- Hey everybody, I'm Connor.
That's Doug and this is the Bethel
School District Presents podcast.
And we have another fantastic show
for you this week in just a few minutes,
Doug will be heading over to one of our middle schools
to speak with some students about their honors program.
But first, something's been driving me crazy, Doug.
- Oh yeah, do tell. Oh,
- It's really a provocative question.
I just can't get it outta my head. I've been dwelling on it.
I haven't done any work for weeks. .
You may have noticed. I don't know. I'm sorry about that.
The question is, if you could wake up tomorrow
with $5 million in your bank account, love it.
But you'd have to be 10 years older.
Would you do it?
- Interest? $5 million.
But I am so the world has
gone forward 10 years. That's what you're saying,
- Doug.
Pay attention. No, you have aged 10 years.
The world is exactly as you left it when you went
to bed at 7:30 PM
- .
Some nights I make it to 7 45. Thank you very much.
Can I bargain with you? Can I parlay some numbers here?
Like instead of maybe 5 million,
could I do 2.5 in five years?
- I'll give you 2.5 for five.
- 2.5 for five. Could I do 1 million for one year?
- No. Okay. Two years for 500,000.
- Oh, that's a terrible deal.
Okay, so you said I could do 2.5 for five
- Tax free, I'll tell you - That.
Oh, tax free. I do like that. Okay.
How are you feeling about this? Would you do it?
- No. No. Would not make that trade.
I unlike you, I value my life.
- . - You haven't even made
a decision yet. So I can't say that
- .
I haven't, but I guess I, I feel like I do value that I, I
- Wouldn't trade a day of my beautiful life
for all the money in the world.
10 years is ridiculous.
- I, I'm more interested in the 2.5 for five,
but I think I'd want to be a younger man making that trade
than a middle aged man.
But I guess that's where I'm at. Well
- The, just to be fair, the average lifespan
for an American man is not 98 years.
So you are technically not middle aged.
You're past middle aged.
- Oh my gosh. So can we just start the interview now
because now I'm depressed ,
I'm sitting here at Cedar Crest Middle School
with principal Hans Nelson and students Jazzy
and Violet, both eighth graders
and both in the honors program.
Welcome to the show everybody.
Thank you Jazzy and Violet, you both are here
because Principal Nelson's extremely proud
of the honors program here at Cedar Crest Middle School
and extremely proud of both of you.
You both competed in History Day recently
and are doing amazing things in class.
Can one of you tell me about the honors program?
What is it for people that don't know? Violet?
- I'd say that honors is a program for people
who want to challenge themselves a little bit more.
Maybe if they're taking regular humanities classes in the
sixth or seventh grade and they feel like that's too easy
for them and they wanna challenge themselves a little bit
more, they can sign up for honors.
- That's a great description. Jazzy.
I was actually in an honors program when I was in middle
school and we had to test into it.
I've heard that that has changed in the,
let's say 10 years since I was in middle school.
It's been a little more than 10 years, but that's okay.
, what is the change
that's happened here at Cedar Crest?
- Well, last year when I was in seventh grade,
I actually asked, um, my humanities teacher
if I was like able to be in honors for next year
because in humanities I understand things a lot,
but I really wanted to like push myself more to the point
where like, I want things to be like challenging for me.
So my humanities teacher talked to my counselor about it
and that's how I was in honors.
- I love it. That's a big step here at
Cedar Crest, principal Nelson.
We'll go a little more in depth
after we finish chatting with the
students and get them back to class.
For both of you, who is your favorite honors
teacher and class? Well,
- My favorite teacher is Ms.
Woolley. She's my honors history teacher.
And during NHD for districts,
she made it really like easy for us
to like really get the resources
that we needed and the help we need.
Even though like everyone was like all scattered
around the place, even though like
everything was really complicated, she made it like easy
for us to like comprehend and like our fixes and our changes
and like she was like a really good teacher for that.
- That's excellent. So Miss Woolery and
because of National History Day,
which you all just participated in,
before we talk more about that, violet,
who's your favorite teacher in class?
- Um, I'd have to agree with jazz. Ms.
Woolery honors history, she's my favorite teacher
because she makes the learning like more enjoyable
and easy to understand.
- Excellent. Perfect transition.
Let's talk about National History Day.
For those that don't know what that is
for is a middle school program where students,
I don't know why I am telling it.
You all are experts. .
Let me have one of you tell our listeners
what is National History Day?
- National History Day is where you choose a topic,
you basically research it for a very long time
or what feels like forever and you
create a project.
You can do things like an exhibit, a performance,
a documentary, a website or a paper.
And you can basically compete if you want to, to go to
state or nationals, which is in Washington DC
- I think that's amazing.
The pictures I've seen of National History Day,
you always see the poster board thing,
kind of like science fairs.
I didn't know there were so many other options
that you could do documentaries and things like that.
So Violet, what was your subject and how did you present it?
- Um, my topic was the Secret War.
My title was The Secret War, the Change of Hmong Culture.
And it's where back in
the 1960s during the Vietnam War, the CIA saw that
Laos was flooding with communists and they didn't like that.
They saw it as like the new and like upcoming conflict.
And so they decided to recruit Hmong people who they saw
as strong warriors fighters, people who are very trustworthy
and they recruited them to fight
and basically bomb what is called the Ho Chi Minh Trail,
where the communists were coming from.
- Wow. And jazzy for you,
what was your topic and how did you present it? Um,
- My topic was the Camp Harmony,
AKA like Japanese internment camps.
It's like about how during the 1940s World War ii,
when the French, um, took the Japanese oil system,
the Japanese thought it was like a good idea to
bomb Pearl Harbor, which led to President Roosevelt
to make an executive order
of putting the Japanese into the term camps,
actually like in Puyallup fairgrounds, which um, led
for like the Japanese Americans to like just go
through like discrimination and all that.
And like basically their rights being taken away
because they're being prisoned in like a ground
where there was like guns pointing at their head
and like they had a curfew, they couldn't go anywhere
and it was like really unfair for them.
- Wow. Yeah. Really dark time
and a history that not a lot
of people know about here in the area.
- I want to jump in 'cause I think one
of the cool pieces about this is
that kids get to choose their own topic.
And so could each
of you just touch on why you chose your topic
and why that was important to you? Mm-Hmm,
- Well, I chose my topic
because I wanted to
tell people more about my culture
and research more about my culture in the process.
And so I asked around, I asked my mom
and she said that the Secret War was a very harsh time
for Hmong people back in the sixties.
So I researched more and that was a topic I really liked.
So that's what I went with.
- I wanted to find a topic where it relates
to Washington state
and I, when I was researching, I found there's um,
about the Japanese and Char camp
that happened right at the pl fairgrounds.
And so I thought it was really interesting that every year,
like this spring fair that's coming up right now,
that there were prisoners being held there. Yeah,
- Something.
It's definitely not advertised.
I think there is a historical plaque there if I'm not
mistaken, but you have to really look to find it.
That is a definitely a dark time. Wow.
A great opportunity for you, for you both to present
and to take part in that.
So you're in honors now, you're both eighth graders heading
to, I presume, spany Lake High School next year.
The thing I think is cool about this shift in honors
where you can choose to be in honors is that
that's the same way that they do AP classes in high school.
You don't have to pass any tests to sign up for an AP class.
Anybody can try an AP class.
Has this shift in honors given you more confidence
to try out AP classes when you get to high school?
- Yeah, - Most definitely.
I think that since honors here is challenging me a bit
more, I could take that into high school
and challenge myself even more
than I'm challenging myself now.
- That's excellent. And those AP classes then prep you
for college classes if you're gonna go the college route.
And let's talk about that. I love when I'm talking
to students, no matter if they're in kindergarten
or seniors, I'd like to know what their dreams are
for post-graduation.
Have you thought about a career that you'd wanna step into
or a college that you're dreaming about going
to? We'll start with you jazzy.
- Well, yeah, actually ever since like I was in second
grade, I was really like inspired by one
of my aunties that, um, she really wanted to be a teacher
and I was really into history.
So I always wanted to be a history teacher just
because like I'm really into like knowing like the deep
things about like past and everything.
And like teaching has always been like one of my dreams
and I really like helping people
and like helping kids to understand that like
history's really important just
so like in the future we don't repeat it.
- Absolutely. And wow, that's so amazing.
I love hearing stories about people that find a passion
and then work towards doing that passion for a living.
I they say if you do what you love,
you never work a day in your life, which is very cool.
How about you Violet? What are your dreams post
high school graduation?
- I haven't really thought about it too deep,
but since like elementary to sixth, seventh grade,
I've thought of going down like nursing or doctor.
But then I did a project in sixth grade where we kind
of like researched about like
what we would wanna be when we grew up
and like what college we would wanna go to.
And I kinda looked into physical therapy for sports
and I really liked that.
So that's what I think I would do after high school.
- That's fantastic. And Spinna Lake has great programs
and the Pierce County Skill Center also has sports medicine,
pre-physical therapy programs you can do
when you're a junior or senior.
So a lot of amazing opportunities
before you even graduate to test the waters there
and see if that's something you want to to do.
Love that class. Really great meeting both of you.
Thank you for joining us on the show here today
and best of luck as you head off
to high school in the fall. Thank you.
- Thank you. - Well,
principal Hans Nelson's the only one left in the room here.
We've sent the students back to class, they were amazing.
- Were they not - Just incredible scholars.
And for you, let's talk a little bit about honors.
I know it's a passion for you. Talk about this change.
Cedar Crest is a little bit ahead
of the curve here on moving away from testing.
- Yes. So I'm coming from Spanaway Lake High School
where I was an assistant principal
and while I was at Spanaway Lake, um, one
of the pieces we really focused on was opening up enrollment
for our AP classes
and making sure that our AP classes
looked like our hallways.
We want, you know, the same kids
that are in our hallways in our AP classes, which,
which sounds simple, but um,
really is a little bit more complex.
And so as I came to Cedar Crest, I started thinking about
how we can support the AP classes
that are going on up at the high school.
And one of the things that I noticed right away is
that in order to get into an honors class, you had
to be identified as gifted or talented.
And so we, every year we would get our list of kids
that were gifted and talented
and they would get placed into an honors
and you would end up with maybe 10 to 15 seats left in
that class that you needed to go fill
just to have a full class.
And so we would pull 10 to 15 kids,
but for me that wasn't enough.
And so last year I told my team,
we're gonna add a class at every grade level.
We're gonna add an honors class at every grade level,
so we're gonna run two honors classes in sixth grade,
seventh grade, and eighth grade.
And we are not gonna have enough gifted
and talented kids to fill those two classes.
So teachers tell me who needs to be in an honors class,
go find me kids that you can fill.
I need 66 kids
that you can put at every grade level in an honors class.
And and our teachers were great.
They said, yep, you need this kid,
you need this kid, you need this kid.
And I had a couple teachers push back
and say, well, what types of things are you looking for?
Are you just looking for test scores?
And I said, no, I I don't care if you tell me the kids
smiles at you every day.
And you think that's the criteria
for being in an honors class .
You know, I I I want kids that you see
thriving in an honors space.
And so what that resulted in is we had a wide variety
of students that were placed into these honors classes.
Some were scoring test scores at the three
and four, which is meeting proficiency and,
and others really not.
Um, you know, we had some students
that were scoring levels one
and two, which is well below proficiency.
And, and what we've seen from those kids is, as a part
of the honors process, they've been able
to develop some skills
and, um, are now earning test scores that are in that three
and four range, um, which is really exciting for us to see.
- Absolutely. And so we're talking about those state test
scores, seeing scores from one and two, move up to three
and four just by being in these programs
and being challenged
or being open to being challenged a little bit.
- Yeah. And and it's, it's tricky.
You know, we talk about challenge in schools
and sometimes people think, well,
that just means more homework or that means more reading.
And, and, and it's way more complex than that.
As we think about designing these honors classes,
I'm lucky I have an amazing group of teachers, group
of educators that have designed these classes to focus on
teaming and student collaboration.
So kids are not just developing the proficiency skills
that they need to meeting the standards
for the state requirements,
but they're developing this set of skills
that's gonna really benefit them in the workforce.
Being able to team with people, collaborate with people,
lead projects, and do some project management type pieces
like you hear about with History Day.
- Right. Yeah. Super cool.
I think we talked about it before, that honors program,
then setting them up to try AP courses, AP setting them up
to try college courses,
really a great pathway for students to follow.
- Yeah, I think at the middle level, I, I truly believe one
of the best things we can do to prepare kids for, uh,
either a career or or college
after high school is to develop this sense of scholarly
identity at the middle school age.
And if we can develop that at the middle school age,
those kids are much more likely to go up into high school
and pursue these advanced courses.
And what we know about being college
and career ready is there's a huge correlation
between having a rigorous high school transcript
and finding success
after high school, whether that success is in college
or in a job somewhere.
- Absolutely. And that's getting more and more important
with colleges, not looking at SATs, not even requiring SATs.
That rigor in high school is more and more important.
I love that. So you're in your second year here at Cedar
Crest Middle School as principal,
you've walked these hallways many, many times.
What's one thing that you see here that you smile
to yourself and just say, only at Cedar Crest
- ?
Um, the thing I love about Cedar Crest and,
and specifically our Cedar Crest kids,
is they can size you up in three to five seconds.
They can read you so well, even if they've known you
for a while, they can tell you if you're having a good day
in three to five seconds,
and they will tell you, Hey,
looks like you're having a rough day.
Anything I can do for you? And,
and those are the kids we have.
They're amazing human beings that are gonna grow to be
fantastic adults one day.
And, um, that's, that's what truly makes it a privilege is,
is we're, we're this community that, that sees each other
for good and bad
and um, works to take care of each other on a,
on a daily basis within these halls.
- Absolutely. That's a great social skill to have
to really size people up.
. Now I'm really nervous
'cause the students that were in here earlier, um, we,
I'm just curious what they think of me now,
but that's my insecurity talking.
Let's not dive into that.
- Nope. They'd have told you if something was off ,
they they wouldn't have talked, honestly.
- Oh, well, very good then. Yeah.
Well then that's the best compliment I can get.
Hans, I'm legally obligated to ask you this next question.
We were told by one of your colleagues
who actually put your name forward to be on the show.
Um, I'm not gonna name any names,
but her name's Julie Schultz, Bartlett .
She's an amazing principal at Challenger
High School and Middle School.
And we had her on the show earlier this year.
She told us that you play in a band
and we're not talking about just a garage band.
You all are actually playing the Spanish Steps Ballroom in
Tacoma on May 1st.
It's a fantastic venue. I've seen some bands there.
Talk to us first about the role music played in your life
and then we'll talk about the band.
- Yeah. Um, I started playing music as a part
of my own public school program
and public school experience.
Um, I was about nine years old
and, um, started playing cello
and, you know, picked up some trombone here and there.
Taught myself guitar.
At one point my high school teacher said, Hey,
we need a bass player for jazz band.
And I said, well sir, I don't, I don't play bass.
He goes, you're perfect .
And so, uh, so I started playing jazz bass
and um, you know, fell in love with playing jazz bass.
Um, fell in love with playing cello.
And for me playing music
through school was really this escape.
It, it gave me opportunities to go places
and do things that I was not able to do
as part of my school experience.
So in high school I was, you know, leading our church choir.
I was playing in the Tacoma Youth Symphony.
I sang in the Seattle Opera, you know, the end
of high school came around
and people were going, well, what, what do you want
to go do with your life?
And I'm like, well, I'm gonna be a
chiropractor naturally,
- Obviously.
- And my parents said, well,
you're probably not gonna play music every day.
Are you okay with that? And
I said, well, that's not gonna work.
So we, I guess I need to go be a music teacher.
And, you know, education had always been in our family
and has set out to be a music teacher.
And, and it just found my niche.
And so, um, got to continue playing music through college.
I played in our jazz band through college,
both guitar and bass.
Um, toured in China.
We got to do a performance on the Great Wall.
- Oh my gosh. - Which was just kind
of out of this world. Cool.
- Very cool. So from China, then you came back
and did you teach music in the States?
- I started teaching orchestra over at, I was,
I was in five buildings my first year.
I taught at Graham Kassin High School
and Frontier Middle School, Nelson Elementary,
Kassin Elementary and Frederickson Elementary.
My first year. Wow. Five buildings.
My first year, the next year we had too many kids
and so I had to move to four buildings
'cause we added an orchestra class at the middle school.
And the year after that I moved to three buildings
because we added an extra class at
the high school and the middle school.
Oh my gosh. Um, you know,
when I left we were looking at three classes,
three orchestra classes at the high school.
And having a high school orchestra program
with three classes is not common.
That's a, a rarity in, in the state. Interesting.
Um, and really across the country
to have an orchestra program that, that, that full.
Right. So that was exciting.
And that was about the time
that I started shifting my thinking over
to administration thinking, well, I can impact, you know,
250 or so kids a year, um, building a culture
and building a community around this program.
Or I can go make this impact on a
building and, you know, right.
What, what would a building look like if we could have this
type of culture, this type of community
for an entire school,
and what, what could that do for a community that's,
- It's done amazing things here at Cedar Crest,
judging from the students we chatted with
and the stories we hear coming out of here.
Congratulations. Amazing career
and really great chatting with you today.
You do have a recording of your band that, uh,
we're gonna play for everybody here at the end.
Uh, what's the name of your band
and any upcoming gigs besides Spanish?
Uh, besides the Spanish Ballroom, people can look forward to
- The, the recording I'm gonna give you guys.
This is from, uh, uh, the Top Tankers where a group
of friends that we were watching Seahawks games together
and said, Hey, let's go, you know,
let's play some music after one of the games.
And we had put a song together
and we're like, yeah, we, we should record this.
And so we're sitting in one of my friends' houses
and say, trying to decide, well, where,
where are we gonna record this in the house?
And someone just goes, well,
best acoustics in the house are in the bathroom.
, you have all, all this tile on the walls.
Right, right. So the sound just resonates everywhere.
It's you have, that's why people sing in the showers
'cause you get to hear yourself so well.
And, um, so we recorded this song in the bathroom and,
and started recording a series of,
of videos from the bathroom of,
of us doing these songs.
And so it's the, it was just this joke, this comical kind
of thing that turned into, you know, people saying, Hey,
when do you have a show coming up?
We want to hear this live.
And interesting, really interesting configuration on that.
I'm playing cello Okay.
Which is what I studied in college,
but I'm not playing classical cello.
I'm doing the jazz bass lines that I had learned on bass,
but I'm putting them on a cello,
which makes a really interesting sound.
Wow. Um, and so we've got cello and acoustic guitar
and three vocalists, which
does not sound like it should work.
And it absolutely does.
So this is a recording of walking on Broken Glass.
- Let's take a listen.
- The group that we're playing the Spanish Ballroom with
is a college band that I've played with, um, cover band.
We do covers of songs.
Um, our band name is under the Covers .
Not sure how public we want that to be.
- Well, it's public now. - It's public now.
But, uh, that group I've played with since college.
Um, our, our height of moments, we got to open
for Macklemore right before, um, thrift shop dropped.
- Oh - My God. So right
before he had his, had his, his career take off, we got
to open for him as a part of Lollapalooza at PLU plu.
- Oh my goodness. - Um,
and then now, you know, we did a bunch of weddings
and just fun dance music.
So it's, it's, it's a good time.
We're nothing special ,
but, um, we're nothing special,
but we have a good time. We open for
- Macklemore, but we're nothing special.
- We're nothing special, but we have a good time doing it.
- I love it. That's fantastic.
Thank you for sharing your music with us today.
Thanks for bringing some students in that we can chat with
and for telling us more about what's going on
here at Cedar Crest.
We're gonna close out our conversation
with our question of the day.
If you could wake up tomorrow
with $5 million in your bank account,
but you'd be 10 years older, just you,
everybody else stays the same age, would
- You do it?
Absolutely not. You know, it's funny,
these lessons you pick up from music.
One of my conductors, one of my conductors
of my youth symphony, uh,
just taught us Time is the most valuable resource you can
ever have and that someone can ever give you.
And so you need to be intentional about
how you use people's time
because it's something they're never gonna get back.
- I love that. That's, you always hear time is money.
It actually should be, time is greater than money, I think.
- Absolutely. - Hans Nelson, principal
of Cedar Crest Middle School, thanks for joining us today.
- Thanks for having me.
- Love that interview. Love hearing from our students.
And what a cover of Annie Lennox,
who knew Hans had it in him.
- You've gotta see the YouTube video of it too.
He's sitting dead center playing
cello like a madman. It's awesome.
- Well, and if you would like to see Hans
and his band under the covers,
they'll be playing live at the Spanish ballroom on May 1st.
- And while you're marking your calendars,
we have another upcoming event we want everybody
to know about in the Bethel community on May 3rd at Spanaway
Lake High School is gonna be our annual family fun night.
Come join our multilingual education department
for a night celebrating bethel's cultural
and linguistic diversity with entertainment, food,
and information.
And they would love to see everybody show up in cultural
dress and attire.
So bring your family down
to Spanaway Lake High School on May 3rd.
That event will be from five 30 to 7:30 PM
- And that'll do it for us this week.
We will see you next time.