- Hey everybody, I'm Connor.
That's Doug and this is the Bethel School District Presents
podcast and we've got a fantastic show for you.
Today we're heading over to Spanaway Lake High School
to talk leadership
with teacher Karina Smurfit and some of her students.
But before all that,
we've actually got an interesting hypothetical
and duck, duck pay attention.
This is for you. If you could buy a vacation home
anywhere in the world, where would it be and why?
- Connor, I love this question
and my mind is a whir with many different trains of thought.
And speaking of trains, do you wanna live somewhere
where you can train to a bunch of different cool locations,
maybe somewhere in Europe?
Do I wanna be a snow bunny? Do I wanna be a beach bum?
You're picking one spot so that spot better be pretty great.
Or it needs to be near places that are pretty great.
I think I'm gonna go with the ladder.
I actually lived in Belgium for three years
and that was a great jumping off point.
Kind of two hours to anywhere is what we used to say.
And looking at Google Maps right now, that is still true.
So I'm gonna pick Brussels, I'll get a flat in Brussels.
It's two hour train, ride to Amsterdam, two hour train, ride
to London, two hour train ride to Paris
and two hour train ride into Germany.
I picked cologne at random
but Germany's a pretty big country.
A lot of cool places to go there.
So I think that's gonna be my answer.
I wanna be somewhere that's a great city
that is really close to other great cities,
- Doug.
I like that answer. And that's actually one of the questions
that I posed to Karina smut when I spoke
with her at Spanaway Lake High School.
Joining us today is Carina smt.
She is an ELA
and leadership teacher at Spanaway Lake High School.
And I don't know about you,
but when I was in high school,
they didn't have leadership class.
At least I don't remember it. What is leadership class?
- Uh, leadership gives the opportunity to students
to express their voice, um,
and then put their ideas in perspective to
where they build a community and the culture of a school
and implement all these fun things
that they wanna see happening at school.
Maybe people envision it as more like poster making
and event planning, but it's so much more than that.
- You're really kind of helping to grow adults.
I guess they're, they're learning a lot of things
that they have to be responsible about
and kind of being empathetic and caring.
Uh, is that, how, how do you line that up as a class?
'cause I mean I feel like some of those
are intuitive things.
How, how do you teach someone to be empathetic?
- It is definitely a different type class
'cause we don't have necessarily things
to look at when we grade in things.
It's more about indeed growing those, um,
leadership mindsets
and um, being able to teach them how to take initiative, um,
and grow as very strong leaders.
So time management is a definitely a cool thing
to address at this age
'cause it helps them put in perspective anything
that they wanna accomplish. You're
- Also teaching how to give back and show gratitude.
Recently your class made coffee and snacks for staff members
and for bus drivers and then went out and gave it to 'em.
I'm sure that made the bus drivers
and staff members feel really special and really loved.
So where does that come from?
- This summer we got a cool opportunity to go
to a convention, a Justin's Renaissance convention.
Um, and that opened up
to a different new level of leadership for us.
It's based on recognizing and rewarding everyone
and everybody for every little thing that's done
around the school, it's teaching them that in order
to be successful you have to be appreciated, right?
So this month we had the goal
of appreciating our bus drivers
'cause I know they work really hard every day.
So it was a very successful event.
We got a lot of good feedback from the bus drivers,
but also the students really enjoyed to um, to do that.
Besides the bus drivers,
we also appreciated our staff members.
So we created a gratitude card that we went
around the school and shared snacks
and treats for the staff members, again,
with the same purpose of making them feel appreciated
and loved and seen here around the school.
- That's awesome. And I I I know that they love that.
So in addition to teaching leadership, you also teach ELA.
And this is interesting because you are moldovan,
you grew up, your first language was Romanian
and now you are teaching English in
what is your second language,
which I can barely speak my first language,
so I'm especially impressed by this.
So how did it come to be
that you became a high school English teacher?
- That's, uh, I guess the, the fate
that you never know that you're gonna embrace.
Um, I've studied English back in my country, the university
to be able to go and teach it
as a foreign language in my village.
And because there was not too many um,
English speakers in my country, they send me here
to practice it so I become better at it.
There's such a thing for in mulian for mulian students, um,
a program that is called Work and Travel.
So they send me here for the summer at an RV company working
with customer serv in in customer service
with people from across the United States to be able
to practice that English skills.
But then I met my husband, he is uh, he was working
with me at the same company and I never returned back.
- What are some of the benefits
and drawbacks of teaching English
when it's your second language?
- The benefits of teaching English as a,
as a second language for me it's great
because we do have a rich diversity
of students here at Spin Away Lake
that come from different countries.
So for me, understanding how the process
of assimilating English works,
it helps me support them better in learning
their English skills.
- And I noticed in your leadership class we spoke
with Anastasia who's from Ukraine
and this is her first year here.
Have you been able to offer her any help?
I know you know Moldova and Ukraine are separate countries
but they're neighbors or have you been able
to give her any advice or help her at all?
- She is my success story
and when it comes to a student, um, it's definitely,
she inspires me every day.
This girl came in last year
with having absolute zero English skills.
I still remember her coming in my classroom,
speaking Russian, being very emotional
and to the point of almost crying
'cause she didn't understand one thing that's going on here
to where at the end of the year she actually was my
valedictorian or my advisory finishing up the whole, um,
all her classes with straight A's.
And she continues to amaze me every day
by doing the same thing this this year.
So she's definitely my my success story.
- What an awesome success story. We love to hear that.
And we're gonna take a hard left turn here.
Doug and I had a heated debate about if we could get a
vacation house anywhere in the world where we would go.
So I'm gonna, I wanna give you the same question.
If you could have a home, anywhere in the world,
a vacation home, where would you pick?
- I'm a hardcore traveler so this question is super,
super hard for me 'cause I, my mind instantly send me,
sends me to like Bahamas and Bora Bora at the same time
and having this nice hat on the water and,
but at the same time my mind sends me back
to Dubai when we went there a couple of years back
and we experienced the rural life
of Dubai actually having these beautiful nice houses
that have like courtyards and just very cultural stuff.
So it's a tough question for me. I don't know.
I don't know, maybe, um, let me travel for
to a couple more countries and then come back
and I'll, I'll, I'll think about that one. Oh that's
- Cheating but we'll, we'll allow it .
We'll we'll get back to you in a couple years
and you can give us your answer but okay
Corina, thank you so much for
joining us. Really appreciate it.
- Thank you guys so much. I appreciate you.
- And also joining us today are Spanaway Lake High School
leadership students, Sophia, Anastasia, Umai, Owen Mars,
Jonah J and Emily.
You guys do all kinds of cool stuff.
One of the coolest things is you went
to Texas over the summer.
Sophia, tell us a little bit about that Texas trip.
What was, why'd you go to Texas? What was going on there?
- We went to Texas because we were selected
by our leadership teacher, Ms.
mfe, to kind of represent Spin Away Lake High School.
And we went to the convention in Texas to learn more about
how we can improve our school, um, academically
and just the environment in general.
And we all kinda had the idea that we wanted
to improve the school and we wanted to be more involved.
- That's awesome. What was the
conference like in general? For
- The most part there was a lot of uh,
interactive activities involving like other people,
but most of all we were interacting with the advisors
and we learned so much.
We learned how to communicate with others
and we learned that
no one is left out like should be left out in an um,
environment such as a school especially.
So yeah, that experience just like improved our
communication with other people.
- Nice. And Anastasia did, was there like a favorite part
of the Texas trip for you?
- My favorite part was when we went
to the rally it was really fun
and all people were participating
and like we all communicated and just had fun.
- So I understand you guys didn't really know each other
before you went on this Texas trip.
What was it like in terms of a bonding experience?
- So none of us knew each other.
There's four of us and we were selected by Ms. Marfa.
Um, and we went on this trip
and the day that the trip came, we were all kind of nervous.
We arrived at the airport
and we all kind of just met each other.
Maybe it was like the first time,
maybe it was the second time, but we didn't know each other.
And then as soon as the Texas trip just like slowly went on,
we all got to know each other and our bonds grew very close
because we were like, oh, we all kind
of have the similar thinking
and we kind of wanna all improve our school.
So once we had that bond growing, uh, we
just had so much learning to do with each other
and we got to help each other, um, decide
how were we gonna bring these aspects to the school
and how could we share them
with our leadership team that upcoming year. So
- Umai, for those who don't know,
how would you describe leadership class?
- I would describe leadership as a group of people who want
to make the school environment
so much better than it already is.
And I feel like there's so much to be improved.
So our leadership team is some, it's a group of people
who are trying to eventually make the school a better
environment for everyone else.
- So Sophia, what has Ms.
MFE meant to this leadership
program since you've been involved?
- I think Ms. Mfe has done a lot of just organization
and she's got everything prepped
and she's willing to try anything
that people really recommend.
She loves to bring in other people
and make sure everyone feels included.
And we do a lot of group work so we have our sections
and she splits us up
to do different activities with the school.
And um, overall I think she's just a very organized
person for leadership
and she's been doing a very good job this year.
- So Umai, if someone was thinking about joining leadership,
what would be kind of your sales pitch to get them involved?
What will they get out of it? I
- Would say that it's a really difficult job at times,
but I feel like if you wanna experience to see
how we do things around the school
and how we are committed, especially
I feel like you should join just
because you wanna gain that experience with other people.
And then, and it's also like a good experience in general,
like you wanna be involved.
- Uh, Anastasia are,
do you feel like you're learning some things in this class
that you'll be able to kind of take with you maybe
to college or beyond college?
- Uh, yeah, I think, uh, what I learned is, uh, to how
to communicate and how to make an impact
and don't stay quiet when you wanna like say them
or you have some ideas.
So yeah, it helped me a lot
and I think it will be really useful for my life.
- So Owen, what has this leadership class
been like for you? What are you getting out of it?
- I'm learning a lot of like leadership responsibilities.
Um, I'm in a lot of leadership positions
as our sophomore class vice president, um, our
lead bassoon player in our win ensemble
and our lead saxophone player in our jazz band.
So it's helping out with the responsibility
of the different leadership qualities.
- Mars for people who may not be aware of
what a leadership class is, can you just give us a breakdown
of what leadership is?
- From my opinion, I just say leadership is teamwork,
you know, community, us learning how to really take charge
of what the school needs
and what we need as students in this school.
- And, and Jonah, do you think this is a class that
everyone could benefit from
or do you think there's certain kind of specific traits
that some people would be good in it, some people wouldn't?
- Um, I feel like a lot
of people could benefit from this class.
If you join leadership, I feel like you get
to have your ideas heard, you get to um,
incorporate your ideas on what you think the school needs
and what you think it doesn't need.
You get your ideas heard, you get to hear um,
different people's perspectives and like what they think
- Jay are.
Are you learning things that you could see yourself taking
with you either to college or somewhere beyond that?
- Um, yes I do only
because like in leadership I've learned
that time management is something
that I can benefit from myself
because I love to procrastinate.
So I guess I take, I can take time management to college,
you know, get, get on top
of those assignments, you know. Emily,
- What about you?
What are you learning in leadership
that you feel like you might be able to take with you
for the rest of your scholastic career
and beyond that? Well,
- For being a senior this year, I've realized
that I'm taking a lot of communication
and taking on that leading role
that I could take on into college and portray
and other stuff like as if I were
to join leadership in college.
- You guys recently had a cool event
where you were giving out coffee and snacks to bus drivers
and other staff members and I know those are really tough
jobs and I'm sure it means the world
to them to hear from students.
What did it mean to you to be
able to show them how much you
care? Mars? I'll start with you.
- Um, it meant to me that these drivers,
they were underappreciated,
but it was good to like really show them, hey, I'm glad
that you picked me up every morning,
even when I have an attitude, even though
I don't wanna speak to you sometimes you deserve it,
you know, you don't have to deal with me, but you choose to.
- Well - Said. Jonah, what do you think?
I'm piggyback on that. What was that day like being able
to show these men and women who work so hard
for you every day that you care?
- Uh, kind of what Mark said, I feel like it, it was a day
where we could really, um, appreciate what they do.
Like not just for us,
but just for like everyone at the school.
I feel like they're really underappreciated
and the stuff that they do for us,
I feel like they deserve like all the credit that they get.
- Great interview Connor.
That has to be the most students we've
ever had on the podcast.
Thanks for sitting down with all of them
and letting us get to know them a little bit better.
Now we started the show with that question of
where would you buy your dream vacation home.
I answered Karina answered Connor, that leaves you,
where are you gonna buy your dream vacation house?
- You know, I think I'm going to Scotland.
I don't know where somewhere in Scotland.
Key reason is I need to work on my Scottish accent.
Our buddy friend of the show, Gary, who happens
to be a Glaswegian, says we need a little work
- .
They're not called Glaswegians.
- Oh, but it's true. Dougie, shut the Google.
I'm a wee bit tled. You ask me that
- .
Okay, hang on. I
I'll be tled myself. It is true.
- Well that does it for us then ,
- But it sounds like Scotland is a great choice for you.
Good luck on your accent work Mr.
Connery, and we will see you all next week everybody.
Thanks for listening.