"From Classroom to Clinics: Inside the GISH Medical Academy" - GIPS Cast, Ep. 061

"The more we can connect school to careers, pathways, and skills that that students will one day enter into, the more kids are going to be engaged in school."


Over 600 students, nearly a quarter of the current GISH student body, are in the Academy of Medical Sciences & Education.


As the Academy with the largest enrollment, curating Medical Sciences and Education experiences is a big job.  Mr. Greg Schlegel leads that Academy as Principal alongside his team of Counselors and Educators.


With 19 years in Public Education under his belt, and serving as the GISH Medical Academy Principal since its launch — Mr. Schlegel has become a consistent voice advocating for new and innovative work-based learning experiences for students.


Mr. Schlegel joins The GIPS Cast to discuss: 
 

• Community partners that help shape student experiences 
• The importance of Career-Technical Education
• How Islander students are finishing high school ahead of the curve 

Because it's about providing real-world opportunities for students to discover not just what they want to do but who they want to be. 
 

Listen to the latest episode above or subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your favorite podcast platform.

(Transcript may be found below the episode player.)

#WeAreGIPS  

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EPISODE TRANSCRIPT:

Podcast Intro  00:00

This is Grand Island Public Schools podcast, and these are our stories. We are learners. We are educators in teaching hearts as well as minds. We are 10,000 diverse voices, and we're changing the world together, one classroom at a time. These are our stories. We are GIPS. We are GIPS. Somos, que efe ese. We are GIPS. Somos, G-I-P-S. We are GIPS, and this is "The GIPS Cast".

 

Mitchell Roush  00:31

Welcome back to the GIPS cast, a conversation based podcast exploring the voices of Grand Island Public Schools in Nebraska. I'm your host, Mitchell Roush, the Communications Director here at GIPS, and as always, I'm grateful to bring to you new stories from all across our district, because here we're driven by our mission of every student every day, a success.

 

Mitchell Roush  01:04

The academies of Grand Island Senior High were a first for the state of Nebraska, launched in 2018 the Gish academies vaulted one of the state's largest high schools into the forefront of innovative, experiential and CTE based education, and eight years later, the academies are showing no signs of slowing down, as Gish is continually recalibrating the Islander experience by adding new internships or including new classes, expanding AP and dual credit courses and so much more. Now, over 600 of those students, nearly a quarter of the Gish student enrollment are in the Academy of Medical Sciences and education and as the Academy with the largest enrollment curating the medical sciences and education experiences, it's a big job. Mr. Greg Schlegel leads that Academy as principal, alongside his team of counselors and educators now, with 19 years of public education under his belt and serving as the Gish Medical Academy principal since its launch, Mr. Schlegel has become a consistent voice advocating for new, innovative work based learning, learning experiences and as a leader for career and technical education efforts. Mr. Schlegel sat down with me to dish on the Medical Academy, to chat about the incredible community partners that help shape experiences for our students in medical facilities all across the community, and to talk about how Islander students are finishing high school ahead of the curve. Here's our conversation.

 

Greg Schlegel  02:45

My name is Greg Schlegel. I'm the principal of the Academy of Medical Sciences and education, and this is my eighth year at Grand Island Senior High.

 

Mitchell Roush  02:55

Thank you for agreeing to be here. Mr. Schlegel, hanging out. I'm excited to chat with you, you bet. So we're going to talk about the medical and Education Academy that you have here at Senior High. And like you said, You've been here for a while now, but just one of the things that I think our community never gets tired of hearing about is the Academy experience at our high school. It makes us unique, and we're really kind of just innovating the way we're bringing learning opportunities to students, especially in your academy. So talk me through a little bit, just give me a high level overview of what is your academy and what is the vision, and how did you kind of become the largest Academy in terms of student enrollment in the high school?

 

Greg Schlegel  03:36

First, I wanted to start by saying I moved to Grand Island because of the academies. I've always been from the time I started learning about academies, being involved in an academy school before here, the idea of academies is really what brought me and my family to Grand Island. That's awesome. And like you said, I oversee medical sciences and education, and I've been here, really since the inception of the academies, and so, you know, it's been really kind of cool to see how the academies have morphed and changed over time, from the original design to where we're at right now. Yeah, so when you think about the Academy of Medical Sciences and education and the student experience in each it's really a little bit different when you look at education versus medical sciences, right? So when you look at education from again, from the student experience, we've got about, you know, we've got about 50 students per grade level, and we've got one staff member, Dr Schumacher, who teaches all of those students, yep, each year as they go through and so the, you know, the great thing about our education pathway, you know, we're building the next generation of educators, and it's so cool to think about that. So the the experience starting, starting their sophomore year. Is the students they they learn the skills necessary to be to be a teacher, and really that that perpetuates throughout the Academy experience some of the real highlights though, number one from the time students are sophomores, they're able to experience dual credit within the education pathway. And so sophomore year, junior year, and I believe part of the senior year is all dual credit through Wayne State College. That's legit. Yeah. The great thing about that is, not only do they get college credit, but they also get some like college level experiences. So from the time students are 10th graders, they are starting practicums, and so our 10th grade students are working with local elementary schools, local middle schools, and even some various professionals, social workers, school counselors, to just go and watch and see what it really means to be a teacher.

 

Mitchell Roush  06:02

That's one of my favorite things, selfishly, about the pathway model that you have here at the high school. You know, our team has had a chance to visit Dr Schumacher classes and do stories and stuff, and it's just, it's really cool to see. We've got students in our education pathway in our schools all across the district, getting real experiences, seeing what classrooms are like. And I just can imagine how much more confident and passionate about that career path they are when they enter college, to go through all of their formal training.

 

Greg Schlegel  06:32

One of the one of the things we've added this year is we've we've been working with Central Community College. And one of the things I always try to do is, what are some additional opportunities that we can pursue? And so what we added this year, and this is just kind of a pilot year, is Central Community College offers a Paris para educator certification.

 

Mitchell Roush  06:58

Yes, okay, I'm so glad you brought this up. I knew that this up. I knew that this was going to be a thing this year. I'm excited about that.

 

Greg Schlegel  07:02

Yeah, so we've got, you know, just a handful of kids that have decided they want to participate in that. Because, you know, what we've seen is that, you know, we want to expose kids to all opportunities within education, right? And it was fun. Yesterday, Dr Schumacher, I was does a panel with with her students, with various educators, and all of those things, and I got to share the fact that I was a pair educator for three years before I even entered my teacher training program. So so Yeah, and like I said, delving into that world of being able to say, You know what? Here's here's a stepping stone. You're not sure you want your own classroom when you first step out of college, that's okay. Or do you want to work as a para as you're going through your teacher training program? It's just another opportunity. And the great thing with our Central Community College partnerships is that nearly all of the credits that students earn from Central Community College will transfer directly into Wayne State College, un K, UNL, the university system. You know, sometimes they'll transfer in as general electives, other times they will take the take the place of a, you know, of a course that a student would otherwise have to take once they're in their major.

 

Mitchell Roush  08:26

So I love hearing that, and that's that's a common theme, I think is going to come up multiple times throughout our conversation today, helping students get a head start for the next level, but then also that real world learning experience so that they can, so that students can not just learn in the classroom, but learn through experience and see for themselves. Is this the career path I want to go into? And if it is, they've got so much experience and familiarity with it already before they even go and continue on their schooling.

 

Greg Schlegel  08:55

You know, the other piece with with our education pathway and Dr Schumacher is Dr Schumacher has really been working on building her CTSO Career Technical student organization, which in education, is educators rising and so looking for opportunities to network throughout the state. Do competitions, again, participate in various various things through that. CTSO, that's cool, yeah, that's really cool, sure, you know, and then we look at medical sciences. And again, I'll be honest, I'm more familiar with medical sciences because I was, you know, I've been there at, kind of working with medical sciences since the start. We've gone through a number of iterations of Medical Sciences as we've worked with with our community, as we've, you know, navigated some budgetary things, those types of things. And so really, what a student, what a student, experiences look experience looks like in medical sciences is all of our. 10th graders take the same class. It's called Foundations of healthcare. I believe we've got about 180 students in that class right now. So it's, it's really chock full where the kids are really just kind of getting, you know, getting an understanding, a survey of all of the Careers Out There. You know, some of the major highlights of that class are all of our students become CPR first aid certified. We do actually the basic life saving certification, which is is similar to any healthcare provider. And so they will, they have that certification for two years. And so a lot of times when students are seniors, we'll have to run them back through if they're going to get a job, or whatever that might look like. Inevitably, I have about a dozen kids their senior. Hey, Mr. Schlegel, I really need to update that certification. And Mr. Myers has been great about, you know, just working him into the day. How we get those kids certified? Yep, another really cool experience with our 10th graders is our industry tour. We take all of our 10th graders over to ch I St Francis. We run them all, 180 through over the course of two days and and they get a behind the scenes look at at really what it means to be a healthcare provider within a hospital setting and and that's just a really transformational experience for our kids, to be able to see it, to understand it, just to get a bigger vision for all the careers that are out there.

 

Mitchell Roush  11:38

They see a lot in that one trip to either for sure, I've been able to tag along for that trip a couple of times before and go along their experience, and they see everything. And then again, another common theme probably that's going to come up is the level of community collaboration that you have, and how transformational that is for students in your academy, but that trip in particular, I'm like, Man, if I was potentially interested in medical and I get to spend a day seeing every corner of a medical facility like that, and hearing from medical healthcare professionals, that would be very eye opening.

 

Greg Schlegel  12:14

Yeah, yeah. And it really is. And, and you, you hit the nail on the head when you talked about those community partnerships, because it's kind of one of those things, like when we started this, it was like, you're reluctant to make the ask, because you're just like, gosh, this is a big ask for this is a big ask for those for that.

 

Mitchell Roush  12:36

Can we take 200 kids to the clinic down the street and take it to work?

 

Greg Schlegel  12:42

But it's been really neat just knowing that, you know, their vision and our vision really align with, you know, creating, creating skilled individuals that will hopefully one day come back to our community and be healthcare providers. And so it's been really neat, just to kind of see, you know, the synergy behind that, and not just with St Francis, but with all of our partners and the opportunities they provide for students.

 

Mitchell Roush  13:09

Yeah, so let's pivot to that just for a second. I was going to ask you this a little bit later, but like that run just real quickly for our listeners, like, what, what is the list look like of the community partners that your students are getting experiences with and some of the things they get to do, because it's pretty extensive, like you're talking you've got over 600 students in your academy, the bulk of those are in the medical field, focus of some kind. They're all over the place, getting experiences with community partners.

 

Greg Schlegel  13:37

Yeah, the list is very long, and it just continues to grow. You know, it's kind of one of those things where we're so thankful for our community partners, because anytime we have an ask, they step up, right? And so, you know, we've, we've always, we've got kids out, job shadowing as seniors. You know, those are usually done in smaller settings, right where it's one student with one professional or a couple students with one professional. We're always able to get our kids experiences that are meaningful to them. They don't always get their first choice of where they want to be, but we do. We have so many providers in town that that just take care of our kids, right?

 

Mitchell Roush  14:26

Because we you've got them in they're going to physical therapy offices, they're going to the clinics in town. They're going to the hospital, they're going to specialty clinics. They're doing all kinds of stuff. They're your kids are all over Grand Island, and that's part of their their classroom.

 

Greg Schlegel  14:41

So, to speak, yep, 100% and you know, it's, you know, it's kind of one of those things where it's, it's hard to track everything that's going on, because when we started down this road, a lot of it was like me, driven, right principle, driven. Mm. But we've had so many teachers and and additional staff members that now the relationship with the partners, it doesn't have to go through me, right? Because it's just so organic and it's so natural that sometimes I hear something that happened and it's like I didn't even know that was happening. That's really awesome. We helped, you know, we helped coordinate that. And it's just, you know, it's just super cool. And so, you know, we have those job shadows. We've got a couple of our physical therapy offices that we work with. They hire a couple of our kids each year to be physical therapy techs, you know. And again, too numerous to to name all of the things that happen. You know, we have individuals that come in for the freshman career conference to be guest speakers. This year, our academy is going to participate in the junior internship, Junior internship day, which is something we haven't participated in, oh, yeah, that's gonna be new for y'all Yeah. And so Mrs. Soundy has been, has been hounding me for the past couple of years to participate and and, you know, I've drugged my feet, quite honestly, because, because we don't do internships in in in the medical field, right? We don't do internships and education, but, yeah, you know, the more that, like she has talked about, and the more I've learned from the other Academy principals, it's like, All right, we need to do this with with medical sciences and education, so we'll be participating in that, and that's going to be another really big ask for our community partners to help with those mock interviews and dress for success and branding and all of those types of things. And so the list goes on and on and on.

 

Mitchell Roush  16:49

And one of the things that I'm continuously impressed in the four years I've been in the district is to what you said, Mr. Schlegel, the the level of willingness for the community partners to show up and provide great opportunities for our students here at the high school, because it's great in your academy, but it's great in every Academy like our community is showing up in a big way, and it does seem like that is a big linchpin to why we can say the academies are such a transformational experience for students.

 

GIPS COMMERCIAL  17:30

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Mitchell Roush  18:10

So talk me through junior senior year, when they're when they're rolling through some of those experiences.

 

Greg Schlegel  18:15

So the junior and senior year we we've about three years ago, we kind of went through design change. And so when we first rolled out the academies, we really looked at a one size fits all design, right? We had every every kid and foundations, principles and advanced in medical sciences. We kind of decided that didn't work for us.

 

Mitchell Roush  18:39

That's the thing. You do things a certain way for a while, and you figure out what works and what doesn't. Yeah, you need to recalibrate, right?

 

Greg Schlegel  18:45

So what we did is we decided that that that junior year, we wouldn't parse out by pathway we had been we had been separating by pathway up until that junior year and so. But we decided, You know what, that junior year, every kid needs the same experience, whether they're going into sports, med and therapy, emergency services or health care. So that junior year we have you, we have shifted it so that Anatomy and Physiology is the pathway class for the junior year because we every community partner that we talk to, every post secondary partner we talk to, says every kid needs anatomy and physiology. So that's fair enough.

 

Mitchell Roush  19:29

Yeah, and they and they would know right there, right they're the industry professionals right now today, and they're saying, Hey, if you want to get your kids ready, do this at this time, and it's going to be a meaningful experience.

 

Greg Schlegel  19:40

And the other thing that we learned, again, talking with our partners, is sometimes when, when you go into the when you go into the industry skill, industry, industry skills too early. Kids get fatigued with them by the time they get to college. And so one example you. Is the athletic training, the Sports Med in therapy. We got really good feedback from our partners at UN K that that they told us kids burn out at UNK in this program because they've been doing it for so long. And so we said, Okay, we really need to scale this back so that we're still going to have sports medicine therapy, but we're just going to have a year, their senior year, where they dive into those technical skills. We're going to have all the other background knowledge of how the body works, how it functions, all of those things, but with that technical skill piece, we're just going to focus kind of on the senior year, not that they don't learn technical skills in anatomy and physiology, but, but the reality is, most kids who are who are going to graduate, not most, but a number of kids who are going to, who go through our pathway, are going to look at probably a bachelor's degree, a master's degree, right, something like that. And so really, having that a solid background and the hard science of anatomy is just super important for our kids to have absolutely 11th grade year. And in terms of our continuum of experiences, we do two college visits, because, again, we think exposing students to college at a relatively early age is important. And so last year, or sorry, for the past couple years, we've gone to UN K Yep, they've been great partners to bring our kids on campus to view their their programs, their buildings, things like that. And then last year, Midland University reached out to us and said, hey, we'd really like you to come to, we'd really like you to come to visit our campus in Fremont. And so we said, You know what, we'll give it a shot. And they were super accommodating. And so really, to be able to see, you know, the public institution and the smaller private institution, and kind of seeing those various, you know, those various campuses.

 

Mitchell Roush  22:03

And that makes a big difference. And again, another thing that is a big part of the commitment of the academy is at every level in the high school, not just in your corner. Of it is helping students see themselves in different capacities beyond high school, you know. So all the freshmen get to go to UNL kids in your academy get to go to two college visits. You know, kids in the technical sciences pathway get to do registered apprenticeships. All of these things are grounded in helping students see themselves in an opportunity beyond just what they're doing in high school.

 

Greg Schlegel  22:36

Yeah, for sure. And then finally, senior year again, this was a, this was an intentional design thing that we did. We really wanted to give seniors more choice, right? And so we've, I like to say we've gone to kind of an a la carte senior year. We have, again, we've got a great partnership with Central Community College. And so that senior year kids have just a number of different opportunities. They can take our sports medicine therapy class here, here at the high school that's not affiliated with CCC, UNK, anything like that high school class there. Our kids can do nursing assistant. They can do medication aid. We're in our third year of offering a med lab tech class, and then we've also got our emergency medical technician. And so we ask all of our seniors to take one of those courses for for dual credit as well as for a certification. And so again, it just really like that. It gives students choice. The nursing assistant class we actually hit that's open to juniors as well. But we have had such an overwhelming number of course requests, especially this year, we had 146 kids request the class, wow, and we just didn't have the seat numbers. And so we had to, we had to prioritize seniors taking that class this year, knowing that our current juniors will have an opportunity next year to do the class. The final piece of senior year is, gosh, four or five years ago, myself and a couple of teachers had kind of a vision for what we now call our capstone class.

 

Mitchell Roush  24:30

I was going to ask you about the capstone experience, because that's a big commitment.

 

Greg Schlegel  24:34

Yeah, it's a big commitment. It's a huge it's a huge ask of our community partners, but it is the it is probably the single most meaningful experience for a lot of our kids. Yeah, you know, the capstone is really designed around a work based learning plan that our students. Events build. And so, you know, we start the class with with four weeks of class where kids are finalizing their resume. They're doing interest inventories. They're kind of decide, they're looking at a list of our community partners and saying, Oh, I really want to do that thing, or this thing, or whatever that may be. And so really, we again the teacher and our community liaison, Mrs. Soundie, they kind of sit and they put together this puzzle of what students were going to match where, yeah, the student then reaches out to the partner, and the partners know the students are going to reach out, right, but it's super important for them to be able to make the call or send the email, they've got to be responsible, right, absolutely. And so we try to get every student three different experiences, so that you know, they they get to, they get to experience what they think they want to do. And I say what they think they want to do, because while most kids do the experience and they find out, yeah, this is what I really want to do. Some of our students do the experience and are like, Oh my gosh. I thought I wanted to do that, and then I saw it, and I no longer want to do that right, which is a meaningful experience as well.

 

Mitchell Roush  26:12

Like, there's going to be a light bulb moment, either way, for the student, they're going to fall in love with it and say, this is for me. Or they're gonna say, You know what, I probably need to go a different direction if I'm gonna go to college, and that's okay.

 

Greg Schlegel  26:24

And some of my absolute favorite stories of student learning have come from Capstone, yeah, because it has completely changed a kid's trajectory. You know, a kid who thought they wanted to be a radiologist and now is going to be an elementary teacher, or a kid who wants to be a nurse and saw a traumatic had a very traumatic experience in the emergency room, right, and still wants to be a nurse, right? And so, like just those types of things. And like I said, the light bulbs that go on for kids as a result of Capstone is just super cool. And then, you know, at the end of the Capstone, we do what we call the Capstone showcase, where we have the kids like, they go and they present their learning, and we invite the community partners and parents to come in and and it's just such a cool experience just seeing how confident kids are. Because it's like, now I know, right? I know what I want to do as I'm going out my senior year. And that's the one class that every now and then I'll have a kid, I need to drop Capstone because of this or this or this. And the answer is always no, no. Gotta stick with it. And they don't know why until they actually go through it, yep. And then once they go through it, they're like, Man, that was that was really important. And it was really, it was really great learning.

 

Mitchell Roush  27:47

That's and that's what it's all about. I know Mr. Fisher, our superintendent. He really loves the capstone presentation days. And every time he comes back from one of them, he's just always talking about the incredible stories that all the all the kids are saying, and it's, I would imagine, especially for our community partners, it's cool for them to get to come and see that finished product in here. Like, here's what the student that hung out with me for a semester learned while they were with us. And it's just really cool to see all that come together.

 

Greg Schlegel  28:15

Yeah, one of the coolest experiences was last year we decided we wanted to put our advisory boards right around the same time as our capstone presentations. Oh, that's our Advisory Board meeting. And so last year, I think it was at our spring Advisory Board meeting, we had three or four of our kids actually get up and present to our board members. And it was so cool to be able to not only have the kid there, but also the board member, yeah, who sponsored the kid? Just talk about, talk about the learning. And that was one of, like, I said, that was one of my favorite advisor board meetings that we've had, yeah, because you just really saw, like, you just saw the impact of of that community collaboration that has kind of interwoven our conversation this morning.

 

Mitchell Roush  29:04

Absolutely. And I mean, anytime you can get kids sharing their stories with people in the community, it's going to be impactful, because they're reminded like, yeah, not only are teenagers capable of great things, but they're getting some really neat experiences here at Senior High, yeah, which is awesome. 100% so connected to all of this, I know that one of your big passions is CTE, Career, Technical Education. That's a big deal for you. And so talk to me a little bit about why is CTE based learning important, and why have we invested so much of that into our high school experience here.

 

Greg Schlegel  29:38

CTE, like you said, I think it's critical. It's become more of a conversation, not just within the district, but on a state and national level as well, for sure. And I think it's, it's pretty like, it's, it's pretty clear to see that when kids are doing something they're interested in. They're going to be more they're going to be more engaged in it, right, exactly. And so the more that you know, the more that we can connect school and school related things to careers and and pathways and skills that that students will one day enter into the more kids are going to be engaged in school, the more they're going to feel connected. Like we talk about connectedness a lot, yes, and how important it is for kids to feel connected. And so, so really, that's, you know, that's kind of what I think of with with CTE is, you know, a space. And so a lot of times a person that that kids can feel connected with. And like I said, learn those skills. And, you know, we talk so much about, like, the technical skills, right? Of being able to make a perfect weld or be able to provide perfect CPR or whatever that might be one of the things we don't talk quite as much about, but is probably equally important is, is the soft skills that that kids get absolutely within their CTE classes and, and I would argue, within all of their classes. And so, you know, you walk into any of our CTE classrooms, you'll see there's a poster hanging in there Nebraska standards for Career Ready, practice, yep, and technical skills is actually just one of 11 skills exactly that this state views as being important, you know, communication, collaboration, innovation, creativity, all of those things really are Part of the CTE, you know, the CTE curriculum, that's right, we're really, you know, we're really trying to push, push ourselves on more of the college and career planning that happens within, you know, that naturally happens within CTE, and making It, you know, bringing it more to the surface, right? It's kind of always, it's always been there, right? It's always been kind of there below the surface. It's, you know, we've, we've had our school counselors, you know, really kind of in charge of that, that career readiness and the college planning, but really trying to push it even more into our into our CTE curriculum, because it is important for for Mr. Forsman to be able to talk to a kid about the best Construction Management Program, exactly. Mr. Myers, to be able to talk to kids about this is, this is why you should go into this nursing program versus this nursing program. And so really like trying to bring that more to the surface, because it is so important, and it is important that our teachers can speak that language and know what's out there. Because the reality is, our teachers are the ones who are most connected with our kids, absolutely. And so it's super important for them, you know, just to, just to be knowledgeable about, about what's out there, and really pulling that to the surface.

 

Mitchell Roush  33:06

And connecting it, like you said, to that personal experience, right? Because there, there is a difference between saying like we should probably talk about what college might look like for you, because that's just what you do, or we should probably talk about what career or educational opportunities are in front of you now, because you said you love doing this, and then these are the things that come next if you want to continue doing this. And I would imagine that probably increases the buy in factor from the students, because it's built around this thing that they've discovered, that they're learning about, and they've said, I want to pursue this more.

 

Greg Schlegel  33:41

And again, the more that we're learning about, not only our career fields, but also about, you know, also about the world, right? Is, I will all talk to kids all the time that want to be nurses, and I say, if you want to be a nurse, you're never going to pay for college, right? Because somebody is going to pay for it for you and and just, you know, I don't think that's only true of nursing. I think that's true of a lot of our professions, just kind of with, you know, the employment and job market where it's at, like, again, being able to know and understand, like, you can, you can make some really good decisions as a high schooler that are gonna, you know they're gonna impact your life. You know they're gonna impact your life forever. One of our coolest, one of our coolest events last year is we had a former Gish student come back and myself and Mrs. Soundie met with her. She's like, I'd really like to talk to your 10th graders about my story, right? And she was a Gish student. She's, gosh, how old is she? 22 years old. Now she has her she's working full time as a nurse. Just purchased her first home, has a car, and so essentially, she's working in her desired field. At 22 People with no debt, no debt, and it's just like, that is that's transfer, transformational.

 

Mitchell Roush  35:06

It is right and a good, a good message for everyone to hear 100%.

 

Greg Schlegel  35:09

Because this isn't a kid that's coming from she's not coming from wealth, she's coming from a middle class family, yeah. And we thought this is a cool message for all of our 10th graders to hear is, if I make good choices, right, whether I'm in high school, the college that I choose, where I choose to get a job that can be me someday, and just really, I know Mitch, you talk about storytelling all the time, to be able to for her, to tell her story, was just super impactful.

 

Mitchell Roush  35:39

And it's great that she also felt good enough about her experience here too, that she was like, hey, I want to come back and pay it forward, which is another common thing that I see in all of our academies. We've got we've got students that have gone through the experience that are always wanting to come back and share with the next crop of students to say, like, Hey, this is the real deal. Here's how you can do some really cool stuff. Yeah? Percent love it. Yeah. Mr. Schlegel, as we wrap up here, I do want to close with one question I ask everybody that guests on this podcast, the same question. I'm always fascinated by the answers, and I know that this is something that's really meaningful to you, because we've talked about this a lot in our conversations throughout the last couple of years. But what is one thing about public education that you want people to know about?

 

Greg Schlegel  36:24

Boy, it's a big question. I should have prepared this answer. It's all good. But no, I am a I'm a huge proponent of public education. I think public education is super important because I just think it, you know, it's available. It's available to all, and it I believe it helps it helps our society, it helps our world. It helps our give our kids knowledge and skills to be successful in whatever pathway that they choose. But then, you know, we also talked earlier about, you know, those soft skills, right? Of being able to of being able to work with people who who don't look like you, of people who share differing views than you, of those things that you know we see every day, right? And you know, my wife and I are both public educators. Our kids are public school kids. And just seeing, just seeing what our kids have learned as they've gone through Grand Island Public Schools just solidifies what all what has always been a strong, a strong view for me, that public education is super important. And the other thing that I would say about public education is, I think we have, and I might step on toes, do it anyhow. I think we have the strongest teachers in public education, because, you know the teachers that we have, they they know exactly what they're getting into, right? They know that. They know that they're they're going to be working with kids from all all aspects of life. They know they're going to be working with tough kids. They know they're going to be working with kids who come from poverty that you know maybe didn't have a lot of sleep last night, whatever it, whatever it may be, and they choose it anyhow, because they know the they know the impact, right and and it's just, it's just cool to see that I was, I was At our the first day with new teachers this year. And so I was just kind of looking out all at all the at all the new teachers, you know, that were in the district. And one teacher caught my eye, and I was like, she came through Gish since I've been here, right? And so it was just really neat. I said something to her, kind of as as I was leaving that day, you know that that for that student who I didn't even know was going to be a teacher, right, for that student to be back in the district, stepping into something that's familiar, familiar to her, knowing the struggle, you know that there's going to be struggles, yeah, but Choosing that anyhow, because they know, she knows the impact that public education can have for kids. Because, again, I believe it's transformational, right? Absolutely it can. It can take you from a bad situation to a good situation, right? And and the, you know, not just the math and English and those types of things. But you know, that's one thing I always talk with kids about who are in my office. Maybe they got in trouble, or maybe they, you know, whatever I had to take their cell phone, whatever it might be. But you know, one of the things I always say is, where do you want to see yourself in five to 10 years? Right? And how. Can we get there? Having your cell phone out right now seemed like the right thing to do, but is not following the rules gonna get you closer to your vision for five to 10 years down the road, because we know, like we're working with kids who, you know they they still kind of struggle with decision making. And I always tell kids, I'm 45 and I sometimes just struggle with decision making.

 

Mitchell Roush  40:23

Spoiler alert, the decision making struggle doesn't go away, right.

 

Greg Schlegel  40:27

But making the right decision time after time after time just becomes a habit, just like all of our other habits are. And so really, again, really knowing that in public education, like we really can change the trajectory of of kids who you really do get to work with. You get to work with everybody, and it's fantastic.

 

Mitchell Roush  40:53

That's a good word, and I couldn't agree more. Thank you so much, Mr. Slagle, for all you do for your students and for seeing your high and thanks for sharing a bit of your story and perspective with us. We appreciate it.

 

Greg Schlegel  41:04

Awesome. It was great. I appreciate it.

 

Mitchell Roush  41:11

Thank you again to Mr. Schlegel for sharing his voice and his time with us here on "The GIPS Cast"! And of course, thank you listeners for coming along this journey, as we continue to share our people and our stories from Grand Island Public Schools, if you enjoyed this episode or if you dig this podcast, we would love it if you gave us a rating or a review on your favorite podcast platform. It'll help other people discover us along the way. And of course, be sure to check out gips.org That's www.gips.org that is our district website and your hub for information, stories, videos, resources and updates from Grand Island Public Schools. Thank you so much for joining us, listeners. We will be coming at you soon with some more stories for "The GIPS Cast" you.