Bend Don't Break: Scott Rowles, Founder and Lead Educational Therapist of Potentia Academics

In this episode host Aaron Switzer sits down with Scott Rowles, Founder and Lead Educational Therapist of Potentia Academics. Scott is a licensed teacher and certified professional educational therapist who has worked in local public schools and at Central Oregon Community College. Through his work, he supports students across a wide age range in building executive function skills, confidence, and the tools they need to succeed academically and personally.

The conversation explores how today’s educational landscape is becoming more complex, from the lasting impacts of COVID to the growing role of technology in the classroom. Scott explains how educational therapy fills gaps for students experiencing stress, anxiety, and skill deficits, while offering practical insight into motivation, focus, and independence. This discussion highlights challenges and solutions that are especially relevant to families and educators navigating education in Central Oregon.

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:00

Welcome to the Ben Don't Break Podcast. We are powered by the Source, Ben's locally owned media company and weekly newspaper. This podcast is our eddy in the rushing waters of local journalism. We are glad that you're taking some of your time to listen to us chat with the people who shape our local community. Support us through our member program at BenStorts.com.

SPEAKER_00 0:22

Thank you to our presenting sponsor, Remax Key Properties, a family-owned full-service real estate brokerage specializing in residential, luxury, commercial, new construction, and ranch and land properties. Their new state-of-the-art facility at 42 Greenwood Avenue is a modern collaborative space and the new home of the Bin Don't Break Podcast Recording Studio.

SPEAKER_02 0:44

I'm Aaron Sweitzer, publisher of the Source and co-producer of this podcast with my other co-producer, Megan Burton, who is back in the studio. For those people who are who are followers, you'll notice there was no video last week. And um we're back. We're back on video. So YouTubers, here we are. And uh I believe that Megan and her sister are uh had their bachelorette, Austin, back partied through, back on solid ground, got through it.

SPEAKER_01 1:16

Thank you. We're back.

SPEAKER_02 1:19

Uh and we're glad we're glad you're back because I I was very lonely in here. Well, just me and me and Phil. Um uh this week, Scott Rowles is here. He is the founder and lead educational therapist of Potentia Academics. He is a licensed teacher, certified professional educational therapist, and has taught in local public schools and at COCC in his multifaceted career dedicated to supporting students of every age, reach their goals, and understand more about executive function. He is a lifelong Ben resident, a father, a husband, and an avid member of the local cycling and adventure community. Scott, thanks for being here.

SPEAKER_04 1:57

Absolutely. Thanks so much for having me.

SPEAKER_02 1:59

Um, maybe just to jump off before we start talking about how you got here and what listeners will know is my very boring introduction to folks right here. Coming a template. Uh, what is Potentia Academics?

SPEAKER_04 2:14

Cool. Well Potentia Academics is a small group of dedicated educators and educational therapists that work to fill the gap in education for students that have the capacity to succeed in in school and in life, but don't quite have the skills, the confidence, or all the tools in their tool belt that they need in order to get there.

SPEAKER_01 2:37

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 2:38

As we're seeing just that the educational landscape is getting more and more complicated, um, and uh the the technological landscape that kids are coming to their um academic pursuits with and their and their focus that they have to defend all the time, it it's a harder and harder battle to be a student in this day and age.

SPEAKER_02 2:58

When you say uh educational therapist, what is um, I mean, therapy has one connotation, yeah, but coupling it with education, what is that? What does that look like?

SPEAKER_04 3:09

Yeah, that's a great question. And it's interesting because the the field of educational therapy is is quite vibrant and alive in lots of states in in the US. I mean, um you can get a full master's degree in a down California. And but in Oregon, for some reason, mainly because of how the special ed um laws and institution within public schools have been shaped here in Oregon. Yeah, it they haven't ever really partnered with educational therapists. So we do it privately. But basically, if you think of let's say you went to a physical therapist. When you go to physical therapists, what are they there to do?

SPEAKER_02 3:45

Well, they're there to they're there to hurt you. They're there to create a lot of pain, screaming, you know, as you've got.

SPEAKER_03 3:52

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 3:53

Um, but so they'll figure out okay, they'll help you diagnose the problem, what's going on, and what's kind of getting in the way of you reaching your athletic or your physical goals. Okay, what can we do in order to help bring you some relief for that? What are some skills and some strengths? And well, they'll actually do some strengthening to help you work around that that challenge other weeks that you're having so that you can slowly become more independent and do get back to your full capacity.

SPEAKER_03 4:18

Okay.

SPEAKER_04 4:19

And so if a physical therapist does that within the realm of physics, uh physical activity, we do that within education. Because in education, there's a lot of small and micro skills that we're using on a daily basis in order to write papers, turn things in, figure out how to study for a math test, how to communicate with our teachers, how to think about our own conversations within our head about who we are as a student and what we're good at and what we might not be good at.

SPEAKER_02 4:44

How does to try to get my to a my mentally a finer point of what you're working with? Are people, are parents and students, I mean, this is high school level and below, right? Am I or is it college level?

SPEAKER_04 4:58

I mean, yeah, it's uh I started it off by doing mainly, I came from the college with college students, and then I brought it back down to work with high school and middle school students. But now people in my um in my firm and on my team, they work down to elementary school kiddos.

SPEAKER_02 5:13

Okay, right. So I'm wondering, are people who avails themselves of your services? Are these overachievers? Or I won't say overachievers, people who hope to overachieve. Are they people who are who are really struggling? Are they folks who, you know, are are can't get through the school day?

SPEAKER_04 5:29

Yeah. I mean all the above. All the above. Yeah. Um because everyone's at their own different track and their own different spot within reaching their educational goals, whatever those goals are. Okay. I would say most of our students, though, are experiencing some sort of strain and struggle and stress and anxiety on a daily basis. And some of that are that we are catching them and helping them in a moment of, I'd say, academic crisis, where man, we're not gonna graduate, we're not gonna pass classes, I'm about to get kicked out of school because I'm on academic probation. And some students have already been kicked out and they're trying to figure out the skills to get back in how to succeed at that next level. No. So I see we see a lot of students that are trying to look ahead a little bit and be like, hey, we barely got through middle school.

SPEAKER_01 6:18

Right.

SPEAKER_04 6:18

Uh there's there's some days I had to come thick you up uh to get a to get a school and there was some some meltdowns, and the teachers were talking to me, but and we got through middle school, and that's great. But we're kind of worried about starting off in 1930.

SPEAKER_02 6:31

Yeah, sure.

SPEAKER_04 6:32

Um, or we're worried about you going off to college.

SPEAKER_02 6:34

Right.

SPEAKER_04 6:34

Like students themselves.

SPEAKER_02 6:36

The more the more you talk about this, I uh I did have a brief period in my in my life as a probably as an educational therapist because I was a DEI instructor. I uh yeah after school, kids would would come, they were in danger. It was summer kind of a summer school, but it was they needed to graduate. So it was after school, they would come. I'd do, I mean, I had to do you have to do all the instruction. Yeah, and we had to get them graduated, and and that was the that was the job. So I uh in tapping back to my 24-year-old self, I kind of understand this was a very rough group, and um but it was a really fascinating, challenging, somewhere redeemable somewhere. Uh that's didn't make it, let's just say that through my tutelage.

SPEAKER_04 7:21

Well, that must have been really fun though, because you were just probably thrown in there without any training, and you were just kind of problem solving. Like, what's going on? How do we no?

SPEAKER_02 7:30

It was it was I mean, to this day, I I I tell this over cocktails. I was given the textbooks, and they were like, these are the textbooks these kids are using, and these are the stuff. And I remember going home and doing homework. I was like, I was good in I'm good in this, I'm okay in history. Oh my god, math. Like I this is I gotta kick kids to speed, and so yeah, it was it was thrown to the yeah, thrown to the lines, but man, when you're what it was kind of an ideal, I I thought it was a very interesting model, and we're getting way off track. I realize this isn't no rabbit trails are potentially academics, but we um because the the class was small, you know, there was a handful of kids. There was probably no more than 11 or 12 kids in there at any one time. And where was this, by the way? This was for ben in Ben Le Pine. Oh, I mean, and and they would send, I mean, these were the kids who were not going to graduate unless they had this credit. Yeah, so we were right at the deadline, and you know, 80% of them were motivated.

SPEAKER_03 8:33

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 8:34

So they um, but you got to really sit down with them. Yeah. I mean, they would come up to the desk and then you would just work one-on-one with them on that subject intensely, and then, you know, and I was honest with them, like, I don't know. We're gonna have to tap into your teacher tomorrow for that one. But but it was uh it was a six pretty successful model, and uh I was uh yeah, happy to do it. And it was it was interesting to get in the school system in that way. Yeah. I had thought I would be gonna become a teacher at the time, and so this was kind of um teaching by fire.

SPEAKER_04 9:08

And it really is, and and and all teaching to some degree is like, yeah, but I think you hit on a an interesting point there where you're like, hey, 80% of these kids are motivated.

SPEAKER_01 9:17

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 9:18

And I think that's that's one of the main factors that I think we all face when we become teachers. Like, okay, how do we motivate kids? And yeah, what makes that kid motivated and those kids not motivated? And that's what I was immediately drawn to when I started teaching. Like, okay, what's the difference between that kid wearing a hoodie and that kid wearing a hoodie?

SPEAKER_01 9:37

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 9:38

And so often um when I was being mentored by my teachers um that were showing me the ropes, like, well, yep, we've got 80% of these kids, and that was really the ratio 80-20.

SPEAKER_01 9:50

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 9:51

80% of these kids, they are motivated and like they're gonna be able to like stay on track. And I'm like, but what about those? What are we gonna do with those kiddos? Yeah, how can we help them? And they're like, man, I sincerely want to. And they really did from the bottom of their heart. But given the dynamics and just the economics of the modern day classroom, there's not enough emotional resources, time resources, anything for them to fully get all hundred percent. And so they would pretty flat out say, like, I want to help them, but if I do, I'm gonna leave the 80% behind.

SPEAKER_02 10:21

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 10:21

So I gotta go for 80.

SPEAKER_02 10:22

I've done presentations, you know, as the publisher, I've come in and talked to writing classes in in the high schools, and I I'm blown away by the number of kids in there. And and you know, you use and I feel like, okay, I got one hour with these guys. I'm pretty interesting. Yeah, like I've, you know, I they should want to know something about you know what I'm talking about. And you know, you just can't get to the back of that room. You just can't, you know, and and I would, I do the little games and I'd have them all try to interact and hold their hands up and try to think, but you know, it was it was tough. I have no uh shortage of empathy for for the instructors who are there, like, you know, trying to connect with these kids on a daily.

SPEAKER_04 11:04

But I bet if you were with any one of those kids individually, you could find a way to build interest or to have some sort of collaborative conversation that would help them move themselves towards achieving X goal or at least, I don't know, Alicia's having a good time.

SPEAKER_02 11:19

Well, I I actually felt I would go sometimes and do presentations at J Bar J. Oh, cool. Um, and the classroom was smaller.

SPEAKER_03 11:28

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 11:28

And I mean, these were at-risk youth, and um I would I would connect, you know. I mean, because you can. There's 16. It's right, they're right here. And so uh had a lot more success in that environment. And I found it fascinating that I could, you know, I had a had a better experience over here.

SPEAKER_04 11:47

So yeah, the small class size makes uh makes a big difference.

SPEAKER_02 11:50

Yeah. Well, tell me more about uh I mean, enough about my rabbit hole.

SPEAKER_04 11:55

Well, just to kind of connect on the though, is that I think that I think in our modern society, we talk about motivation as kind of a something out of our control that'll just kind of come and hit us on the head certain days.

SPEAKER_01 12:10

You're the motivator, do you're not?

SPEAKER_04 12:11

Exactly, right? And like, oh, look at them, they're so motivated. I wish I was motivated like that, or I didn't do that thing. I just I just wasn't motivated.

SPEAKER_01 12:18

Right, right.

SPEAKER_04 12:19

But in, and that's because we kind of have this model based upon the way we say it, that motivation has to be present for us to do a thing. And as kids were kind of taught this that, oh, once if motivation's there, I do it. And if it's not, uh it's like this kind of copy.

SPEAKER_01 12:36

Right, right.

SPEAKER_04 12:37

When in fact, this whole way that we look at motivation is needs to be kind of turned on its head. And in fact, once we take action and start something, the motivation follows within the next 30 seconds to a couple of minutes. And you look at you know, functional MRI scans, this is actually what have you see those certain parts of your brain light up once you've started the action to keep you persistent on that task right now.

SPEAKER_02 12:58

Yeah, that's cool.

SPEAKER_04 12:59

It's like when you're, you know, when you start to go clean at your garage, at first you're like, I don't want to clean a garage.

SPEAKER_03 13:04

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 13:04

And then then you start and you go, I pick a couple of things, and then like 20 minutes later, someone's out there like, what are you doing? You're like, I am so deep into cleaning this garage, don't bother me right now. I'm loving this, right?

SPEAKER_02 13:13

Yeah, we were talking about Megan are talking about the lay it out storage unit.

SPEAKER_04 13:17

Oh, yeah, right.

SPEAKER_02 13:18

And nobody wants to go in there until they do.

SPEAKER_03 13:20

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 13:20

And then they all have a plan for it. Or that if you just buy those running shoes, then you're definitely gonna start running, like waiting for the motivation to strike out of your shoe box, which is not gonna happen.

SPEAKER_04 13:32

But of course, those first that first like five minutes of the run is the worst. Yeah. And then suddenly you're like, hey, hey, yeah, I'm into it. This is I'm glad I came. Yeah, totally.

SPEAKER_01 13:40

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 13:41

But so I guess what we would do a lot is we help students, I guess, get a different perspective and learn about their own motivational landscape. And how do you I I don't like the word hack your motivation, but how do you be in charge of your own motivation and know that it is something that's in control and that that's something you're in control of?

SPEAKER_01 14:01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 14:01

And it's not just this arbitrary fact, this uh arbitrary factor that's just gonna affect you one day and not other days.

SPEAKER_02 14:09

I gotta believe, and you know, this is Megan knows this is a failing of mine because I relate everything to COVID, but your um I mean, I gotta think that your profession and the need for educational therapists is skyrocketed now that you know students were put into the salad bowl, thrown around. They all came out at different levels. Yeah. And but they're all, you know, and of course they're all expected to exceed a grade level, but grade level in the same anymore. What is the grade level for kids who didn't read? Some of them were parents were home making sure they got the education they needed during those times. And you can see those, you can see it in the in the scores that are starting to come out um for Oregon schools.

SPEAKER_01 14:52

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 14:53

Do you see that? Do you do you hear parents? What what's the what's the vibe around that?

SPEAKER_04 14:57

Yeah, I mean 100%. Be you can almost look. I've been waiting for some really interesting data to come out. I'm expecting it to at some point here. I'll just keep waiting. But yeah, it's not coming. We could that's a whole nother podcast.

SPEAKER_01 15:10

Like they don't, that data's not coming out.

SPEAKER_04 15:12

But I think if we could get a bunch of interesting longitudinal studies for different age groups, we could see that there were specific skill gaps associated with how old they were during those specific school years.

SPEAKER_01 15:24

Right.

SPEAKER_04 15:25

Because you can see it socially for some of the kids that were in late elementary school during that time and they were completely cut off from their peers, and that's super crucial social, that's social development. You can see that, and you can even see that now that it's five years later. And they're like, Yeah, I've already done keeping friends or really being vulnerable or sharing.

SPEAKER_01 15:44

Or motivating. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 15:46

Yeah. Yeah, exactly.

SPEAKER_04 15:47

But then I mean, I just was chatting with um uh a college kid who had a really hard time writing papers because he had never written more than a like a three-paragraph essay going into his college career because everything just got watered down when that was a crucial like curriculum goal of these years of high school, and he'd skip those. Right. And um, it just didn't just didn't work out as the chip spelled COVID.

SPEAKER_03 16:15

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 16:15

So I think you can see these specific skill set gaps as we go down through different age groups. And then they have long-lasting ripple effects once they get into more complicated academic situations.

SPEAKER_02 16:26

I remember at the time there was a lot of conversation about war babies, you know, and how you know you have and and how similar was COVID going to be to these effects you saw on children overseas who had been through conflict where their lives were stopped at one point, they saw horrible things, they re-engaged, and um and that would be the data, right? I mean, coming out with these data. What do you when you are looking at um, I mean, Oregon is, I don't think I'm I'm saying anything is gonna rock anybody's world, nationwide? We're just not a educational pillar anymore, you know, where this the scores have slid. Again, that it starts with COVID, I think, as a as a benchmark of of where we were to where we are. And do you feel from parent? I mean, how tuned in are do you think the community is? Because I find it's some it's still somewhat of a revelation. I mean, and we do a lot of comparison internally in Oregon, and you know, Deschutes County against other places in Oregon does pretty well. And so that's usually the news that comes out. Yeah, I've been doing pretty well, county to county. Look at this. But people who are tuned in to the nationwide landscape know there's some issues. We might need some educational therapy here for Johnny. You know, yeah. I mean, how much do you feel that people are aware of the changing educational dynamic in Oregon?

SPEAKER_04 17:59

Man, that's a great question. Um I think that when we look at education, I think you see a lot of people having a certain capacity for engaging in social or political issues right now. Yeah. And I see a lot of people uh out of steam.

SPEAKER_02 18:23

That's a good way to put it.

SPEAKER_04 18:24

And just like, nah, I just kind of numb to that. And like, and also a certain point of disengagement.

SPEAKER_01 18:30

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 18:30

Like what's what's the point?

SPEAKER_01 18:32

Right.

SPEAKER_04 18:32

I mean you can see that with local issues, maybe larger issues as well, like nationwide, but I'll say locally, even with some of the changes that happen I think within our own school district and in DeSus County, you can see some of those things happening. And many people have pretty strong viewpoints about them, but they're not really doing anything about it. And it's like they had a little bit of an emotional like response to that, and then they just kind of went, Yeah, yeah, that's fine. What am I gonna do? Pick your battles. Yeah. And I see in some degree a lot of apathy towards that, which is really helpful.

SPEAKER_02 19:09

Um you see a lot of, I think you see a lot of what I see a lot of is, you know, AI is such a buzz. Yeah. And I I've talked on this podcast with with um a lot of the moms who are, you know, worried about laptops in the classroom, pads in the castroom, tech in the classroom. Um, but I don't hear what I don't hear a lot of conversations about uh the lack of attendance, something scores, where we get a little more away from kind of your what's your what's your tech preference to some of the more granular stuff. Like, do you want them to be taking tech work? Do you want them to learn hands-on skills, or are we gonna really go with reading, running arithmetic? Um that all seems like we're in a void.

SPEAKER_04 19:59

Yeah. I mean, we we we could talk about technology in the classroom for a long time. And I'm glad it it seems like the pendulum is swinging backwards away from heavy tech, um, partially that the further we get from COVID. And I think that we're starting to see the reading scores that start to back that up.

SPEAKER_01 20:15

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 20:15

Um, and a lot of people, a lot of data has started to correlate reading with technology. But I also think that my my personal opinion is the amount of with so much technology in the classroom, we're training kids to reduce their time where they can focus on a single thing. And when we have super like tactile, interesting iPads with just like technology, it reduces our focus so much that then when we have to take that away and focus on a black and white, on black text on a white page, our capacity for following that for a long enough time decreases.

SPEAKER_01 20:51

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 20:52

And I see that, you know, in my in my clinic extrapolated to the to the nth degree because they can't even, they're having a hard time focusing on completing a worksheet or paying attention to more than 10 seconds of verbal instruction. And so we have to rehabilitate and retrain the focus. And I think that I'm kind of soapboxing here, but I think that's a good thing. No, no, that's that's right. Is a is it the singular cause of that? No, it's not the singular cause, but it's one of the bigger um, I think, factors that's production us that way.

SPEAKER_02 21:20

As a person who survived uh my ADD in uh in school, I am very familiar with the problem of you know, following text for long periods of time and sitting there, and I hear these things and I think, man, mainstream folks? I mean, I would have been right in with my people if that had been, you know, today.

SPEAKER_04 21:39

No, what if you were in there in your in your hay in my day right?

SPEAKER_02 21:44

I do feel like I've grown out of it.

SPEAKER_04 21:46

I I hope, but you know But what if during those times you were given a super interesting like tablet where you could access anything on the internet?

SPEAKER_02 21:55

Oh yeah, no, I would be toast. Yeah, but I think about that all the time. Like I I I mean. I'm already toast with the thing, but um, you know, I just it was I mean, this isn't gonna work for everybody, but you know, I did not have an educational therapist, but I did end up trying uh developing lots of weird uh I ended up being a lit major, you know, because even though I was ADD, the the the brain was clearly towards English and not math, William Billy. That would be another story in another podcast. But um, I just learned to walk, you know, I just learned to walk and sit and walk and sit and walk and sit repetitively. And I would bang out a paragraph, get up, and I would think about the paragraph, then go back and bang the paragraph because I had to I had you because I had to submit this paper and it was five pages long. So I would draw lines on the paper and I'd go, I just gotta get to here, and then we're gonna go to dinner and we're gonna come back and we're gonna get to here. And it was like, you know, marathon running. Those are amazing adaptations of me. Yeah, that is like, yeah. But and I feel bad be kids who don't, you know, because I see people struggle with it. I'm like, dude, you need your your notes app, you need your reminder app, you need your little I had little booklets that you I used to just write everything down and so and I think that's so many a lot of us end up making those own adaptations ourselves, usually from a very stressful point or from recent failures that we're trying to outrepeat, right?

SPEAKER_04 23:27

And so we start to create our own toolbox and like our own skills and systems for preventing that. And so a lot of people can, and then there are students that end up not being able to do that, and then they experience failure and it changes their whole self-esteem and sure belief about themselves.

SPEAKER_02 23:43

Yeah, you'll you know, I mean, I worry about brain development.

SPEAKER_04 23:46

I mean, some of it was sure, I you know, I didn't have those adaptation skills my first couple years in college, and you know, there were certainly lots of other distractions, and and then you you kind of are like, hey, I I'm I am not gonna make it, you know, like the you know, and you re-engage and um so one of the one of my favorite sayings that I say all the time is uh and I learned this from a wilderness therapist, actually, when they said, Well, good judgment comes from experience, and experience comes from bad judgment.

SPEAKER_01 24:17

Right, good, bad. Yeah, what is the thing uh uh bad child, good adult Yeah, exactly, right?

SPEAKER_04 24:23

And so you had a lot of like, frankly, bad judgment that first years you were trying to figure out how do I like manage all my manage myself within this, and then you learned and you change your judgment.

SPEAKER_02 24:33

How what percentage of your um the work that you do is with uh each grade? Like where do you kind of lean in or is it is it even?

SPEAKER_04 24:41

Yeah, I would say we're about I'll say 50% high school. Okay. Um, probably 35% college. Okay. Um, and then um below that the rest kind of 15%, even though um we continue to kind of grow with some more of our clinicians that are working with those middle school and elementary school kids. That's a continuing growing, I think, uh component of our population.

SPEAKER_02 25:07

I I see you you uh what did you do up at C O C C so I taught the college success courses, which is basically how do you survive in college?

SPEAKER_01 25:17

Yeah, right, right.

SPEAKER_04 25:18

Yeah. And and that was stemming from seeing the stats that 60, I don't know if they are this year, but um the the data seems to be pretty consistent, um, at least I actually up until COVID, um, was that 67% of students returned for their second year of college.

SPEAKER_01 25:37

Okay.

SPEAKER_04 25:37

And this is national um clearinghouse data from combined from university, state schools, and community colleges, yeah. That the retention rate or the persistence rate is is about two-thirds. Meaning that about a third of students don't return back. They had all these hopes, these dreams, all this money they spent, all this belief about themselves. And then a third of them decided like that's not for me. I can't do it, I'm not college material. Yeah. And so being able to work independently with a I worked with a lot of college students prior that had failed out actually in a residential program. And we worked specifically on what are the things that got in your way and what do we need to do to fix those things? What can you do for yourself to help that? And so that we can hopefully increase that persistence rate. And then as I was working to those college kids, I'd realized, like, man, man, there are some things you really needed to get in place here. Like this is uh but you can do it. And then I realized if only we could have intervened like three or four years earlier, if we could have taught you how to have this self-talk or this task management process um three or four years earlier, or these executive function skills, you would not be here. You'd be on a different directory.

SPEAKER_02 26:49

I always think the biggest challenge. I mean, I my paths of success went through community college. And so I'm and and I worked up at COCC. Um, actually, the DEI program that I was talking about was a program of COCC that um contracted with the schools. But um, you know, I I I feel like one of the biggest trick challenges, of course, is that you're living at home, and then all of a sudden you're at a four-year university where there is fun in a candy shop, you know, and and and then you're supposed to go to class. Like it to me, it just seems second, you know, second level. Like, you know, there these people are far more interesting than the kids I grew up with, you know, like they're into way more cool things than I was doing. And you're educated, that's where I wanted to spend my time. And of course, that is the road to failure. And uh and but and being able to get into uh community college where I had one foot in in my house, one foot in the work world, one foot in school, was just a much better balance. And um I think that goes back to that like train training, what's your attention, like two more years out, and um, I'm a big fan of gap years. I think all those things where you have like you gotta ease that transition. Like, I mean, not everybody. I'm uh very few people, I think, have the wherewithal to get in there. I mean, who who doesn't sit down over drinks and hear some horror story about from the first year of college? You know, where you're like, you're lucky you're alive. Like, and you gotta be. That's great. And they're gonna those charges are gonna get exposed by the other spike. We're almost to the five year mark, so you're good, you know.

SPEAKER_03 28:25

Yeah, seriously.

SPEAKER_04 28:27

Well, it's uh I I also think that's kind of an unfair I think expectation we've put on our youth that you know, they're guidance counselors when they're like in sophomore years of high school, like, what do you want to major in? What do you want, what do you want to do for your life? How are we gonna get you into a good school?

SPEAKER_02 28:42

Here's a little test. That was the other one. Here's a test to show you what you're gonna be. Yeah, and you take in the you're a forester.

SPEAKER_03 28:47

No pressure, by the way. It's just the trajectory of your entire life. So I think that's a tricky landscape for kids to like for this pressure she have on their shoulders.

SPEAKER_04 28:58

And it's even more so in this last 10 years, just a sense of competition, since the interconnectedness of society is even more apparent to kids that they're I have all these kids I have to compete against. I really have to like do something amazing and push myself super hard. Yeah, yeah. And so especially at that age to have this period out.

SPEAKER_02 29:18

You got to see a lot of that.

SPEAKER_04 29:19

I mean, yeah, totally. Yeah. But what another trend that's interesting is I see a lot of I also work with a lot of young men that have been in recovery that had a really rough set of years between 16 and like 21. Yeah. And they went through some hard years, they went through a lot of recovery, a lot of like soul searching and a lot of therapy. And now they're re-imagining and rediscovering their identity of who they want to be at 22, 23.

SPEAKER_01 29:47

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 29:48

And they come to my office and they're like, I had no clue that I wanted when I was 17. But now I actually feel motivated to go to college.

SPEAKER_01 29:57

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 29:57

Eel motivated. Yeah, yeah. And I know what I want and I'm driven to do that. But that is a combination of one, those really hard years they had. Yeah. But also it's just that their prefrontal cortexes are like four years older.

SPEAKER_01 30:09

Right.

SPEAKER_04 30:10

And they're ready. And it's a better time in life to decide what do I want to do?

SPEAKER_02 30:13

I always think it's funny too, because they come in probably to your office and and they're like, I'm so old. All the time. I'm old. I'm 24. You know, and you're like, well, you got a little road, you got some road, you got some time. How are your are your knees before? That's right. Well, Scott, we're at the end of our our time. Um, is there anything we didn't cover that you want to say to readers and um listeners and viewers? Um we got viewers this week.

SPEAKER_04 30:41

Yeah. Um I think it's really important to be kind of tuned in on what are the specific policies and things that are changing in in education. Yeah. And be aware of uh of what your student skill set are, skill sets are as they're trying to navigate this really complicated world.

SPEAKER_01 31:04

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 31:05

And be willing to have open conversations about them and embrace the areas where they they're not doing great. Yeah. And help them and co like collaboratively, I think, work on solutions with them and not just necessarily wag your finger at them, tell them that they need to like use a play or whatever. Yeah. Oftentimes our teenagers, they have a lot of a lot of insight as to why things aren't going well. So just have those open conversations. Listen to them.

SPEAKER_02 31:31

Yeah, I think, you know, and again, I keep going back to that term educational therapist, but you know, one thing that therapists are good at is being somebody outside the house that can give a little, give some sometimes some support to what the kids are probably saying at home. And the parents are like, well, that's not the plan. Yeah, that's not what we're doing right now. And so that that seems like and and these kind of services are so much more available now than they were years ago. And I think again, after COVID, everybody's kind of aware, or I hope they're aware that these kids are on far different spectrum than um they were pre-COVID. And they're just the grade levels are so much different. I hear from teachers all the time that that classroom is just different now. It's you've got the kids who are much further back and kids who are much further ahead, and you're trying to teach in the middle. So uh so good luck out there. And I think you're in the wrong right space, you know. Yeah, so cool.

SPEAKER_03 32:31

Well, Scott, thanks for thanks for having me. Great to have conversation.

SPEAKER_02 32:35

Thank you all for listening. Uh, this has been the Ben Don't Break Podcast. If you like what you heard, you should by now know where to go. BenSource.com, become a member, uh, support us. Uh, you support our ability to get over here into the Remax studios and talk to great people like Scott. And um, we will see you next week. Thanks. You've been listening to the Ben Don't Break podcast powered by the Source Weekly. To read, hear, and see more of what we do, go to Bensource.com.