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Introduction

Janet Pilcher: Hello everyone, welcome to the Accelerate Your Performance podcast. I’m your host, Dr. Janet Pilcher, founder and president of Studer Education. 

Today is a special episode I can’t wait to share with you. During the past several weeks, you’ve heard a lot about recognizing and appreciating your staff. Today, we’ll take that one step further with Quint Studer, who’s here to talk about the book he and I are releasing together. It’s called The Extraordinary Gift: Our Teachers. 

To celebrate the release, I invited Quint onto the show to talk about it with me. In fact, we turned this episode into a video episode. So if you’d rather watch than listen, please head to StuderEducation.com/podcast or click the link in the show notes. It will take you directly to the video interview. Either way, I’m glad you’re here. 

Let’s get started. 

Interview

Janet Pilcher: So it’s with great pleasure that I welcome Quint Studer to our show today. Quint, it is so great to have you on today to talk about our new book, The Extraordinary Gift: Our Teachers. Thank you for being here. 

Quint Studer: Well, thank you, Janet. You know, I love you and I’ve loved you from the first… I loved you from “hello.” Isn’t that what they say? 

Janet Pilcher: [laughs] Yeah, and we’ve had… You know, I’ve had a chance in the book to really talk a little bit about our story. There’s a lot more to tell, but just the impact that you’ve had on my life has been tremendous. So just being able to share this book with you and give a gift to our teachers who are extremely important to all of us is very special, Quint. So thank you for that opportunity as well. 

Quint Studer: You’re more than welcome. 

Janet Pilcher: So let’s start. You had… We’ve been talking about this book for a while and you wrote the book, The Calling, that connected to healthcare. And you had an idea about writing a book aligned to the type of book that you did in authoring The Calling. And so you and I started talking about that and we moved forward and took action on it. So talk about why, why this book, Quint, and why right now? 

Quint Studer: Well, I get chills talking about it. When I wrote the book, The Calling, it was about people in healthcare got into healthcare because it’s a calling. And I find that’s not just teachers or that’s not just healthcare. That’s people in helping professions. 

So you talk to paramedics. They were Halloween paramedics. You talked to teachers. They had little brother and sister sitting in the floor giving them lessons and things like that. So The Calling was written about, that we answer our DNA, and it was about how do we replenish ourselves? 

But this book’s different. The Calling‘s more also, I think, more tactical. I think this book is less tactical and more emotional and appreciative. And, because there is a difference. So before, I’ll talk about other professions, if you don’t mind, Janet, if I go on too long, let me know. 

Janet Pilcher: No, please do.

Studer Education: I’m a paramedic. I go and help somebody, get to the hospital. When I get into the hospital, the family thanks me, thanks me, thanks me for taking their family. I go to the ER. 

So in healthcare, I, extraordinary people in healthcare, but you pretty much get a thank you right away. As you and I were talking, I’ve had a bad back. And when I, the pain medicine doc or the chiropractor doc, I am just appreciating the heck out of them and they know it. 

So in many helping professions, even in not help, even restaurants, thank you. I own a minor league baseball team. People say to the usher, “thank you.” Everybody gets an immediate thank you, except teachers don’t get immediate thank youa. And it just hit me that teachers are so phenomenal human beings, but they’re in a profession where their gratitude either comes totally internally, knowing what they’re doing is noble, or they aren’t going to get it externally. 

I mean, you know, my belief is if the principal knocks on a teacher’s door and says a parent called them, their first thought isn’t, “oh, is this positive?” It’s, you know, “what, what happened?” You know, it’s that type of, if you’re a principal and some parent wants to talk to it’s not, “well, the teacher’s so great.” 

So the whole idea of the book was to write a book that teachers understand, even though they’re not hearing it right away, they’re making such a huge impact and appreciated. And it’s also actually to encourage other people to appreciate the teachers that they had or do have. 

So, you know, it takes three compliments to one criticism and teaching is the lonely job. 

Janet Pilcher: Yes.

Quint Studer: I mean, teaching is a lonely job. And then again, comparing it to other professions, other professions, you’re almost seeing other people do their job. 

We’re in a restaurant, whether an activity, if you’re in health care, you’re in the OR, you got eight other people working with you. But for teachers, it’s a solo job. And it’s a, and it’s a solo job working with people that aren’t your age or aren’t like you. So I, I think it’s a lonely job. And I more and more realized that when I left teaching and got into other jobs, how lonely being a teacher can be. 

Janet Pilcher: Yeah. You know, and it’s as you’re talking, you know, it’s, it’s, it’s interesting to think about teaching because it’s, it’s a lonely job. And it’s also when I think back, Quint, over my life of jobs, I’ll never forget teaching because of the emotions that attach to that job. I mean, there are emotions that attach to all the jobs that we have with our people, but there’s nothing more powerful than being in that classroom with young people and connecting with them each and every day. You know, I can’t even describe it, but it’s a feeling. 

You can’t, unless you’re, you know, you’re talking about sympathy and empathy. I mean, it’s a feeling, unless you’ve been in that classroom, you really don’t understand that gut feeling of what it’s like to be that teacher. 

Quint Studer: And that’s what I think, in the book, besides encouraging other people to appreciate teachers, it’s helping people do self appreciation. Because if you need three to one, you know, if you’re teaching fifth grade, outside of teacher day or something like that, you’re probably not going to have students writing you thank you notes on a regular basis. You’re probably not going to have parents writing you a thank you note. 

And you know, principals get busy and they’re likely to come in when something’s wrong. I mean, if you get a text from the principal that says, “call me,” your first thought is not, “Good, here comes more reward and recognition.” So we build a culture that focuses on communicating when something’s wrong instead of something right. 

And so I think the books, the neat part about the book is we really want teachers to get appreciated from other people. 

Janet Pilcher: Yes.

Quint Studer: And no doubt about it. That’s the book. Buy it for the teachers, superintendent buy it for a teacher you got, school board buy it for everybody you got, you know, parents buy it for your teachers. 

But we also have, I think a lot of good feelings of, you know, even when you don’t get it directly, don’t underestimate the difference you make in people’s lives.

Janet Pilcher:  Absolutely. And, you know, Quint, as you wrote the foreword in the book, you told the story of the three teachers that had an impact on your life. Can you talk a little bit about those stories and then what moved you into teaching? 

Quint Studer: Sure. Exactly. Basically, I had a, I’m a hearing impaired person. Hearing impaired people have speech impediments. I also, when I was two years old, I was in an accident and my two front teeth were knocked out. So I had what you call a lisp. And so really until kindergarten, very few people could understand me, but my immediate family, because they knew “bulk” meant “milk,” you know, they could interpret my language. 

So I went to kindergarten and, you know, it was different back then. There was no 94, 142 or any of these things are M teams or many of those things. So I really struggled in kindergarten. First grade, I really struggled, even though they sent me to speech class, which, so you’re already, I already felt different because I, my speech impediment. 

And I know that all good reasons to pull me out of class, but now you’re even feeling more, you don’t fit in. So I had speech. And then I had a very difficult time reading. I still today have a very difficult time reading. So I have to have somebody tell me the word. I can’t read it. They have to read it and tell me what it says. 

So in second grade, I have my second grade report card and it says on the fourth quarter, it says very nicely, “we think Quint will benefit from repeating the second grade.” So my mother must have, I know she lobbied because she got involved in the PTA. She became secretary of the PTA. 

Janet Pilcher: [laughs] But I can see your mom doing that. 

Quint Studer: And basically they agreed to give me a trial in third grade for about six weeks. And I’m going to probably cry. And that’s when I met Mrs. James. And I don’t know anything about Mrs. James, her degrees, anything about her. She did two magical things for me. One, she just, you felt loved. Type of person she feel was hugging when they’re not hugging you. 

And number two, she didn’t do it the way maybe people do it. She knew I loved sports. So she’d bring in the Chicago Tribune paper every day and quietly we’d sit there and go over sports scores. And that’s how she taught me to read because I was so passionate about sports. She taught me to read Jerome Holtzman, a sports writer for the Chicago Tribune. Wendell Smith taught me how to read. She taught me how to read. 

And she also never put me in a spot of failure. So we’re in a school play and she gave me a speaking part. Now you have a speech impediment. You’re pretty nervous. And I practiced and practiced ,and I had to say, “I’m as poor as ever.” And when I said the word “poor,” I pronounced it “pur.” And she said, “‘Poor’ doesn’t mean money for you. It means pouring milk.” And so I was in this play. Normally if you have a speech impediment, you’re a tree or a rock or something. And I basically said, “I’m as poor as ever.”I still remember my mother was sitting the second row from the window, in the third seat. So, that’s Mrs. James. 

Fourth and fifth grade were pretty tough. Sixth grade, I ran into Mr. Fry. And again, I don’t know what it was, but Mr. Fry knew I was going to need extra help. So when we did the seating assignment, somehow my desk got real close to his desk. Because that way, instead of me, when I struggled, he would lean over and help me on the side without the other students knowing. His desk was in the back of the room, not in the front of the room by the blackboard. And he just kept me busy. If he noticed I was distracted, he kept me doing stuff all the time.

And, you know, if you’re not doing well in school, and there are parent-teacher conferences, I always made sure I was sound asleep, pretending to be sound asleep, when my mother came home from parent-teacher conferences in fourth and fifth grade. Because it was stuff like, “I got my report card. Doesn’t listen. Distracts others. Gets his neighbors in trouble.” The fourth and fifth grade wasn’t good. My mother came into my room so excited because she had such a good conversation with Mr. Fry, because he said, “I love having your boy in class.” And he said, “He’s got a lot of energy. We just got to keep it funneled in the right direction.” And that was pretty cool.

I’m going to go off topic. One of my grandsons has a real bad speech impediment. He’s little and he couldn’t make it in nursery school because kids would tease him and he’d get in fights. So we got him put at Roosevelt School in Janesville, Wisconsin. He was learning to talk, and he didn’t even want to get out of the car when my daughter, Becky, would try to get out of the car because he hated the feeling of being in these rooms. My daughter went to get him one day, and this is why not only are teachers vital but all the staff around teachers are vital. The teacher’s assistant brought my grandson to my daughter and said, “I love having your son in class.” And my daughter cried the entire way home.

So the third teacher is my high school coach. I went to the biggest high school in Illinois, Lyons Township High School, with 5,300 kids. I love sports. Well, when you’re 4’11” and about 98 pounds, you’re not going to play football. I thought about cross country, but I ran around the block and was exhausted. So I went out for a new sport. In 1965, the first time they started it, it was called soccer. Because it was brand new, they weren’t going to cut anybody. 

I had Coach King. And Coach King, again, I think the key is how to correct people without tearing them down. Coach King… well, I’ll tell the story. You’d run and miss the ball, and all he’d do is tell you how great you ran and how you hustled and “Way to get over there”’ Then he might say something like, “Hey, try to get your foot out,” but
“Good job getting over there!” 

So, I coached with him for my freshman and sophomore year, and it kept me in school. I mean, because I wasn’t a good student. Not that I would quit, but that’s the only thing I enjoyed, because in the offseason, you get ready for it. You know, all of you go to the gym and you lift weights and stuff like that.

So my junior year, I went out for soccer. Coach King was the freshman-sophomore coach, and not me and one other guy got cut immediately, because they started cutting. So now I’m a junior in high school. I have a lousy grade point. I’m struggling in school, and now I don’t have the one thing that I loved.

So my senior year, soccer started about two weeks before school started. Lee Bennett called me and he said, “Quint, Coach King wonders why you’re not out for soccer.” And I said, “Well, Coach King’s the freshman-sophomore coach.” He said, “No, he’s the new varsity coach. He told me to get you out.” I started crying. So I went out. He’d play me half the game. I knew when I was going to play, when I didn’t play, the whole year. 

And then, because I had two study halls and wasn’t a good student, I got to go into his classroom and be a teacher’s assistant. What I got to do is after the bell rang, I took his boys to the library, sat with them. Before the bell rang, I took them back into the hallway because he taught special ed. Back then, if the kids were in the hallway, they would get teased.

So when I went to college, after two years of being undecided, they asked me what I wanted to major in. All I thought was Mrs. James, Mr. Fry, and Coach King. They said, “Well, what do you want to teach?”’ I said, to explain what Coach King did. They said, “You want to be a special ed teacher.” And that’s how I became a special ed teacher. Sorry to go on so long.

Janet Pilcher: No. It’s… just the, you know, just as you’re, as you’re chronicling that story, Quint, you know, just thinking about, without those teachers, you know, where you would be. I don’t know. You probably think about that many times.

Quint Studer: You know, no, there’s more, too. My counselor, Ken Taylor, I didn’t have a good grade point, but I took the ACT and I did pretty well. He called me in and said, “You… you can go to college,” because I didn’t think I was going to go to college. He helped me get to Whitewater because Whitewater has a special program for people that have learning issues. It’s a university that focuses… you know, they have the second or first best wheelchair basketball team in the country. 

So he found a college that understood people that have trouble learning because there are 14 letters that I can’t hear because of my hearing impairment, so I have to figure things out. So, you know, that’s a counselor. 

There are all these people along the way. When I went to college, Helen Copas was the special ed administrative assistant. When I’d go in, she’d make you feel loved. I donated money and there’s a Helen Copas room at Whitewater, and she was a farmer… her husband was a pig farmer in Jefferson, and she teared up and said, “I never thought I’d have a room named after me.” 

So, it’s… it’s everybody in education. The bus driver that gets that kid feeling great when they get on the bus and get home. It’s all these people that touch people.

Janet Pilcher: Yes. And what we had a chance to do in the book, we chronicled a few stories, told a few stories. There are so many to tell, but that’s what we do in the book. We start with your foreword, and then we begin to tell stories, the great stories of the impact that teachers have made on, on individual lives that have positioned them to be who they are today. 

And so, Quint, as we close today, you know, as, as, as we think about why we wrote the book and what this book can really do to have the most positive impact as we reach out to those who have touched all of us, you know, what, what can we do? What can we do to say, “You are extraordinary teachers. Thank you”?

Quint Studer: I think sometimes people think people get recognition when they don’t, or they assume they already know that. So if you’re not a teacher, you probably assume that if you’re a teacher, you’re hearing all this positive stuff. So I would say, don’t assume. Don’t assume that teachers are hearing all this. 

I also want the book to be one where they put it on their desk and it’s right there. And because sometimes when you’re not having a good day, you need to turn to something to have a good day. If you know, in the book, they can even write some things. They can tell their own stories. 

When I speak to large healthcare groups, and I speak to physicians and healthcare people all over the country, I always ask them if any of… any of them have ever had a teacher that had a huge impact on their life, and 100% of the hands go up. So I want that to be on their desk, so they get… so there’s some self-replenishment. 

But I really, really want to make it where the community appreciates the teachers, or the community really says, “If we need to be more appreciative, let’s make sure we get them the book. Let’s make sure we tell them the story.” Even… and principals need appreciation, too. But for that principal to realize when you knock on that classroom door, you want the teacher to think, “Oh, great, I’m going to hear some good things.” So we really want to create, I think, a culture of abundance and a culture of positivity.

Janet Pilcher: Yeah, so good. And one thing that we say constantly, and you do as well, “When there’s something going on every day that’s good…” I mean, we said every day, I mean, harvesting those good things and not keeping them inside of us, right, but really sharing the good.

Quint Studer: Well, I remember again, you know, when you teach and you have a student that’s struggling, parents know this, and I’d always try to send a note home every single day of what the person, the student, did that was positive. It could be, “Well, they had a great 10 minutes.” I don’t know, but it was something positive.

Janet Pilcher: It was something good. 

Quint Studer: You know, people move to what’s being rewarded and recognized. And I just know as a teacher, you know, it was lonely. And I know you want to stop, but you know, I interviewed Dan Madden the other day on the radio program as a host, and he’s one of the greatest teachers ever. He taught math at James Parker High School. Great baseball coach. And I’m in the classroom next to him, and all I wanted to do was make sure he couldn’t hear my kids through the walls. 

Janet Pilcher: [laughs]

Quint Studer: But you know, but, but you’re lonely because I’m in a lonely profession. And you’re… you’re scared. Those first couple years are really, really hard because you’re… you’re isolated and you don’t want to go to… at least I didn’t want to go to the teacher’s lounge and say, “I don’t know what I’m doing.” 

So I think the other great part about the book, Janet, it really encourages experienced teachers to share with new teachers what they felt like when they were new. Because when you’re new, you’re thinking, you’re going home thinking, “I can’t get Wayne. I can’t deal with Deborah. What am I doing? I can’t reach them.” 

And I think if by getting an experienced teacher to say, “Hey, let me tell you when I was brand new, my first year, my second year,” all of a sudden you don’t feel alone because that’s the other thing. We don’t want teachers… we want teachers to feel part of, not part from. 

Janet Pilcher: Yeah, yeah. Well, it was certainly a pleasure writing this book with you. It’s a pleasure being able to interview teachers and hear their stories. Just the, the emotion that goes with all those stories is tremendous. So thank you for that opportunity to partner with you in this book, Quint, I… you’ve been a teacher and a mentor to me for many years, so thank you for being that.

Quint Studer: Well, I’m excited to play a small part in Studer Education, too. So thank you so much for the opportunity.

Conclusion

Janet Pilcher: Thank you, Quint, for joining me and recognizing teachers everywhere. I’m forever grateful for our friendship and for the investment you continue to make in me. I’m honored to call you both a mentor and a friend.

If you’d like a copy of The Extraordinary Gift: Our Teachers, please visit studereducation.com/books or click the link in the show notes. 

As always I thank you for tuning into this episode of the Accelerate Your Performance podcast. I look forward to seeing you next time as we work together to make sure every educator knows how deeply valued they are. Have a great week everyone.