Sahithi Mantri

I would attribute it to students who inspire us every day, and the staff who share the passion with me. Because we don't see each other every day, the culture that we have built can't just be a top-down approach from me just because I'm passionate about what I want to do. We've tried to build and retain that culture between my staff and myself, and the students and the staff, and it's at a different level. So whatever success or whatever positive things that we have is coming from all these places, not just coming from one person. We try to build or learn that skill every day - learning from each other is something that we strongly believe in as a team.

The best career advice I've received came from two important people in my life. My principal during my second job was my mentor, and the most important advice he gave me was that change doesn't happen overnight. He gave me this advice because I started my job as a teacher replacing someone who left very hard shoes to fill - it was a very well-established classroom where the teacher and students had a strong relationship. When I came in, the connection between me and the students wouldn't happen overnight. There were times when the students challenged me, and he taught me that they were just testing me out because I was new to them, and I had to crack that bond. He taught me those everyday things to help me build that connection. The other piece of advice came from my father, which applies to both personal and professional life: you do what you can do best, which you can control. Put your best foot forward every single day. That is something you can control. Whatever happens is something you cannot control, but you control your actions. That's what I tell my staff too - do your best in something you can control, and don't stress about something you cannot control.

I do have staff who are straight out of college, and sometimes I've had staff in the past who didn't know what to do, so they just came to it on an experimental basis. Since this opportunity happened to me accidentally, I don't want to turn away people from trying to aspire to the same journey. I tell young people, okay, you're not sure - that's fine, you don't have to figure it out today. What do you like or enjoy the most? Because at the end of the day, your job consumes one-third of your life. If you don't like it, there's no point in doing it. You can always hypothesize to figure out what you want, but when you are trying to hypothesize or figure out what you want, you just have to do it 100% out of passion, out of love. That's something I advise when I take in staff that are really young. For example, my intern is someone who graduated with us last year. I tell them, you are learning the skills best possible that the job is giving you. Whether you want to figure out to stay long-term in this or not, that's the second question. Today, these are the opportunities you have through this job - what are you doing with them? The same thing goes for my students.

The main challenge, I think, more than what in-person schools are facing right now, is retention. That is a huge challenge because we don't see those students every day. It's not like they come into a classroom where you're building a connection with them. All our connections typically happen virtually, meaning you can make them in one click or you can break them in one click. For example, imagine somebody blocking your number - the connection is broken right there. Even when we connect with our students, we respect their choice of wanting to remain anonymous, meaning we don't force them to turn on their cameras. So whatever we try to connect with them, it's through Teams messages or phone calls where I don't know how they look and they don't know how I look. We are trying to build this connection virtually. That being said, most of our students come into this program because reality has hit them - they could be working one or two jobs which prevents them from going to an in-person school, they might have had a hard past where they were bullied or ignored in a traditional school, or we have so many pregnant teenagers or students who have children without support systems. When they are already coming in with baggage like that, when it gets harder, sometimes school isn't their priority anymore. So retention could be a problem. That's why we try to overcome this issue by sharing stories from students who were in similar situations. We have something called monthly Showcase Student where we tell them stories from other students because they are not interacting with each other much on a daily basis like they would in a classroom. We give them opportunities to interact, to get inspired, and to know they are not alone in this journey.

To me, both personal and professional life, you have to believe in what you're doing, number one. Number two, what your practices are. Sometimes we preach something we ourselves don't want to do, and I'm totally against that. Like I said in my earlier response, I like to get my feet dirty. If my staff has to do something, I am volunteering or okay to do whatever I'm asking my staff to do. So, don't preach something that you don't want to do, number one, and don't do something you don't believe in.