were doing, from the work that was piled up on your desk and just looked up? I know that during the course of my days, I often forget to take a moment or two to just breathe, look up at the sky and dream. Terrible that I have to remind myself to breathe, but when I do, I feel energized because in those moments, I’m able to let go of the daily grind and think more about what I want to accomplish, how I want my business to grow. Sometimes those are the aha moments. If we all took a few moments out each day to stop what we were doing and dream a little about our business futures, not only would we feel a great sense of calm, but we may come to realize that these dreams can, in fact, come true.
I’m Marci Booth. Let’s talk about the changes you need, boothmaine.com.
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Lisa Belisle: Given that my mother is a teacher, I always enjoy and of course that I’ve had lots of education myself and many fine teachers, I always enjoy having people on the show who are themselves teachers and have dedicated their lives to this very important field. Today, we’ll be speaking with Steve DeAngelis, who is a science teacher, Nordic ski coach and half time Dean of student at Maranacook in Readfield. Thanks so much for coming in and talking with us today.
Steve DeAngelis: Well, thanks for letting me come. It’s nice of you.
Lisa Belisle: I’m really impressed with your memory of Nordic ski history. It goes back almost as far as my graduation from high school and that says a lot because it was a while ago. I graduated in ’88 and you’re remembering people that used to ski on the team that I was with at Yarmouth.
Steve DeAngelis: That’s because they used to squash us like bugs and so they were really good. They were our idols. When I first started coaching skiing, Bob Moore had been at it for a while at Yarmouth and he still is, which is pretty impressive. If you want to talk about someone who’s been around a long time, but the Yarmouth were the teams that when I first started coaching we were in last and they were in first and we always … That was our model that we were going to emulate them, so we got to the point where we could compete with them pretty successfully, so that’s good.
Lisa Belisle: Yeah, you actually have done a great with the Maranacook group, and it’s some that … I guess why I’m impressed with this is that, I mean, this is a decade’s long project that you’ve been working on. Why Nordic skiing?
Steve DeAngelis: Belisle, I’ve coached other sports as well, but I stuck with Nordic skiing for a couple of reasons. One is I love being outdoors and it’s still something I can do with them every day. I’m here to practice every day, I’m skiing with the kids and that’s hard to do that. As a basketball coach my age you really not allowed run up and down the court very much with the high school kids as if you’re playing it, but I can still ski with most of them except the very fastest ones now, but … That’s always been a big part of it.
The other reason is really related to how much I love teaching because teaching and coaching are really the same thing in different places and for me coaching is, especially Nordic skiing is a great way to teach some of the life lessons that I want my kids to learn. It’s a sport that requires intrinsic motivation to be good at. Nobody comes out for Nordic skiing because they’re like, “I’m going to be in the front page of the paper. There are going be big crowds cheering.” No, if you’re a Nordic skier in Maine and you’re really successful, your parents and a couple of other people might be there at race and when you cross the line you’ll drool coming out of your mouth and big snot thing coming down your chin probably and if did a really good race. It could be 20 below zero and you’re still out there skiing in this great windshield or whatever.
You have to be intrinsically motivated. You also have to deal with the elements. Whatever you’re given on a given day, it’s not the same. Every basketball gym is pretty close the same. The rims are the same height and so forth, but every trailer is different, the weather is different, the wax is different. You name it, it’s all different and you have to adapt.
Those are great life lessons. The other cool thing about Nordic skiing it makes me crazy passion about it is that it’s a neat blend of individual and team. We always better I think because we work incredibly well with the team. It’s a tradition on our team that the older kids work with the younger kids. At the start of the season, we have 40, 50 kids in the team and I’m often the only person there, the only adult. They know that if we’re going to get better, they have to teach the younger kids and so that’s part of the tradition. That builds great teamwork, but also we have a full range out of those 40 kids that we had this year, there were some who had never been on skis before ever and other kids who were going to be State champions this year.
Out of that whole range it’s really great to work with kids to have them meet their own individual goals as well. Their individual goal don’t have to be to the State champion. It can be to make through a race without falling, and it’s awesome to watch kids grow and change in a way that is almost without public notice. That’s it’s all within themselves and I think that’s an awesome thing to learn how to do to reach those kinds of goals.
Lisa Belisle: You’re now in the off season for skiing and you’re still very busy because you’re still a teacher, you’re still a halftime Dean of students. How do you stay physically active?
Steve DeAngelis: That’s a good question. It’s not always easy to do all the kind of endurance training that I want. I undoubtedly spend much longer time without skiing or running if I didn’t have the job I have, so it’s a trade off, but I work it into other things that I do like we have a little sugar house we built back at the house in Readfield. We just got down, we had our last boiling this last weekend. It’s got too warm now, but I was thinking about … Just last week I was out carrying these five gallons buckets of sap through the woods, through two feet of slow on snow shoes.
You wouldn’t say I’m going out for a workout, but you getting a workout; a really good workout and so I think a lot of what I get to do I build it in little bit as part of our daily routine. We have a little land in Readfield and we have a Christmas tree farmer who grow young charismas farm. That works out great because all the work for that’s in the summer time, a lot of mowing and walking in the woods for that. We have a wood lot we cut our own firewood and I split with my hand because I like to do it.
It just fits in the flow of life. It helps me to stay relatively fit that way. My kids like to tease me that I’m really skinny and weary and look a little bit, but I have an old man strength.
Lisa Belisle: Old man’s strength.
Steve DeAngelis: Which comes from just doing stuff.
Lisa Belisle: I commended to you as you were coming in that you do look remarkably youthful considering that you have been coaching as long as I … Because far back is when I was …
Steve DeAngelis: You don’t have to keep going, I know the far back part as much. You can light up on that a little bit, probably. I’m just teasing.
Lisa Belisle: But, my … but Bob Moore, so you already mentioned my ski coach, I mean, he was doing it long before I got there, he’s still doing it. He looks pretty much the same …
Steve DeAngelis: He really does.
Lisa Belisle: … When I see him now he looks pretty much exactly the same.
Steve DeAngelis: He’s had that gigantic mustache forever. He looks very the same and he’s still out there skiing too with the kids. He’s done amazingly well. It’s an awesome sport. I keep going back to it, but great stuff.
Lisa Belisle: It is a great sport. You also have quite a lot of educational background yourself in addition to your Bachelor of Science in Chemical Engineering from the University of Maine in Orono. You also have a Masters of Education in Counseling from Orono. You’ve lots of … You’ve done science, you’ve done counseling, there’s education piece, so you … In addition to this physical thing that you do with the skiing you’re also … You have this intellectual aspect of you as well. Talk to me about how that whole progression was made. Chemical engineering is a very difficult major. Why did you decide to go from there to education, to teaching, counseling. How did that all come together?
Steve DeAngelis: That’s an awesome question actually. That’s a great question. I graduated from Maine with a Chemical Engineering degree like you said and I worked for, what at the time Scott Paper Company in, first in Winslow and then up near Skowhegan. They were doing a startup of a mill there at the time and it was really interesting work, really challenging, super financially rewarding. Very intense because we’re doing the startup, but then after a couple of years; it was just about less than two years, it felt … It really hard to describe, but I just felt that I wanted to be doing something more for other people than I was, which really hadn’t occurred to me a great deal going through high school and college. I loved science, I loved the nerdy stuff. Loved thinking about and figuring out things like math. Just … My dad was involved in the science field, and so it just made sense to me, I’m just going to do that end of the …
In all honesty, I just did it because I was good at it. It made sense to me and then I started looking around at my job after a couple of years and I remember … I still remember just thinking there this older fellow who had been there for a number of years working for Scott, I don’t know where that place. He … I asked him. He didn’t seem that interested in his job so I asked him, “Why are you still doing this for?” He started just thinking about … All of a sudden they got the golden handcuffs on me, which just meant … He said if I quit this job my wife would not to get to drive the car she does. My kids … The golden handcuff and just still resonates with me, I don’t want golden handcuffs.
I started looking around just really with no idea and, of course, no internet at the time. This is back as you pointed out a long time ago, and so I was looking in one day at stuff like, I was reading the Sunday and I saw a picture of the Principal at Maranacook School. It had just started up in 1976, this was in ’78. He was sitting in the hall with his arm around a kid and I’m like, “That does not look like the Principal of my high school.”
Just interested me, I tucked it away. Just … Two weeks later I saw an ad this was in early august for a chemistry teacher at Maranacook and I’m like, “How hard can that be. I’m a chemical engineer. I can teach chemistry.” When I look back I was incredibly arrogant to think … Because, I mean, I’m a big bad chemical engineer. In education major you had it so soft in college that is what I was thinking.
I applied for just on a whim. I had never had an education course in my life, never student taught, so I’m like they’re not going to interview me. They call me up, they asked to come interview and it a pretty experimental place … The open school concept and were willing to take risks and they took a giant risk. I remember they called me back two days later after this grueling interview and I thought that’s over and done with. They called me back and offered me the job and I seriously asked if they had the wrong number. I thought they had called the wrong person.
They said, “No, you are the one we’d like to offer this job to.” It was just a gut feeling I said I’m going to take it and this was two weeks before school started in August. I took that job and it was the hardest thing I’d ever done. Talk about an awakening, I was like, “Really, that’s what it’s like.” it was brutally hard, in part because I had never student taught, never had an education course in my life, but I had an awesome, a wonderful department chair who really helped pull me along for the first couple of years. I got lucky I got hooked in with some other physics teachers up in Montville, Mike Gunson was one of them who had been doing it for a lot longer and they taught me a lot more about the teaching aspect of it not just the content.
I started a lot teaching chemistry, but then like a lot of things when you teach something, you can really all of sudden like a light goes on and the first year I teach one physics course, which was the hardest thing for me as an engineer. I never … Even though I was successfully working as an engineer I didn’t really totally get it.
Taught that for a year and about halfway through the year I remember thinking that’s how this works? I totally get that, so then I just fell in love with physics, started doing that all the time and would up doing a lot of work over the summers and continuing education with physics. Now, when I teach that’s all I teach is physics. It’s a … That’s the short version.
Lisa Belisle: A short version.
Steve DeAngelis: It’s a lot longer, but I’ll give you the short version.
Lisa Belisle: How about this Masters of Education in Counseling. Why the counseling piece?
Steve DeAngelis: Well, because Maranacook has an awesome advisor system. A really wonderful thing where each teacher in the building and most of the administrators even have a group of 10 to 12 students that they follow through, they take them as ninth graders and follow them through to 12th grade. It’s not just in home room you do … You have days out with them, you do a number of extended activities beyond just a home room every day.
The other key piece that I think sets Maranacook apart, I think it’s the reason I’ve stayed there is I feel that we do a great job of educating the whole person, really paying attention to helping them become mature adults. We’re communicating work with other people. Things that go beyond just the content of your courses and I felt that if I was going to go a real … If the first couple of years, I thought if I’m going to be really good advisor, I’ve got a chemical engineering degree, no education background, I got to learn so more, so I took a leave of absence for a couple of years and got a counseling degree mostly to help me to be a better advisor then I came back.
Lisa Belisle: How does that help you with your Dean of students’ position that you do halftime?
Steve DeAngelis: A great deal as it turned out. I always resisted that for a long time. I’ve been there since 1978 and so with the exception of two years off to get my Masters in Counseling and so for … As I got older and I’d been around people kept asking me do you want to be Principal? Do you want to go into administration? I always said no because I really love working with the students, with kids. Teenagers are … They keep me vibrant, they’re … It’s the best and it’s still the best. I love working with teenagers.
Then about three and a half, four years ago now … Yeah, three and a half years ago, one of the two Deans of students opened up. We had half time Dean of students so that … Because we feel it’s important that the people in that role also stay in touch with the teaching side of things, so rather than having a full time Assistant Principal we have two Deans of Students’ who are both halftime and teach half time. We share the Dean of students part.
Nobody from in-school applied for it. They went and opened it up to outside of the school and I just felt like we needed to have someone who knew the way the school operated and … do it. I didn’t really … Not because I wanted to, I still was pretty convinced I was not a good idea. I really … And I miss the teaching still, but it’s turned out to be a really good thing for me because that’s where the counseling piece comes in. I really spend … When I teach physics, I spend half my time with students who really for the most part love school. They’re into school they’re good at school. They get it, they like it … spend the time at.
My Dean of students role, I spend half my time a lot of kids who really don’t like school. Who school’s a struggle for them for various reasons and my thinking about that part of the job is I don’t want to be seen as the Assistant Principal who is the head knocker. Who’s out there knocking heads to get people … I want to be as proactive as possible, so my goal is to get to know all the students that I work with as before they get in trouble, so you have a relationship first.
When a kid’s doing something that they shouldn’t be doing you have to call them on it. You call on them on it the same way you can call your own children on something because you love them, because you want them to be successful and you know that if they can just get around and do whatever they want, that’s going to be struggle for them at some point.
I try to be as proactive as possible in that job. Get to know the kids first, get to hit off issues, so … One of my crowning achievements after doing it for a couple of years is one of the students in our … program. His teacher overhead him say, “Man, I will just crack that kid except Mr. D would found out about it before I ever did anyway, so there’s no point.” I was like, “Yeah, that’s awesome.” Because he just said that he knows I’m looking, he knows I care about him, he knows that … It’s proactive stuff , that can happen, that’s best and that counseling part.
Lisa Belisle: I’m thinking about the parallels between education and health. Obviously, health is what I’m in and I’m a family doctor. You’ve come to a place where there is common core standardized testing, no child left behind. Medicine has come to a place where we’re asked to uphold certain standards. We’re constantly being evaluated not only on whether we’re good at being doctors, but whether we’re good at talking to our patients.
Ultimately, in both cases, we are … It’s hard for us to be measured on relationships and yet those end up being probably the most important part of both fields, so how do you stay focused on the importance of the relationship when what you’re being told from the outside is we need you to meet these external goals that we think are important?
Steve DeAngelis: In a way I’m lucky because I have been teaching for a long time and I know in my heart what works. I know that if your students know … I mean, the most important thing for a teacher is to be passionate about your subject and what you teach and passionate about kids because if your kids know, if your students know you care about them, you want to do your very best for them. That empowers them, that motivates them and without that, you can have the best standards in the world, all kinds standard testing, and it’s not going to work for you. You got to have that relationship.
That’s the … Another key part about being a teacher is just being to meet kids where they. To connect with them and understand why this kid is learning if differently than someone else. That takes time that takes that relationship building and I know that if you can do that that’s the starting piece.
Then, I really think that … I like the idea of common core by the way … Well, at least as it applies to science certainly. I don’t as much as about it for English and math, although certainly our teachers are working hard on that, but what’s called the next generation science standards were just adopted actually by Maine. They’re great. It’s basically saying these are the things that people that really know the field think are most important to learn. I like that part. Where I really very seriously differ is our emphasis on doing lots and lots of standardized testing to prove that we’re teaching that because it’s take time away from teaching and it the emphasis away from … It puts the emphasis too much on content and not enough on knowing how to figure stuff out and how to learn because that’s my big goal with my students is when I teach physic I’m thinking less about it’s important that you know these equations and this content. In fact, we don’t have memorized equation they always want to …As we learn new equations we put them up on a big poster, it’s on the wall. Now … Do we have to memorize that? No, you need to know how to use them.
What’s most critical I think is that we teach people not the content so much, but how to learn and how to figure things out because you know a whole bunch of content you can’t possible know all the content in the world nobody can, so if you’re working on something and it’s something you’re not familiar with and you don’t know how to learn. You don’t know how to figure stuff out, that’s a problem. That’s really the emphasis I think needs to be on that but the relationships come first.
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Lisa Belisle: You’re not originally … Your family is not originally from Maine?
Steve DeAngelis: That’s correct.
Lisa Belisle: When you’re 12 your dad came to Maine for a job. You love Maine. You got job offers in other States. Why did you stay here?
Steve DeAngelis: Like a lot of things I’m not a big believer in super simple solutions to anything or explanations. There’s a lot of reasons, but I remember that we came to Maine, we came from Virginia and we came in the middle of the Winter. A week after we got here, we had landed the biggest snowstorm in the history of the State of Maine and we got out of school for a week.
I thought I had died and gone to heaven. I was like, “You got to be kidding me. This must happen all the time,” which it doesn’t, but still that just right then and there I just fell in love in being in the snow. I love the snow, I love being outdoors and Maine is a great place to raise a family. One reason I stayed when you said I didn’t go for jobs in other States, I wasn’t looking to raise a family. I wasn’t married at the time when I first got to college, but I just thought to myself this is … As I looked at some of the other places I got job offers; New Jersey and Pennsylvania and some places in … It just …Maine was clearly in my mind a great place to raise a family and I thought someday I want to raise a family.
Lisa Belisle: Now you have …?
Steve DeAngelis: Now, I have three children who are just wonderful. Hanna, my oldest at 25. She’s been working in Boston. She got out Colby college in 2012. She’s been working in Boston for a few years, but she’s moving back to Portland this summer which is great. We’re excited about that. She hopes to … She’s … In the tutoring counseling field right now and I think she’s going to hopefully go USM and get her Masters in Counseling.
My son, Tyler is a senior at Boden. He’s going to graduate in about a month and after spending next winter in Europe skiing; he’s on the Nordic ski team at Boden right now. I’m pretty confident he’s going to be back around Maine also.
My son, Luca is a junior in high school and he’s also a Nordic skier and wants to go skiing in college, then he wants to be Secretary of State somebody, so maybe when I’m a benevolent dictator he can be Secretary of State, although I know benevolent dictators really need such a thing.
My wife, Tara is amazing and she is a counselor in the elementary schools towns in our district and it’s a great place to raise kids when … I still remember when Luca was in middle school, we’re driving home from school one fall day it was just beautiful. We drove right by the end of the lake and this fall … “Dad, we live in a place where other people come for vacation.” The kids all get it, I get it. It’s a great place to live for a lot of reasons, but you love the outdoors, it’s a great to live.
Lisa Belisle: Well, I agree with you and I appreciate all the work you’re doing. All the students you’ve helped teach and counsel. All the kids that you’ve helped coach. It’s something that … I’m very glad that you listened to the guy who told you about the golden handcuff and you didn’t develop, you didn’t get your pair of golden handcuffs and you decided you were going to be a teacher. I think you’ve made an impressive mark on the field.
Steve DeAngelis: Thank you very much, but you have to know I get a tremendous amount back from kids and parents and I … Pretty fortunate in that way.
Lisa Belisle: We’ve been with Steve DeAngelis who is teacher, a Nordic ski coach and a half time Dean of Students. Also, husband, father of three, enthusiastic promoter of the greater Readfield’s and I really appreciate you taking the time to come in and talk to me today.
Steve DeAngelis: Well, thank you. It’s been a lot of fun actually. I appreciate it.
Lisa Belisle: You’ve been listening to Love Maine Radio, Show Number 190, Rethinking Education. Our guests have included Zeo Weil and Steve DeAngelis. For more information on our guests and extended interviews, visit lovemaineradio.com. Love Maine Radio is downloadable for free on iTunes. For a preview of each week’s show, sign up for our e-newsletter and like our Love Maine Radio Facebook page. Follow me on Twitter and see my running travel, food, and wellness photos as Bountiful 1 on Instagram. We love to hear from you, so please let us know what you think of Love Maine Radio. We welcome your suggestions for future shows. Also, let our sponsors know that you’ve heard about them here. We are privileged that they enable us to bring Love Maine Radio to you each week.
This is Dr. Lisa Belisle. I hope that you have enjoyed our Rethinking Education show. Thank you for allowing me to be a part of your day. May you have a bountiful life.
Speaker 1: Love Maine Radio is made possible with the support of the following generous sponsors: Maine Magazine, Marci Booth of Booth Maine, Apothecary by Design, Mike LePage and Beth Franklin of RE/MAX Heritage, Harding Lee Smith of The Rooms, and Bangor Savings Bank. Love Maine Radio is recorded in the studio of Maine Magazine at 75 Market Street, Portland, Maine. Our executive producers are Susan Grisanti, Kevin Thomas, and Dr. Lisa Belisle. Audio production and original music by John C. McCain. Our content producer is Kelly Clinton. Our online producer is Andrew Cantillo. Love Maine Radio is available for download free on iTunes. See www.lovemaineradio.com or the Love Maine Radio Facebook page for details.