Musings with Mr. Lee

As you all know, Mr. Lee is retiring after this year, so I had a chat with him on his journey at New Tech.

Question 1: How did you get involved with New Tech? How long have you been involved at New Tech? 

Mr Lee: I was involved from the very start when New Tech was just an idea in the superintendent’s mind. He sent a group of interested teachers from Coppell High School to Napa, California to study a school that was just like what we see at New Tech High. We spent a week there studying teachers and watching them. The current NTH@C campus was Lee Elementary at the time, and they transitioned Lee Elementary out that summer and then New Tech was created here in Coppell ISD. I have been here since 2008-09. I did leave and go back to CHS for some time and now that I am at the end of my career, I’ve come back, but I’m working in a different capacity.

Question 2: How do you think the school has grown in all your years here? 

Mr Lee: Well, for sure, learners are taking more risks. I see that things like agency are being used in a great way as learners take up learning for themselves. I think projects have also come a long way since we first started. At the very beginning, there had to be buy-ins for trust cards because people wouldn’t wear them; it was a fight but now I never see people arguing about trust cards. I think we have come a long way.

Question 3: What challenges did you face in your role, and how did you overcome them? 

Mr Lee: In my role right now, the challenge that I face is balancing my duties. Getting the Flex Friday schedule published, organizing the tours, and answering questions from parents. I also support and work with the facilitators to be a springboard for ideas and help them if they need something in their classroom or professional learning. NTH@C didn’t have this role when it started, and I think that if I were a teacher here and I had an instructional coach, I would make sure to bounce ideas off of them and use them a lot.

Question 4: What skills do you think will be most important for students to develop to be successful?

Mr Lee: All of the soft skills. I believe that being able to communicate well orally, write very well, and collaborate within groups are helpful. Also, making sure that you are keeping up with technology and that you are on the cutting edge is important. I know that AI is coming into play now. Students should think of its impacts in the classroom. Overall, being a little bit ahead of the curve and thinking about what the students need because the students of yesterday aren’t the students of today and we’re preparing for a different world.

Question 5: How do you think AI will be incorporated into the classroom and do you think that will happen in the future?

Mr Lee: Absolutely. When I first started teaching we used a chalkboard and chalk and we had an overhead projector. We’ve come a long way since then – we used smart boards, we moved into iPads and laptops, and we have Apple Pencils. We are developing fast as we embrace technology and we have figured out how the next generation is going to use this to support them in projects that they need to do.

Question 6: Looking back at your career, what is the most memorable thing you can remember? What is your proudest accomplishment?

Mr Lee: It’s the connections with students that I’ve had over the years. I’ve made some deep connections with students who keep in touch with me and now they’re 40 years old with families of their own. I also think all of the immersion trips are quite memorable. I used to be a Spanish teacher, and I used to take my students to spend a week in Mexico City or Costa Rica and they would stay with families, go to school during the week and they would have some kind of community service in the afternoons. I believe that was a really big accomplishment for me, and I’m just proud to be a teacher and educator and get to interact with kids because that’s my favorite thing to do.

Question 7: What is the one piece of advice you would give to students?

Mr Lee: I would tell students to try hard and be authentic. They don’t have to be the best at everything they do, but they should always try to show up and I think showing up is like winning. If you show up, you are going to win.

Question 8: What do you plan to do after your retirement?

Mr Lee: My long-term plans are to open a records store. I have already bought a domain name called “Heart of Hearing Records” similar to the phrase “hard of hearing”, but with “heart” instead of “hard”. I would like to eventually dive into that, but I want to wait until I retire and have a chance to inhale and exhale because I want it to be a good journey and I don’t want to dive in too fast.

Question 9: Will you visit us here at New Tech occasionally?

Mr Lee: Absolutely! I’d like to come back and sub occasionally. I’d love to come for a Flex Friday and speak. I’d love to bring some records. So absolutely, this isn’t the last of me. I’m not riding off into the dust, and you’ll see me again!