Welcome to Students Incorporated, a podcast where we dive into relevant topics and issues
related to the world of business, technology, education, and design.
I'm your host, Mr. Jason.
Episodes include student conversations, interviews with thought leaders, and inspirational stories
with an international flavor.
This podcast is created and produced with the help of students from the International
Community School of Bangkok.
In today's episode, we explore the topic of past to present, and I'm joined by our student
co-host, Lion and Linda.
We also welcome our special guest, Mr. Luke.
But before we jump into our interview with Mr. Luke, I'll turn the mic over to our co-host.
Thank you, Mr. Jason.
And now for our quote of the day.
Our quote comes from Winston Churchill.
He said, success consists of going from failure to failure, but loss of enthusiasm.
Good words to think about, especially as we have started a new school year.
Don't lose your enthusiasm, even if you have a failure.
But before we get to Mr. Luke, here are some headlines from our news desk.
In our own school, the cafeteria has been renovated, but the school food is still the
same.
In other regional news, storm Mulan hit Bangkok, leading to massive traffic jams and long delays.
Students were eagerly waiting for a flood day.
An interesting development is that scientists are looking to revive the Tasmanian tiger
that died out in the 1930s.
Thank you for those headlines.
Now let's jump into the first part of our segment with Mr. Luke.
I'll hand the mic back over to my co-host, as they have some great questions they'd like
to ask you about your past to present journey from teacher to headmaster.
Our first question for you is, which high school did you attend?
Oh, thanks, Lion.
I attended a huge public high school in Tennessee, Cleveland, Tennessee, called Bradley High
School.
It was a very large school, 3,000 students in the school.
I think I had over 800 people in my graduating class.
So really kind of the classic public school experience in so many ways.
Nothing like ICS.
I didn't know anyone outside of my kind of immediate circle.
So yeah, large high school experience.
Interesting.
Our next question is, what were your favorite or least favorite classes?
Oh man, I wasn't the most studious student in high school.
I was much more concerned about friends and girls and sports than I was about academics.
But if I had to say what were my favorite and least favorite classes, definitely my
favorite classes would have been like PE, art.
I took several pottery classes in high school because that's where all the girls were.
I really love PE classes.
Anything that was not focused on academics or more focused on hanging out and having
fun.
That was great.
I took a class where you actually learned how to drive.
One of my favorite classes.
My least favorite classes, I was fine with most academic classes except math classes.
I was really terrible in math and I did not enjoy it.
So yeah, but I guess that would be my least favorite.
I didn't know we also liked girls a lot, Mr. Luke.
Anyway, our next question is, what was your most embarrassing moment in high school?
Oh, Lion, I think I had many, many embarrassing moments throughout high school and many of
them revolved around asking people out on dates.
So that was always super embarrassing.
But I think if I had to think of the actual most embarrassing moment, I would say I think
it was my senior year one morning early in the school year I was driving to school and
I was driving too fast and trying I was in a rush to go pick up my friend.
We were actually going to go get breakfast before school.
So I was trying to pick up my friend, get back to breakfast and then go to school.
So I was driving too fast, driving a little recklessly and I hit a truck that was in front
of me and completely destroyed my car.
It like rolled off the embankment and I was okay.
Everything was fine.
But then after the accident, when I walked back up to the road, I realized that I'd hit
a truck full of vegetables.
They were taking vegetables to be sold somewhere, I guess.
And so there were vegetables all over the road everywhere.
And this was like, I don't know, maybe one or two miles from my high school.
So keep in mind that 3000 people were trying to get to my school.
So they see me standing on the side of the road, my car destroyed and a truck that I
hit that was also pretty destroyed and vegetables everywhere.
I got teased about that a lot actually.
It was pretty fun.
Most people deal with failure at least once in their lives.
How did you move on from failing an exam or a test?
I've definitely dealt with failure way more than once in my life.
I had lots of opportunities for growth through failure.
I would say honestly for me, I wasn't, again, I wasn't the best student in high school.
So I actually didn't care about failing tests.
I didn't really fail classes, but I was a solid C student.
But if I failed a test or something like that, I just didn't care.
One thing that I did care about, I was involved in sports.
I was really involved in wrestling when I was in high school.
And so I really, really cared about being successful in that.
And I also dealt with a lot of failure in that area too.
So anytime that I lost a match or kind of had a bad practice or something like that,
it was super frustrating.
I was, I don't know, I guess a bit of a perfectionist.
I wanted to be, I wanted to win all the time.
So it was really hard to deal with.
But luckily I had some mentors in my life that actually helped me kind of process through
that to be able to realize that you actually learn way more from failing than you do from
succeeding.
And when I kind of look back on it with that mindset and that perspective, I would say
I can, I completely agree.
I've learned, I can still remember to this day many of the matches, wrestling matches
that I lost where I can't really remember many that I've won.
And thinking back on what I learned through those experiences and through those kind of
hardships and whether it would be a mistake that I made or really just at the end of the
day, this other person was better than I was, right?
And kind of learning through that as well.
So yeah, lots of failures.
Anytime you're in sports, you're never going to win all the time.
So yeah, I learned a lot from that.
That's a very great advice.
Thank you, Mr. Luke.
Now, what was your favorite memory from high school?
Anything in particular that you really enjoyed?
I had a lot of really great memories, Lion.
I think again, kind of the classic high school experience.
I was super involved socially.
So I was more, I think most of my memories revolve around either sports or kind of like
after school social things.
We had different school kind of functions every year, whether it be like big dances
or people had these huge parties at farms and things like that.
There were not school sanctions, but there were school events for sure.
That was super fun.
I think being involved with the wrestling team was a huge part of high school and would
definitely have to be up there as some of my favorite memories.
Also was part of the cross country team when I was earlier in high school.
And I really enjoyed that and made some really good friends.
But I think like most people, just kind of moments with friends really stand out for
me as pivotal moments in high school.
And then trips, I would also say trips.
We didn't go on school trips like ICS students do for salt or anything like that, but we
had athletics trips, wrestling trips.
So the wrestling team that I was on, we really were like a family and to be able to travel
together, we traveled all across the Eastern part of the United States.
So that was definitely the most enjoyable part of high school for me.
Cool.
Our final question for this segment is what inspired you to become a teacher?
Yeah, great question.
I took the long road to becoming a teacher.
I tried out several other different things right out of college and kind of had different
ideas of what I wanted to do.
So I think I was 30 by the time I actually got into teaching for the first time.
And a couple of things I would say.
First of all, I had a teacher in college who really inspired me.
He was a history professor.
I was a history major.
He was an amazing, unbelievable teacher, like lecturer that just kind of really just kind
of talked most of the class.
We had class discussions and things like that, but he was this incredible storyteller that
was really able to make history come alive for me, which I had never experienced.
So I ended up forging kind of a good relationship with him throughout college and he became
kind of a mentor and we would go to his house for dinner, go out and get coffee.
But then also, so yeah, I think the thing that kind of cemented it for me was my wife
was in this graduate program through her college and she had the opportunity to go to Ghana
in West Africa to do her student teaching.
And honestly, I wasn't a student, I wasn't anything, but they invited me to go because
they needed another male on the trip.
They didn't want to, there was 10 girls and one guy at that point.
They didn't want to send to sub-Saharan Africa without another male student.
So they asked me to go along and just kind of like be there as kind of the trip leader.
And while I was there, in order to not be bored, I ended up actually teaching in a middle
and high school there, some social studies classes just for fun.
And I absolutely loved it.
And I remember my mentor teacher one day, her name was Beauty actually, and she had
watched me teach and I walked out of the class afterwards and she was like standing there
and there was like tears coming down her face and said, God made you to be a teacher.
And I remembered that like completely cemented in my heart.
I'd already been kind of feeling that way because of this relationship with this professor
that I had, but that really kind of cemented in my heart.
They're like, okay, yep, this is what God has for me and this is what I want to do.
And with that, we'll be right back in a moment with more from Mr. Luke, teacher, educator
and headmaster extraordinaire.
One, two, three, four.
Our show doesn't really make any profit and people like the class of 2023 keep us on the
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So here's a message from them.
Listen up, everyone.
ICS carnival is happening this Saturday on September 3rd.
Come on out and support the cause and the seniors.
Come experience being lost in Japan, watering through the cat cafe, going through the amazing
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Come to support the cause of 2023, especially Linda's Butterfly.
Okay, we are back with our part two with Mr. Luke.
It's always fascinating to hear the personal journeys of people we know.
With that said, let's jump back into our questions.
Thank you, Mr. Jason.
Let's start off with how many years have you been part of the ICS community?
I've been part of the ICS community since 2009.
So my family and I came, my wife and I came with a one-year-old son in 2009 where I taught
middle school social studies for two years.
And then actually we went back to the United States for a year after that and kind of thought
that our time at ICS was over.
But then God brought us back the very next year by I think Christmas of that year that
I had left, I knew that I was coming back.
So it was great.
And then so we came back in 2011 and I've been here ever since.
So I think this is our 13th or 14th school year.
And obviously I made some changes through there.
I shifted when I came back.
I was a high school teacher.
I taught world geography and modern era history and then moved into the high school principal
position.
And now my second year as the headmaster.
Our next question is how was your transition from being a teacher to a principal?
Yeah, I think honestly Linda, the transition from teacher to principal was probably like
the biggest one that I experienced.
I really, really loved teaching and I think most days I really enjoyed every aspect of
teaching.
So kind of at the same time I did want to be a principal and move into administration
eventually.
I didn't think that it would come as soon as it actually did.
So it was a bit of a transition.
As a teacher I always tried to be super relational with students.
I tried to get students to, I was more concerned about them really getting kind of being inspired
and enjoying the subject than I was with the actual like details and information that they
were learning on a daily basis.
I felt like if students could really enjoy the subject and be really genuinely interested
in the subjects that I were teaching that the knowledge would come because they would
want to learn it more themselves.
So I was very intentional about that and relational.
So obviously when I moved into the principal's position it's a different role and you can't,
my role wasn't trying to inspire students to love what I was doing because I was a high
school principal.
I know a high school student is going to love all the things that a high school principal
has to do because there's other things that come up whether it's through policies or discipline
or whatever it may be.
So that transition was actually kind of difficult.
I always felt like I was really student focused as a teacher and I think that I tried to maintain
that as much as I could as a principal but it's just different.
I don't have the relationships with a hundred students like I did when I was teaching all
the time.
So it was actually challenging in a lot of ways for me but I found different ways whether
it's through life groups or leading various student groups or speaking in chapel or whatever
it may be.
I tried to find different ways to connect with students on a different level.
I just want you to know Mr. Luke a lot of us do love you as a headmaster and principal.
Thanks a lot.
You're the best.
I've got a very good question for you.
You could have chosen any sort of principal to be.
Serious, intimidating, cool, good cop, bad cop.
How do you decide what type of principal you wanted to be?
That's a great question and I think well hopefully no one ever thought I was intimidating.
I don't want to be an intimidating person.
I think that was actually kind of hard because I went from being a teacher to a principal,
a teacher that I think most people would have thought I was fun and cool and not so serious
to a principal where there are days where you have to be serious.
There are conversations that I had where I had to be serious.
I couldn't be fun or cool or funny or I think I could always, I always try to say okay I
can always be nice no matter what the situation is I can be nice even if a student's getting
disciplined I can be nice about it.
And I think the kindness was kind of the most important thing to me that students even through
discipline or even through hard conversations or whatever it may have been kind of tough
situations I tried to be kind.
So I wouldn't say that I had an actual mindset of okay I want to be this type of principal
but more kind of adapting and adjusting to whatever the situation is.
I mean in throughout the school day you encounter hundreds of different things as a teacher
or a principal or any adult working in the school or a student being in a school.
So I think you just kind of had to adjust depending on the situation.
My question is what is your daily routine now as the headmaster?
What are some of the tasks you generally have to complete on any given day?
Yeah good question.
Daily routine it depends on the day.
I usually get up pretty early.
Sometimes that involves a workout whether it's going swimming or running or biking something.
I try to stay active as much as I can so that my day always starts with coffee because I
couldn't survive without that.
And then I usually get to school somewhere around 6 a.m. usually in the mornings that's
kind of a nice hour of the day where there's less interruptions and less things happening
because there's not many people here.
And then throughout the day you know general tasks honestly it depends on the day.
I'm in a lot of meetings with a lot of different people.
I typically work most closely with the rest of the administration team so Mr. Steven and
then our division principals.
I work very closely with our principals helping them supporting them in whatever way I can.
I'm trying to make sure that they can do their jobs to the best of their abilities.
My job obviously involves a lot of communication with the community whether that's with teachers
and staff here on this campus or our parents and students as well.
So I would say those are some of the daily routines.
And then I try to be as present as I possibly can on the campus just making sure that you
know I really enjoy getting out and talking to students during lunch or after school going
to soccer games or other sports activities that are happening after school and kind of
being part of the community in that way.
Very fascinating Mr. Luke.
Now our next question is do you have any funny anecdotes from when you were principal or
now as headmaster?
The headline there's a lot.
There's a lot of funny things that happen.
I always found humor in when students like got in trouble.
Not that they got in trouble but the way that people try to get out of getting in trouble
is actually the funny part.
But there's some privacy issues there so I won't tell any of those stories specifically.
I've always enjoyed fun things that students do.
School teachers have always been fun with me.
I've had really great relationships with a lot of the high school teachers specifically
because I was in the high school for so long and kind of bantering back and forth with
teachers or I had a life group one year that liked to play pranks on me and I came into
my office one day that was not a life group day but they turned everything in my office
upside down and I had no idea.
When I walked in I was like what is going on?
It took me a week or so to figure out who did it and why they did it.
So yeah little things like that.
It makes life enjoyable.
Our final question is if you could sum up your experience as the headmaster so far how
would you describe it?
My experience as a headmaster specifically that's a tough question.
So I started the job last year obviously after Mr. Darin retired and we kind of had several
administrators that moved positions.
So kind of moving into the headmaster's position in the middle of a COVID pandemic was not
ideal by any means.
I felt like a lot of my job last year was COVID related and COVID focused whether it
was communication with parents and students and teachers and the rest of the administration
or kind of working with Ajahn Aung San, our TIE Director on getting the school reopened
and kind of making sure that we were doing everything that we were doing there.
So that was super stressful.
That was honestly on a daily basis not the most enjoyable experience.
There were many days where I was like man what have I done?
Because I went from being the high school principal which I can genuinely say I enjoyed
almost every single day to being a headmaster where it just wasn't as fun and enjoyable
and fulfilling as being the principal.
Obviously things changed.
Things got better over the course of the year and I think I started to settle in finally
and it's been fun.
It's been a learning experience.
I'm still learning each and every day because now we're kind of starting this year and it's
kind of everything for the first time all over again because last year was so unique
and so different.
But I really am enjoying it.
My wife was asking me last night actually do you feel like you're enjoying your new
job and I'm like yeah actually I do.
This time last year I don't know that I could have said that but right now I do feel like
I am and it's great.
Looking forward to continuing.
Okay well unfortunately we are running out of time and have to end this segment with
Mr. Luke.
Any last words of advice for our listeners before we sign off?
Oh man I'm not the best with advice.
I don't know.
Be kind to one another.
Love each other.
And yeah never pass up an opportunity to show someone love.
As we end this episode we'd like to say a special thank you to our listeners for joining
us.
Please stay tuned for the release of more episodes as we continue to dive into more
topics and interviews relevant to you our listeners.
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Thanks everyone for tuning in and until next time we're your students incorporated where
your voice matters.