Transcript: Mr. Jeff Pierce on Hong Kong, History, and Debate

Good morning and welcome back to Late Start Show. We are here today with Mr. Jeff Pierce, Junior Kindergarten through 8, Enrichment Specialist, Middle School Speech and Debate Coach, and a Middle School History Specialist. How are you doing today, Mr.

Pierce? I'm staying warm inside. Before we jump into debate and enrichment, all those other things you do around the Shaker Campus, you take us all the way back to where you grew up and what a young Mr. Jeff Pierce was like?

Young Mr. Jeff Pierce. How long do we have? So I grew up north side of Columbus, neighborhood called Clintonville.

I went to St. Charles. I checked with Coach Malvasa when St. Charles played U.S. in football this last fall.

He said it was okay if I wore my letter jacket. So I did. I was kind of happy whoever won that game. um but uh i'm gonna try and make it down to i think us is gonna go down to st charles in uh october of 2026 so i'm gonna try and make it down um so yeah um i i trying to think there's a photo i sometimes would use with middle school where it's a eighth grade uh you know i guess the teacher right you know like as the teacher from when they're younger and mine is kind of usually pretty easy to get because i have i think one the ones I use I'm standing next to like a history day project or something right um so I've always been pretty into school and pretty curious and uh you know pretty big bookworm um I did uh I did cross country and track and wrestling in high school I wasn't too great at any of those um but I enjoyed, you know, I really enjoy running. And let's see, I did a lot of school.

Like I think I was thinking about this. I did, I think I had eight AP classes in high school, which I think is a lot. I don't know if, you know, I'm not trying to set records or anything, but again, like I really liked school. I've always been pretty good at it.

And most of my family's still in Columbus. And then I don't know, then I went to, I was, I don't know what St. Charles is like now. I don't know how many similarities there are between St.

Charles and U.S. I mean, they're both all boys school, but St. Charles is Catholic. But it certainly, I don't know if there's the same amount of pressure or high expectations that we have at U.S.

Not that expectations are low at SC, but uh anyways i ended up um one of two kids in my class that went to harvard uh so that gets me through to 18 years old um anything you want to know about like young jeff i don't know yeah i mean like when you think when you think about your family growing up whether it was kind of like any siblings you had or just kind of the parents or the people around you what's one thing from home that just really shaped you early like do Do you have those like early lessons that you remember? I think that that. I think my childhood was definitely the church and Christianity growing up, that was a pretty big foundational part of my family, right, was Sundays. And I don't know if you guys go to church or, you know, there's people listening.

But, you know, that was like a this is where you're going to sit still for at least an hour. You know, you're going to be quiet. You're going to be polite. you're going to listen to the message. Uh, I think that was a pretty big, big, big formative part of my childhood.

And, uh, you know, in terms of, I think just the other day I was talking to somebody, uh, actually a U S alum and I made reference to a parable from the Bible that one of the, one of the many ones that kind of always stuck in my head. And, uh, so yeah, I mean, I think that's a pretty big foundational part of it also. I mean, oldest of four, right. And, um, pretty pretty competitive um everybody's pretty quick-witted and uh pretty stubborn so um it's funny now that i have my own two kids and you find myself saying so many of the things that you know my parents said right so like when when you have a family you can make a different choice right or i think you'll understand when you're older i don't know if you guys ever hear that but uh um you know just the other day my one of my sons said dad you told me you always fought with siblings so you can't tell me not to um so uh but we're pretty close now my siblings and i um you know we're we're well right now we're in the same for all three of the four of us are in the same state um one sister's in pennsylvania but yeah so i see them decent the amount but we've all got youngish kids and life is tough time you mentioned um they did a lot of activities and and extracurriculars during school.

What do you think you got out of some of those things that complemented? Obviously, you mentioned you were good in school, but what do you think you got out of some of those activities that complemented just in-class work? I don't know if I ever thought about it in terms of what I got out of it, Jack. I've always loved games.

I'm not that great at chess, but that was an outlet in elementary school. I still help run the spelling bee at Shaker. And I don't know if I've started to tell it more, the story of when I won my school bee in fifth grade and then I went to the city bee, my first word was chimney. But I guess it was the nerves and I spelled it C-H-I-M-N-E-W.

And, you know, I've told enough of the lower school kids that. So they mostly know that Mr. Pierce is spelled chimney. So I don't know.

I don't think of it, I thought of it in terms of what I got out of things. I think it's just more there's a natural, if you, you know, before the, before when we were setting this up, you said, Jack, you know, you just want to get to know Mr. Pierce a little bit more. And I always just like teaching myself and trying new things.

And I'm just pretty insatiably curious. So I went to Jamaica with my church in high school. and you know like just just kind of blew my mind about like you know international travel and being somewhere different and uh a country that you know they spoke english but i couldn't understand them right um so you know i wasn't uh i think that that's a pretty big part of of who i am it's just who i've always been is just trying to trying to find out more right you know moving into college you talked about a little bit earlier but you end up at Harvard studying history what is the real story of kind of how that happened how did you pick history and like how was it like um again I think so I graduated high school in 2000 um and I think that things have changed a lot in just 20 plus years in terms of what these institutions are like and then who's going there and why they're going there. Because I think it kind of surprises people, but I wasn't really, I wasn't like set on Harvard. I was just like, well, you know, it's a pretty good school.

I should give it a try. I should apply there. My father did go there. That was kind of the extent of his, you know, like if you want to go there, Jeff, there was never any pressure from my dad or my mom to go to an Ivy League school.

So I kind of, you know, my 18 year old brain was not, you know, thinking like, which Ivy should I go to? Or it was really quite simple. It was, you know, I think I want to leave the state. And I think I want, I think I want to be a teacher.

And so those two things i again it's kind of silly but harvard they recently discontinued it maybe within the last four years but you used to be able to get uh like you could it's not really i think it's not part of my degree or anything but i did get a massachusetts teaching license so i did spend didn't write a thesis in college but i did spend i don't know how many credit hours it was but at the at the ed school as an undergrad you can't do that anymore um so that was part of my you know My reasoning for going to Harvard was like, oh, I could become a teacher there. Only maybe six students a year out of Harvard's class of, I think the class is just about the same, maybe 1,600. So a really, really small number of students would go through that program to get a teaching license. History was something, Charlie, I just always liked.

I have a copy over there of the magazine Foreign Affairs, which my dad had a subscription to when I was young. And, you know, for my mom, for sure, I just I never stopped. I'm reading all the time. Right.

I just finished listening to a book about Nantucket today. And so reading all the time, you know, I get so bored. I read my you know, my sisters would read like Babysitter's Club's books, which I don't know if that is still a thing. You know, I get so bored.

I'd read their books. And so my dad would have this foreign affairs magazine. I'm like, okay, I'll read that. You know, like I think middle school Jeff, you know, I could understand maybe one out of four articles.

And I just always kind of love the stories of history. Right. Again, being curious about how things used to be. So, you know, I went there.

The other thing about Harvard, about why I studied history. So 18 year old Jeff was thinking might be a teacher. I might be a pastor. I might be an engineer.

And I still remember taking, there was three levels of physics at Harvard and I tested, you know, I think I could have taken the highest level one with my math background, but I didn't, I took like the medium one. I didn't take the intro one. and I discovered in that course, my dad likes to tell this too, about how, you know, he learned about how there's a bell curve, right? And, you know, I'm at Harvard University, so I'm, again, pretty good at school, but, you know, I really struggled with that physics class. And I remember a friend in my freshman dorm was taking the harder one and told me, yeah, I think that one's too easy.

I'm going to do physics in grad school. And meanwhile, you know, working hard and struggling to get like, no, I think my test average was a 66. I was working really hard. And so that was sort of my, you know, I did well enough on physics to get a decent grade on the AP test in high school, but I didn't really understand it.

So that was an example of a door closing where I was like, no, that's not, physics is not, engineering is not where I'm going to go. So I think that answered a bit of your question right Charlie Was there anything else you curious about I mean I think we really just curious about your experience at Harvard Obviously, like you mentioned, it's full of smart people, maybe intense people. And I guess, did being around that level of talent motivate you, inspire you, or intimidate you, or kind of a little bit of both? Like, what did that, being around that type of environment, what did you learn from that?

I haven't really thought a lot about my time at Harvard since getting ready to do this podcast. I don't know if, you know, I'm 43 years old. And maybe I'm at the point in my life where I just got too many things to worry about. And I just, I can't really hold on to regret anymore.

But I don't know. It was a challenge, right? I went from being a big fish in a small pond to a small fish in a big pond, right? And I think a lot of my identity growing up was this grade A student, the kid who aced every test without studying.

And then you get around people that are maybe, that's not unique, right? And so I think it took some unlearning, right? It took some reframing of my identity. That was tough.

And, you know, I also think that Harvard is a funny place because it's, I don't know how to put this. I think some people, there's more people there that I think than your regular population who think they're going to change the world. You know, one of my closest friends there was, she's not, she's an astronomer now, but she was, she wanted to be one of the first African astronauts. And, you know, that was like a real dream of hers that she was legitimately pursuing. and uh you know as an astronomer who knows maybe she still will get to do that and you know i didn't ever dream that big that was never part of who i was you know what my aims were right um so i think it was it was a challenge to be there jack um and i think it's also i don't know it's um maybe there's a certain personality type right like there's a certain personality type that uh not that i'm not driven but that's not really the first thing that I present with necessarily.

Harvard's full of people that are you know, I mean Zuckerberg was a couple years behind me, right? I did a class with the social network like the Divya Narendi, right? I had a class with him once who's one of the guys that actually had the idea for Facebook and then so it was tough. It was definitely you know, like that side of it.

I had to relearn a little bit. My favorite professor, the other thing too about a place like that, it's a little bit of a sink or swim kind of atmosphere. And it wasn't really until my junior year that I finally clicked with a professor and found somebody that I could get along with, that understood, you know, that took the time to understand me. And, you know, and he wasn't, he was a linguistics professor, actually.

So I think it's, it can be tough if you don't find your feet at a place that's big, you know, again, 1600 kids, it's a pretty big place. Right. You know, after you graduate, what did you think about what you were going to do in the next five years? Obviously, like there's a lot like uncertainty when anybody's kind of moving on to the next period of their life.

But what were you thinking about in that moment about what you kind of saw yourself doing? So part of the way that I, you know, when I had the, you know, part of the readjustment, right, was I took some time off. I took one semester off. And it was, I think this decision really frames a lot about what happens next.

And my parents had a friend who, from college, who was a pastor of a church in Morocco. and he said, hey, listen, like volunteers can always come to this orphanage in the mountains of Morocco. I don't, I didn't teach either of you, right? So I think, I don't know if you would have heard this story, but I spent maybe six months my junior year away from school, you know, manual labor and, you know, learning Arabic and picking up bricks and putting them in new spot you know like they can build building buildings but you don't have uh there's no backhoe right so that foundation is dug with a shovel um so so that was uh that was pretty formative in terms of helping me to kind of settle and and reframe who i was a little bit and so then when i came to graduate i remember pretty vividly there was a there was a i don't know i think most universities will have this like a ours was called office of career services um so you could you could go there and look at what are some scholarships and what are some jobs that are you know who wants somebody right out of school and there was a red binder full of teaching jobs overseas and i remember just going through the binder and writing down you know a lot of these jobs you know 22 years old you were a dorm parent or you were a lab assistant right and i'm like i'm you know looking for who's going to actually let me teach because that's what I'd done my senior year in college. And so I there was a school in Hong Kong and there was a school in Cairo were the two places that I that would have hired me to actually teach.

And, you know, again, my criteria where I want to teach and I want to leave the country. And so, yeah, the school in Hong Kong worked out and, you know, that's probably the next big chapter of who Jeff is, is going there. So I moved there. Again, things you remember, right?

Like I remember my mom saying, you know, well, I wasn't sure if I wanted to do this. And she said, listen, if you take the job, it's one year, right? Like, so, you know, see how it goes. And as I think you may know about me, right, that one year turned into 14.

So yeah, so that was what I was, you know, again, like, I think looking back, I don't know, there's not some mastermind plan behind all this. This is just me trying to be authentic and trying to learn more. And we heard that you taught at the Hong Kong International School. So does that school, was that kids from all over the world, not just from Hong Kong?

I mean, the Yeah, it was definitely, I mean, international, there's kids from all over. Hong Kong has changed, you know, quite significantly in the last 30 years. You know, 30 years ago, it was still part of the British, it was a British colony. But the school itself is an American curriculum, so it's accredited by WASC, which does a lot of international schools in Asia and some schools in California.

So it's an American curriculum. So the kids graduate with an American diploma. In terms of who was in the school when I was there, it was probably 60 to 70% ethnically Chinese, but that would include kids from Hong Kong, kids from China, and American, you know, Chinese Americans, right? So, you know, that was the, and then I think inside of each classroom, you know, or if you break it down a different way just by passport it was probably 60 american passport holders right uh so a much bigger school too than us um not like a massive school but you know 200 kids per grade approximately what do you keep teaching kids from so many different kind of nationalities places backgrounds really do for you i mean obviously kind of living in hong kong already from the like from the bat changes your perspective about a lot of kind of stuff so when you mix that in with teaching kids from so many different places around the world what did it kind of change your perspective on just life overall i mean i i always found it to be a bit um exhilarating frankly to be uh you know hong kong is is quite cosmopolitan um the you know people in my wedding party, right?

My best man is from New Zealand. The emcee at our wedding is from Australia. So I really enjoyed, I don't know, it's kind of hard to describe. It's just, it's quite exciting.

I mean, I brought something, let's see, it's kind of a tangent, but I, And from a young age, I always like to collect coins and something that I, you know, as in terms of a show and tell, this is a pretty cheap, you know, like $2 Hong Kong purse. But I just from a young age, I've always loved coins and I keep this with me. I think, Charlie, I would I keep this around because I'll use it for coin flips for PF. I really get when I judge public forum debate and I go into the room sometimes and the kids say, we've already done the coin flip.

Say, no, no, I get that. You know, I'm the judge. So I, you know, I'll say, do you want to use the, you know, the Australian coin with the kangaroo on the back? You want to use the, you know, the funny, you know, ridge shaped Hong Kong dollar.

And this is a special 1997 one that's got twins on it. Right. So, no, I just think like every coin, every country tells a story. And I think that's the same way when you're in an international context, like you really can't make any assumptions about anyone. they've got something unique and special about them so yeah I think it you really can't make a lot of assumptions and then by the flip side I still remember quite formatively I think I'd been in Hong Kong for a few years and again things are changing but it used to be quite common that the US, an aircraft carrier would be given permission to dock in Hong Kong at Thanksgiving.

And so a lot of families would fly up to Hong Kong. It's easier to get to Hong Kong than it was to get into China. You need a visa, bit of a pain in the butt to get the Chinese visa, whereas Hong Kong, not quite so hard. And I remember standing in line in the ATM behind a few different, you know clearly some some navy some sailors and you know these guys different skin colors from different places in the country different accents i remember thinking to myself like you know i know that in terms of culture upbringing uh education so many things like i'm very very different from these sailors but i also it really struck me like i have so much more in common with these guys than i do with people on the streets in hong kong um and so i think it uh I think inside of this country I think especially lately the last 10 years people don really do a good job of we look for things that divide us and being outside of the country for so long it's a little bit easier to recognize that there's so much more that unites us.

I know that sounds cliche, but it really is true. And now moving to a different chapter at the Shaker Campus at U.S., how did you end up there, and then I guess what were your first impressions coming from international school and then what was your biggest adjustment coming to teaching in all boys middle school um it was you know my i did a demo lesson i came back to the to ohio um for other personal family reasons we really wanted to get back to ohio um as you know my wife is from england um we wanted to be closer to family and we thought it'd be easier to get all of us to the the United States than it would be to get all of us to England. My demo lesson was fun because I, you know, certain certain ultra aspects, something that I always did when I taught history full-time. So I really try to emphasize having conversations, right?

I think you probably had graded conversations in middle school in grade eight and that was something that I, in your global classes and that was something that I started and I remember my demo lesson, you know, I had a lot of plans and backup plans, like you don't know what the context is, you don't know how it's going to go and that group of students, like they just, it was just, there were so many risk-taking conversations whereas in Hong Kong it really was hard sometimes to get the kids to take a risk and to say, you know, make a suggestion. I think that Americans being spoken as a general group of people is generally true. Getting to U.S., I mean, so having gone to St. Charles, I thought, you know, I wasn't put off by an all boys school.

I went there, I thought it was fine, right? I really enjoyed that aspect. I think that there's something that there's a level of cohesion that you experience as a student at an all boys school that I was kind of excited for. I really enjoyed it as a student.

And so I was excited about that aspect as a teacher. I did, I'm trying to think, were you all at the Shaker campus before we redid the reception area and the commons? Yep. Charlie was, I was not, yeah.

So remember what that looked like, Charlie, right? Like it was dark wood, pretty low ceiling, right? And there's portraits of all the headmasters. Yeah.

And so you walk in and it kind of gives you a bit of a. I wasn't sure, you know. I wasn't sure of the vibe, right, like, is this place the kind of place that's going to let me have conversations with kids, it's going to let me push the envelope a little bit and we take risks here. So it came to U.S. with my hair about, I don't think I can put it in a ponytail yet.

And so part of coming to the U.S. was I just thought like, I think it was in the handbook. I think it, I don't know if it still is, but your hair is not supposed to touch your shoulders. I don't know if that's gone. But I just thought, well, so the students can't have their hair touch their shoulders, can I?

So I wanted to see, you know, like there's value in respecting the past and having traditions. I wasn't sure about how much in the past U.S. was when I first joined. And I think it's cool. I really think U.S. does a good job of honoring traditions but not getting stuck in the past, right?

Not holding on to things that don't work anymore. And I don't know. been this is my eighth year at the school jack um in a different role uh and i think it's um i don't know no i really i really like the place and my boys are there and it's they're doing really really well um i think it's a pretty special place uh so i feel quite lucky to be there i'm still you know i wanted to be close to family um and so my mom and dad um my dad still works. My mom's best. She's a full-time grandma.

And I get to see them pretty often, you know, not weekly, but certainly monthly. So it's been good. I did, there was definitely culture shock, though. We live now, we live at the upper school.

I'm in the stables, right? The other end of this is Mr. Perry's apartment. But when we first moved to the U.S. and moved to the country, I was pretty close.

I was, you know, a 15-minute walk from the school. It was the house we bought. And, like, Americans say, you know, like, how are you doing? But they don't, that's like a, you're not supposed to say how you're doing.

And it took me a while, a few months to, you know, stop telling everyone, well, I'm doing this, I'm doing that, right? There was definite reverse culture shock. I mean, I've been in Hong Kong from when I was 22 to 36. And so, you know, there's things I hadn't done.

Like I hadn't registered a car at the BMV because in Boston I wasn't driving. There's so many things that, that, you know, I'd enter these social situations with that I'd never experienced before, but I'm clearly an adult. Right. And so I tell people I'm just pretending to be American.

Right. Like I think that I think I've settled down a little bit now. I feel pretty acculturated back into the country, but it was, uh, it was more than a couple of years that I felt, you know, I was just, just, and I don't know, it's hard to describe, but you're just, you're constantly like replaying a conversation. Did they mean that?

Did they mean this? Did I get that right? Um, so that was part of coming to the United States for sure. That's interesting.

Then I guess you mentioned that your indifferent role today is the enrichment specialist and I guess at what point do you start caring or I guess was this always something you cared about about how kids learn as much as what they learn? I think actually so so most of my career with teaching history but if you look at history I mean and and most of my career teaching middle school the content of what you teach is not really going to stick um so i think history is a bit of a unique discipline like that because you know things don't it's not like you do the presidents again necessarily like you might you might do it in you know you might have u.s history in sixth grade and then you have it again in 11th grade right but that five years like you're gonna forget most of what you you did learn um and so i i've always been in terms of a history teacher i was always focused on the skills um as opposed to the content. I really loved lessons where you can interact with a primary source, a photograph. I think we still do it in the grade seven curriculum, the geography curriculum.

Here's a photograph. Here are three locations where that photograph could be. Where is it? And so that sort of sleuthing, puzzling, like that's a skill that uh maybe you're going to forget that lesson you might forget some most of the geography but you know knowing how to tackle that how to tackle a source um you know i'd be pretty intentional in you know seventh and eighth grade you know like an ap test right you're going to have a unseen document on that if you're taking an ap history test right so you're going to have to read something and make sense of it so so that's the skill that i was always more excited about as a history teacher.

I think my role now is really fun. It's really special because, you know, I get to work with, you know, I help provide programming and I work with kids from four years old up to 14. And so I get a pretty unique vantage point on, you know, how do we provide opportunities for students? What kind of extra things do we offer?

And how are we, I mean, you guys know, I mean, I was in your classes when you were doing the eighth grade speaking contest, right? So, if that's a thing that we want to have the students do in eighth grade, what are some things that are happening before that? Like, how can we prepare them for these experiences? So I think it's a pretty unique and special job I get to think more long-term about and then we'll think more systematically like what can we offer, not saying you have to do it, but what can we offer to students.

I really like that aspect of it and it's also, it's never boring right like you know you, well I was supposed to be with with kindergartners today. We're off school today, so I'm going to reschedule that. But I have a lesson with kindergartners where I was going to do something about Ernest Shackleton and leadership, you know, the guy who got stuck in the ice in the Antarctic. And then I think I was going to meet with fourth graders at lunch about a speech, a new speaking showcase.

And then I have a sixth grader who won the spelling bee so you know my day is is full of things that uh i'm always excited it's always something new so it's fun you know switching over to kind of debate side at us you coach middle school speech and debate when did the debate come a big part of your life and how has that experience happened um so so i was interviewing with miss arnu and she said hey you know so like part of you're going to be a history teacher we want you to do uh something else significant, right? Like coaching. And she said, I really want a debate coach. And I said, you know, I've never done that.

And she said, I'd really like a debate coach. And, you know, I'm interviewing for a job. And I said, okay, I'll be your debate coach. And, you know, there's a decent amount of overlap with critical thinking and research from a history teacher perspective.

So, I don't know. I also, I still remember the first year of coaching debate and speech and debate. And as you know, Charlie, I mean, these are long Saturdays, right? sometimes we leave at 7 a.m. this coming next month the state tournament's down in Columbus so the bus is going to leave at 5.45 so these are long days and I remember thinking after the first few tournaments I was like, I really like this, this is a bummer because I really don like spending these long Saturdays doing this but I think that what I like about debate and I think one of the things that I always you know I don want to say struggled with but I think one of my you know one of the constraints when you're teaching a regular, you know, bell-scheduled class, you know, kids have to be there, right? And there's a bit of an artificiality, you know, like the kids have have to be there from this time to this time and you know like once it's over they go on to the next thing um and i think that what i really liked about debate what i like about a lot of the offerings that we have is that these are these are things that people sign up for right um these are things that students think like i'm going to put in the extra effort for this um you know like both of you did really well on your eighth grade speech right and that was clearly something where you chose to put extra effort into it.

And I think speech and debate, I think it's real. And all the programming we have, right, these are kids that are signing up to do more. So I think it's, it's, I really think a lot about what's the environment I want to build in these activities that's going to reward kids who want to put in more work. Speech and debate, Like we have the most probably the most competitive district in the state in terms of the competition.

And so you get you know, we have straight A students, kids that are absolutely crushing it on the standardized tests. And they come up against other kids just like that. And I think that's invaluable because a report card, you know, that that you're you're you know, that stuff stays inside of the of the classroom. right like that's you know maybe when you get to high school that might matter for college but it's still pretty contained it's it's relatively artificial that you know that there will be you guys if you go to you know maybe you get like a master's degree but you've got you know certainly less than 10 years of schooling left in your life right um maybe even less than depending on how many you know how long your graduate degree is maybe five years left right so so grades will stop mattering pretty soon and what's cool about things like debate is that like that that's authentic, right? Like that's a, there's a random person, you know, that's someone, you know, this mom, grandma coach has to decide who is arguing better.

Um, and so I think there's, you know, you kind of go down the line of, of, you know, we have a robotics team, we have a, a science fair, we have a junior model United Nations. Like these are things that are, um, pretty authentic lifelong skills that you get to try now. And so, um, I, I just think, you know, again, and this is Mr. Pierce, like rambling and telling you probably way too much, but I think it's pretty special.

You know, that's a gift, right? When a kid says, I'm going to spend this extra time on something. So I really want to make the environment one where that rewards their extra time. You know, we're not just going to have fun.

We're not just going to play games and goof off, but I want it to be a space where, you know, how far do you want to go? Where do you want to push yourself. We'll see. And you're married to Mrs.

Pierce, who's also a teacher at the middle school. What have you learned from her as a teacher that you think you've kind of adopted yourself? Well, the, you know, what have I learned from her, full stop, that's a, any good marriage and partnership. That's a pretty long list of things, Jack.

But as a teacher, I mean, Mrs. Peters does not have, she does not have half measures. She does not have an off switch. So I think that's something that just as a colleague, right?

Like that's pretty inspiring. I really leaned on her a lot with each aspect of speech and debate. Um, I can give good speeches, but, um, actually, you know, prior to coaching, you know, like my, my big speeches that I gave were speeches at weddings. Right.

Um, and, uh, you know, just as my partner, you know, she was giving me advice on how to do those. Right. Um, and so I've certainly leaned on her a little bit, you know, as a speech and debate coach. Um, but that's, that's the big thing too.

She, she taught you, did she teach you guys? Yeah. Yeah. so you know like she also just there's no sitting still right they're just we're gonna move we're gonna be authentic we're gonna be engaged we're gonna be like full-on right like that's pretty cord i think how she teaches um is that she expects everyone to be present and doing their best and i think that that's um i think that's important right like whatever you do you should do your best version of it right and you also have your two boys at the us so how is it wearing the faculty hat and the parent hat both at the same time um so there's a it's pretty special um you know i think that it's it's unique to when you're a teacher you i didn't realize as a teacher um until i started a family but but that would allow me you know i can really be present in their lives you know like if i don't have after-school commitments i can get my kids at the end of the day um it's really special to to watch your kids you know like to see them throughout the day um but then um i don't know the uh you can find the video of this but uh i don't i don't i don't help judge the spelling bee last year or the year or this year because my kids have been in it and when i was the mc to the spelling bee for the lower school I actually broke down in tears before I even as I was starting because I had a speech I had something I wanted to say but then it sort of overwhelmed me because I was thinking about like telling you know I was telling the boys like we're all so proud of you and then I see my son in the front row and I just like you know I broke down so it's pretty lucky that I can you know help create the kinds of environments that I think are important that my kids get to experience know it's special. Thank you about kind of a legacy question obviously when all said and done in your years down from now what do you hope students like us kind of remember about you like what do you feel like when people say Mr.

Pierce what do you hope is kind of connecting to your name? I think authenticity right I think that that I um I think in my time at us and my time as a teacher uh i i try to be really honest um you know i uh i i brought in my my show and tell objects but you know you guys didn't have me but but when i taught history we do show and tell right and uh i think that that i would you know i had 50 minutes a lesson but i would carve out 10 minutes from the first 30 lessons and you know the first 15 lessons like we are going to listen to our classmates now and you know i'd really you know make that happen and um i always thought that was really special because we got to learn things i mean there was a kid who'd been in the school for a while and in that and then the throw and tell was also it was like a me asking them questions and um you know the rule of it too is that if you don't want to answer the question you don't have to right but if you do answer the question you're going to be honest and i still kind of keep that activity. I think we did that with Coach Friedman, Charlie, during mock trial. You know, I think that that's something that I don't get to do it as much anymore, but I think that being present and then being authentic and listening to each other is pretty invaluable.

And I think the other piece too is that, and where, you know, my current role right now, you know, whatever you want to do, whatever your passion is, whatever you're curious about, like you should do it, right? Like there's absolutely no, who cares what society says you're supposed to like and what you're not supposed to like, right? If you want to go, you know, Junior Fellows Project, which I oversee, right? You want to go in on Formula One, you want to go in on the heart, you want to go in on Chilean dictatorships, like whatever you want to do we're going to celebrate that we're going to give a space for you um so i think that that's the that's the short answer authenticity fairly you know mr pierce you've lived a really unique educator life studying history at harvard getting a master's in educational technology at michigan state which we haven't talked about but it's another huge most of your career kind of teaching hong kong then coming back to to us in 2018 and then now you're wearing kind of these millions of hats with enrichment, research, debate, showing up for kids after hours, and also kind of being a dad to US boys.

So on the days when you're tired and when the calendar is packed, what is your why? What is the core thing that kind of keeps you showing up, pushing students and making them keep on keeping on? What is my why? I will apologize, gentlemen, that prior to being invited to join you on the show, I hadn't watched very many of your episodes.

I should have been because you've interviewed some really cool people. But I did know that this question was coming. So what is my why? I wrote down some notes.

I mean, the two things that I tell my boys, I think they apply to everybody I work with and you know all the students I get a chance to work with and the two things that we really emphasize in the family are that you need to make the world a better place right um however that looks right like picking up trash or going into a career where you can really save lives who knows right but we make the world a better place and the other thing that we tell the boys is that you know pierces can do hard things and that idea of persistence right like that um you know and then a lot of times i'm finding like the hard thing is the point right like it shouldn't be easy um yeah you could have the ai write it for you but that's not the point right the point is to do the hard thing so i i still i think that that still guides me right as an individual um you know i try to seek out and do hard things still and uh i try to make make the world a better place. So that's my, that's my why right now, gentlemen. Well, Mr. Pierce, it's been great having you on the show today.

Thank you so much for taking the time to share your insights and experiences with us. To our listeners, thank you so much for tuning in and we'll hope you'll join us next Wednesday for another episode of The Trish Show. Thank you, Mr. Pierce.