Business to Education with 2026 Vermont Teacher of the Year Linda Alvarez 

Please note, this transcript is generated by AI and may include some errors. 

Spencer Payne: Okay, here we are with another episode front of the class real stories with real educators and our real educator today is Linda Alvarez. Linda, can you please introduce yourself as you would when you meet other educators? So maybe what you teach, where you teach, how long you've been doing it, maybe a fun fact. However you like to introduce yourself. Can you you share us a little a little bit about who you are?

Linda Alvarez: Yes. Hi Spencer. I am Linda Alvarez and I am the 2026 Vermont teacher of the year. I teach entrepreneurship, marketing, and management at the Windham Regional Career Center. That is located in Southern Vermont. And fun fact about me, I've lived in three states for a proportionate amount of time in my life. And we recently moved to Vermont, well, 10 years ago, because my husband had never lived in the snow.

Spencer Payne: Well, congratulations on your win. after his first winter of snow, that didn't deter him to say like, out. He wanted more?

Linda Alvarez: Thank you. He wanted more. Every year, steadily, we've gotten more. So it's been exciting.

Spencer Payne: Nice. And what were you doing before, before teaching? Because you do have a background that's interesting. I will, I will say, I don't want to spoil it, but I would love to hear a little bit. What were you doing before you got into your career in education?

Linda Alvarez: Okay. Well, I decided to relocate down to Florida when I graduated from high school. And after my first year of college up in Michigan, I was born and raised in Dearborn, Michigan. And so I decided to move to Florida and the University of Florida was on my radar. And I had a couple of different jobs and was looking around and decided that Gainesville, Florida did not have a coffee shop which was unusual coming from the suburban Detroit and Ann Arbor area.

So I was about 20 years old and I secured a lease and I decided that I was gonna start a restaurant up. And it was pretty crazy from that moment on. This was back in 1995. So pre-internet, like as far as anything that we have on our phones, think like AOL was online at that point.

So essentially, it was a crash course in business for me. I was able to open like five credit cards in one day because you could do that back then. And I borrowed about $35,000 and bought my equipment and found used furniture and opened up the cafe. And within a year, I had some mentor business people from downtown that wanted me to move into a larger location, which was next to a theater, which was perfect downtown.

 And so I moved and the cafe just went crazy. So I went from a little tiny place to serving over 80 people a night. We had beer and wine and desserts and live jazz. And we were the place that all the UF students would go for a date.

Spencer Payne: And how did you transition from that to education?

Linda Alvarez: Well, my plan had always been to be a teacher. So after about eight years of working pretty much nonstop at the restaurant, I decided that it was time to go back to school. And so I literally wrote UF a letter with my application and I enclosed a list of all of the UF events that I had sponsored over the last nine years. And I said, I have my business here, I have my home here, I can't go anywhere else to school, this is it, you gotta take me, and they did. So I finished my degree, I only had two years left. And so I finished my degree in history, I had a minor in education, and the day after graduation, I was hired at Gainesville High School as a social studies and reading teacher.

Spencer Payne: And now teaching entrepreneurship, can you share a little bit of what are some of the skills that owning your own cafe, what has helped most that's been most transferable to going from business owner to educator?

Linda Alvarez: Well, there's a lot of similarities between being a business owner, a business manager, and being a teacher. The biggest thing is time management and using very little resources to make something spectacular. Also, just being able to problem solve, look at the people that are in front of you, making sure that everybody's happy in education. You have to make sure that everybody's learning. Keeping your cool, you know, being able to dedicate just about every moment of your life to it because that's what's needed to be really effective, at least in the beginning.

And so there was a lot of natural fits. I also learned a whole lot my first few years of teaching down in Florida. And I was super grateful to have a principal and an assistant principal who took me on as my mentors and helped me get my certification in Florida. They helped me get my reading specialist and just really took what I knew as far as management and helped me better adapt it to the classroom.

Spencer Payne: And given your background in business, entrepreneurship teacher, curious, what, if anything, from your perspective, do you see in education where you're like, you know what, maybe we could benefit with a little bit more of a business mind if we approached it to this, this, or this. Anything stand out to you?

Linda Alvarez: there's a lot of things that stand out. fact, am I allowed to talk about other colleges? No, I'm taking a class right now. It's a series of classes for a certificate through Harvard Business School and Harvard College of Education. And it's for like education leaders and also business leaders kind of combined. And what they've done is they've created this certificate program where we talk to each other and try to see how business can better help education and how education can better help business. So I actually just finished one of the classes this morning. Like strategic planning is something that's really something that's looked at in business.

And in education, it's slightly different. Goal setting we have a lot of in business, and there's goal setting in education, but it's usually based on so many different parameters that it's hard to have like one goal. And so I think something that I see a lot more crossing over as schools coming up with effective mission statements and effective visions. And those are things that I teach in management and entrepreneurship. And so like there's that balance between being efficient as a business would be, but having the empathy that the education system needs to have. And so I believe there's a lot to be learned as far as basic business principles crossing over into education.

also being very, very cautious because school cannot be treated like a business. It is a completely different entity. But there's a lot of very, very, very talented and successful managers and business owners who have natural abilities to lead people to do really hard things. And I think sometimes principals and teachers get burnt out because the leadership isn't as effective as it could be for them. And that's not saying that anyone's doing a poor job. It's just, there's different training out there. And I think sometimes in education, we're so focused on the teaching of the students that we forget that we also have to manage ourselves and we have to help teachers and help administrators be the best they can be.

Spencer Payne: yeah, I'd like to dig on that a little bit more in a second, but first you mentioned kind of the power of like the mission statement or the values and you teach people about this in your class. and I, I would be interested in that, but if you asked 10 different teachers, what's the mission of your class or your school, you might, you might get a lot of different answers. Like it might be to raise good kids. It might be to pass the test. It might, it might be a lot of different things. I'm curious. What's the mission statement of your class or your school or like how, how have you helped craft that in a way that's clear to you and your students of like, what are they expecting to get out of a course with you?

Linda Alvarez: Right. Well, it's funny you asked that because in my management class for level one, my students were just given an assignment where it's kind of like a hypothetical. They're dropped in a school that they don't know and they have to go into the high school that we're attached to. And then they have to go around our career center where I teach and they have a list of things that they're looking for. They're looking for artifacts about what they see as far as being important cultural things about the school. they're not allowed to talk to anybody.

And they're not allowed to go into rooms or poke around. They're only allowed to list out what they see. And the reason that's important to vision and mission is because when you walk around a school and that feeling you get about the culture is very much there by what is there, like physically on the walls or the kids walking around or what you hear, what you don't hear. And then one of the questions is, can you find the mission statement for either of the schools?

And in our connected high school, it is not posted physically in the building, which I know it is online. Most every school's website has these things available, but it's not in the school. And then even in our school, and I've been saying for two years now, I need to post it more places. Ours is, there's a big poster, framed poster in our office. But if you don't know that's what you're looking at, you wouldn't know that was the mission statement.

And so both of those are pretty ineffective as far as like you said, does everybody know what the shared mission is? And if you ask 10 people, you would probably get 10 similar but very different ideas. And I think that's something that we see when we teach business is that that shared mission and that shared vision is super important because it's the guiding focus. And like even today, one of the things I was learning about a school down in Maryland and a principal had to come in and it was really struggling. And one of the things he did right away was he adopted or adopted this idea of excellence in education, which everybody wants. You know, that's a very not super out of the ordinary saying, but he put it everywhere.

So it was on in the classrooms, it was in murals, it was above where the students that were on the honor roll, it was on the teachers' paychecks, it was everywhere. And then after a couple of years when students were asked what's the thing about your one thing about your school or the mission of your school, they started to say excellence in education. And along with all the hard work they were doing, their their scores were going up and the the successfulness of the school was rising and the overall culture was being built around this idea of excellence. And I think that's a super important concept.

Spencer Payne: Yeah, to pull from a completely random example, which is because it's fresh in my mind. I'm currently reading a book called Wild Bill Donovan, which is about how the kind of office of the strategic services got created in World War II, which I believe is the precursor to kind of like the CIA. And anyway, this man was a, I he was a major in World War I. And he shares that he would make sure there were six questions he always asked all of his troops all the time. And they needed to know the answers to these six questions. And a couple of examples were like, what is your job? And like, what is your current job right now? And another one, I because the importance of there, you know, there's a thing called trench foot in World War One. He's like, are you truly making every best efforts to take care of the feet of your men? Because that was like a very big problem in trench warfare.

And the point I'm making here is, you know, he made it his mission, like to know that like, in order for us to win the war, like I'm gonna hold accountable all of my people to these six questions. They're gonna be front and center, like excellence in education. They're gonna see them all the time. I'm gonna ask them all the time. You know what the standard is that I'm expected, that I'm setting for you. You know where you stand. You know what you need to have ready when I come around. And just setting that standard and holding it is like, unless you do that, sometimes it's very easy to waver. Like, what are we here for? Yeah, exactly.

Linda Alvarez: Right. Right. Well, what unifies, right? I mean, what unifies everybody. So in that instance of the analogy with the soldiers and trench foot, that's something that they all understood. And that's all something that they were really, really trying to avoid because not only could it be really, really painful, but it could be fatal if it got infected. And so for him to rally the troops around something unified, and even though it was a negative, still gave everybody something to work together towards.

And sometimes when things are really hard, you do have to start with something really lofty, like, you know, during a war, living and being healthy, it might not be easy, but that's the goal. you know, in a school when sometimes students are struggling or communities are struggling or teachers are struggling, having that goal that unifies everybody that people really buy into, not just like a fluff goal can really be the start of something special.

Spencer Payne: Yes. And it's got to be repeated over and over and over and over again. So it really sinks in. Like, sometimes people will think like, I said that mission statement at that call that one time. like, no, like you said, it took years before excellence in education became something that was just recited by some of the students in that school. I just share this just because again, if you're, if you're trying to go make change in your classroom or your school, like it takes that unifying message and it takes time and repetition.

Linda Alvarez: over and over, yeah.

Spencer Payne: for that to sink in so that people really know it and feel it and know what it means.

Linda Alvarez: And it really takes sitting down and writing up that plan. And I think that's something that businesses are really good at. They have to write out everything they do and they have to explain out why the choices they're making are the choices they're making, especially when you get into larger companies that have shareholders and they have reports at the end of the year where they have to show every aspect of what's happening, whether it's positive or a negative. And sometimes schools just don't have time or the manpower or person power to do that.

And so it is something I think that more schools are trying to do. Obviously there's a huge business of people trying to get into help schools to do that. And I would hate to see it become something that you pay for your mission statement. But I think there's a lot of grassroots efforts to making sure that students understand what the overarching mission is of the school that they're attending. Like for us, ours is belonging.

I mean, that's a very easy word to describe. Like, what does it mean to belong? But we've really worked hard to, to explain that out. Like not just belong at the school, but belong in the choice that you made to become part of the school or belong as a productive member in the class or belong as far as being invested in your own work so that, you you continue to try to produce, things that are in your best, your best work, especially, you know, at a CTE center where we're actually, you know, our students are usually actually producing something in order to get certified or to get college credits to go on to another thing. And I think that's super important.

Spencer Payne: Yeah, and if you're a teacher out there who's like, well, maybe the mission statement of the school or the district is too big, you can still break this down. Yeah, what's the mission statement of your classroom? What is the vision? What is the...

Linda Alvarez: start in your classroom. Yeah. And sometimes we start with norms at the beginning of the year where we ask the students, like, what do we want our norms to be for this classroom? And then that can really easily develop into some sort of statement. And if it's not as lofty as a mission statement, which sometimes can be, you know, multi-tiered, you can still have a vision statement. Like, I'm going to do my best work or, you know, I'm gonna belong, I want to belong or we belong. I mean, it could be something very easy and that could definitely be done at the classroom level.

Spencer Payne: You mentioned asking your students about those norms. Can you share maybe an example of what shared norms were created by you kind of coming with a perspective, but also including your students in like, how are we going to administer ourselves for the year? Like, what can you share about that?

Linda Alvarez: Yeah, in the beginning of the school year, when I introduce myself, I try not to hit them up with too many things about this is the syllabus and these are the rules and all of those traditional things that a lot of times you get in high school. So instead we do some shared activities as managers because that's what they're going to, they're aspiring to be, especially my level one classes. As managers, if you're meeting a new crew of people, how would you sit down and decide how you're gonna communicate with each other effectively, but also appropriately?

 And so I'll go around the room and I'll ask people, know, how, what's important to us here? And if the class is quiet, because usually they are, it's brand new group of people and they're juniors, I'll bring up like belonging. You what does that mean in the classroom? And usually by the time we're done, things like being courteous to each other or listening to each other or allowing each other to speak or, if you're gonna ask a question about maybe something you don't agree with, you try to rephrase the question first in a way that's not mean-spirited. We have a lot of different work where we do have to critique each other and we have to see what can be done better.

And so we really have to talk to each other about how do we discuss that with each other so that we know like you're not attacking somebody, you know, no feelings hurt here, but I can look at you and say, I don't think that the margins on that paper are right. So what do you think about changing it to this? And then that idea of a student would be like, okay, let's look. We have to be able to have that communication. And if you have really strong norms, which is that idea that there's a shared feeling about how we react to each other, then it just becomes easier, especially with a bunch of students that don't know each other.

Spencer Payne: Yeah. On that note, this, this, this is an interesting one, right? Like you're trying to hold a high standard, create future managers, right? Who sometimes have to give bad information, hard information, hard truths. curious, like any specific examples of like, how, how do you and the team manage, maybe letting someone know if their work isn't good enough or they're not cutting it, but doing it in a way that is still looking out for them, trying to get better. Like, cause there's, again, there's good ways to do that and there's bad ways to do that. Can you share some of the examples of, what are good ways to do that?

Linda Alvarez: Mm-hmm. Right? Well, yeah, and we look at some of those examples of bad ways too. One of the things I do early on is a project where the students will come up with like a logo. Usually we have different school activities or like the library wanted us to do a logo this year. So we're working on that. And it's a cross project because they're learning how to use some like Canva or some other like online editing tools. They're also learning a little bit about design, which is outside of the realm of a lot of these students because they're in a business class.

They're learning how to present something and they're learning how to listen to what the directions are because when you have a client, you want to do what they want. And so in order to get a positive critique or what is it called for positive criticism, word constructive criticism, what we'll do is I'll have everybody work on it. And I try not to get too involved in that point. They all want help. And I'm like, no, let's see what you come up with and then I'll print them all out and I'll put them on like a half piece of poster board.

I'm very lucky because I have multiple classrooms. I've kind of taken over the wing of my building. So I've made like an executive desk, our table area in the one classroom. So we all sit around, there's 14 of us and there's lots of space and I'll give everybody a logo and I'll say, okay, I want you to look at this logo and I want you to write one thing you like and I want you to write three things that you think need to be changed. And they're always like, what? And I'm like, yeah, three things, because there's always things to change in a rough draft of something that's, you know, like this. And then we, we literally set for like two minutes and then we pass the paper.

And so by the time the students get the 14th one, they're reading what other students have written down, no names, you know, it's just what they're writing. They're reading what other students have seen. They might be seeing something else. They might be disagreeing or agreeing with something that somebody else has written, but it's a really gentle way to start introducing, it's okay to say, I don't like this and this is why, or you might wanna try to do it this way. And as a team, being able to talk to each other that way, because when you have a real project and somebody is going in a direction that the team doesn't think, the team has to be able to stand up and say, hey, wait.

We don't want to go in that direction. And if that person then has to stop and either explain themselves out or they switch directions because that's what the team chooses. And it's, that's a learned behavior, especially at teenage years. They don't, they don't necessarily have that ability naturally because of their shyness. There's not wanting to, you know, be the one that stands out. Kids don't want to be different. They all just want to be the same and they want to agree and it's like, well, when we're doing something that's really real, and if you're going to be a manager and you're responsible for this aspect of the business to be profitable and for the employees to be happy and to do their job to the best of their abilities, you need to learn these skills. And this is like baby steps.

Spencer Payne: Yeah, these are such important skills that there's no class for this in at least never any school that I went to of like how to deliver hard news but do it in a good way that can get the other person to agree with you, right? Or whatever, like it's a hard.

Linda Alvarez: Or, yeah, or even just like you've practiced enough with giving news that when there is hard news, people know that you're being sincere. You know, some jobs bosses have really hard news all the time and they still manage and the people still manage to do those jobs. But it's the, it's the overall feeling like that's that culture that you build, which goes back to that vision statement. We belong, so we know we belong, so we can talk about these hard things or make these decisions that maybe not everybody's comfortable with with a project. But we know we all belong together in this class. We're working for this common thing.

Spencer Payne: Yes, important, important topic there of how to be constructive in your criticism in a way that is trying to genuinely be helpful to the person you're giving it to and not be insulting, mean, et cetera. And usually, most, most things like this come down to like, what would you want if you were in the other person's shoes? Would you, would you want honest criticism if your work actually wasn't good enough? So you can make it better. Probably. Would you want to be insulted in front of a bunch of people with that? No.

Linda Alvarez: No, you would not. And so there's like, yeah, there's a really like, there's a line in between those two places. And, and I think effective managers have to learn that. And, you know, when you talk about similarities between business and classroom, well, business people have to learn that people that work as managers or as business owners have to learn that. But as a teacher, you also have to learn that because you have to be able to tell your students that they need to do things better. That's learning. But you have to do it in such a way that they continuously buy into the fact that they're going to do things that are going to take longer. It's going to be harder. It's going to be more work, but that's going to make them stronger in whatever it is they're learning.

So it is kind of a game and you know, there's a lot of psychology behind it, but at the same time, if you really think about it at the end of the day, everybody's happier. The job's getting done better. The manager might not be as stressed out. The employees are certainly not as stressed out. And whatever that is that needs to be completed or be accomplished is getting accomplished in an efficient way.

Spencer Payne: And a lot of what we talked about here is on creating the norms for your class. How do you hold that standard? How do you give that feedback? How, if at all, at the end of a school year, do you look back and kind of judge for yourself how that school year went? Maybe some of it's grades, maybe some of it's quantitative factors but also just for you personally, how do you judge for yourself, like, man, these are the things I want to do better next year. These are the things I did great that I want to keep, that I want to maintain for next year. How do you kind of judge for yourself on your effectiveness as an educator for that particular year?

Linda Alvarez: Well, I try to keep it centered on the students and what they want to do after they leave me. I get my students for two years. For level one, I have them for two hours a day and for level two, I have them for three hours a day. So that's a huge chunk of time that they get to spend with Ms. Alvarez. So I feel kind of responsible to help them, kind of steer them into the direction of making some decisions of what they want to do next.

And because we're a career center, that doesn't necessarily always mean going to college, although I do offer four college classes through my program. So my students leave with 12 business credit hours, which is pretty cool. You know, for me, I look at success with, you know, are my students not as nervous when they have a job interview or are my students feeling more confident when they're writing their college essay?

Or are my students able to write an email because they see something that's not right at school, but they're not nervous about it and they can do it in such a way that's productive. Those things are important. you know, last year I was super, super proud because I had all of my students enrolled in college. And that was part by chance because they all wanted to go to college, but also was a lot of work on everybody's part because, I think over half of them were the first generation or new Americans that had no real support from home to be able to do that. And that was completely awesome. And now I hear from them all the time about what they're doing in college, how they like it, and sometimes even how happy they are that I helped them prepare to do hard things.

Spencer Payne: And what, if anything, are you looking forward to as an educator in the next three, six, 12 months? You pick your time frame. You've got this great recognition, this great award. How do you top that? What you looking forward to coming up soon in the next couple months?

Linda Alvarez: Yeah.

Well, I mean, I just keep focusing on my students. So I have a whole nother group that I'm still getting to know. It's only, you know, the beginning of November. So my level one students, we're still working on, you know, goals and some of them, it's a very, very quiet class this year, which every so often you get. It's trying to get them out of their shells. So for me, you know, I have to keep hyper-focused on making sure my kids are getting what they need out of my classes. But as a professional, I mean, I have this huge opportunity right now. I'm the first ever CTE teacher to receive this award.

And CTE around the country is gaining a lot of recognition and traction. CTE in Vermont has always been something that's been very special. I know for at least 25 years, it's been something that's been regionally dispersed around the state. Vermont, there's 17 CTE centers. And so every high school is attached to one of these regional career centers. So I have five high schools that feed into my class. And that's really special. I, you know, I was just at a agency of education, like retreat on Monday, where the secretary of education invited me to be on a panel, you know, similar to this talking about why CTE important.

You know, the governor was there and he is somebody who went through CTE education and he was actually going to become a mechanic. And then somehow he ended up as governor, but that's a different story. But the idea of they want to know like, why are we experiencing what seems to be a little bit more success? And in that, mean, students that come to us seem to really buy into what they want to do. And they work really hard.

And I think it's because they see that there's something that they're going to gain. So like, for example, our kids that are in our electrical program, when they get done with two years, they're going to be ready to go into an apprenticeship. And that's something that's really hard to do if you haven't been through a program. Or our criminal justice kids get, they get to work with the police and they get to do ride-alongs and they get to be out there and meet people and network so that when they graduate at 18 and you can't become an officer in Vermont until you're 21. But there's agencies now that are like hiring students out of these CTE criminal justice programs because they know we can have them for three years and we can send them to the police academy and they're going to stay with us.

And so these things are all super important. And I'm literally really looking forward to being able to talk about that this year in ways like this, you know, podcast just to get the word out that CTE is not vocab of yesterday. Our kids aren't just taking wood shop. These kids are taking really highly skilled technical classes and they're leaving with industry recognized credentials that can get them a job or get them right into a college and they already have credits or some of the skills necessary to be more successful at the next level.

Spencer Payne: And this is a little off the cuff. So I don't know if you have these numbers, but compared to, I don't know, five, 10 years ago, any sense of how many kids in the state of Vermont or in your particular, uh, CTE, uh, totality, not just your program, but your that the other five or seven high schools you mentioned that roll up into kind of your CTE program. How many students were in there seven years ago versus today? Just trying to get a sense of is this growing? Like, what's the trend? And then what are all the different things that are offered? You mentioned kind of electrical, criminal justice, business, like, what are some other examples of things that are that are offered through that program?

Linda Alvarez: So I think CTE overall in the state of Vermont is growing at a pretty quick rate. mean, we have at our high school, there's about 700 students. And then within the four high schools, the other high schools that feed into us now, know, Vermont's a very small state. So we're a large high school for Vermont, but I think we probably have maybe 1600 students that are high school age in our region. And we have I want to say 250 students. So that's a pretty good number. Graduation rates, we were just talking about this the other day. I think that the high schools around us are right around between 78 and 80 % graduation rate. And I think that we graduate between like 95 to 99%. And sometimes our graduation rate's a little skewed because we have to count students that leave us after the first year and it doesn't necessarily mean that they don't graduate, they just don't complete our program.

So we have a really high graduation rate. You asked about what programs we offer, and I think that's something that's really changed. And CTE education in Vermont, about five years changed from being like a class here or an elective here to this program model, where for two hours a day, for two years, you're in business management entrepreneurship. we have criminal justice. We have electrical trades. We have construction trades. have forestry and natural resources. We have manufacturing and within manufacturing, there's engineering, 3d printing, blacksmithing, welding. Then we have a new aviation program. We have a retired pilot that teaches that and it's amazing. All four of his students last year passed the FAA pilots exam.

So all they had to do now is get into a college or get their hours and they could go work for somebody flying. We have an LNA program and that one's always full. We actually have an adult licensed nursing assistant. So it's our medical program. And so students, even if they don't want to become an actual licensed nursing assistant, they can still take all those other like pre-med sort of classes.

 Culinary is coming back this year. We just hired an amazing chef and I'm out. I'm actually good to help open the restaurant. It's like my dream. So that's super, super exciting. I'm going to try to do some cross between my students and her students, you know, with my restaurant background and her chef background. I think we can make some really fun things happen. And then I think that's all the programs, but there's 11 of them and those are all programs where kids come for two years and when they leave, they leave with, you know, like I said, they're called IRCs, industry recognized credentials and or college credits.

Spencer Payne: And this is all again, public school. this is also all like I'm going to high school. I might as well potentially go get my credits ahead to be a welder or a licensed electrician so that after high school, right, kids who are going through some of these programs might be able to go get a professional license or they got a leg up for free in public school to go get that much closer to have a professional license. And maybe they're out earning at 19 or 20 or 18 when they graduate potentially as a result of some of these programs.

Linda Alvarez: all public. Correct.

They are. Yeah. Yeah. So the other thing that's nice about our programs, because we are through the public school system and we are licensed, all licensed teachers, we get to offer high school credits as well. So not only do they get elective credit, like for example, students that complete my program after two years will also earn two credits for English or if you do the forestry program, you can earn two credits for science. So, know, kids are taking a chunk of time out of their schedule. So we need to make sure that if they're gonna miss, you know, two classes a day at the high school that they're getting what they need.

And so there's a lot of benefits, but yeah, it's completely through the public school system. There's an application process, which is pretty wide open. I mean, we do look at things like attendance and grades and, you know, there's a lot of safety. These programs, a lot of them are very high tech. And so we have to make sure that students can do things safely. And there's all sorts of things we have to keep up with. It's a public school. But at the end of the day, kids that are really interested can get themselves ready. And their junior year, we take juniors and seniors, you have to be 16, they can apply and then they can be part of our programs.

Spencer Payne: very cool. Well, I'd love to hear a couple more stories, just from your time in the classroom, all in from, back in Florida now into Vermont. but any, proudest moments stick out the most after your time as an, as an educator that, that stick out something that still makes you smile or light up or just a special class moment, student, whatever it may be. Any, any proudest moments that just kind of, again, just make you still smile after all these years.

Linda Alvarez: Man. I mean, there's so many. It's hard. I I keep up with some students still from like years ago in Florida. And of course they're all adults with families and things now. One of the students that sticks out because I keep up with him online, he came to my class when he was 16. He came into my world history class, which was a ninth and 10th grade level class. And he had just moved from Cuba.

So he didn't speak a whole lot of English. My husband's also Cuban. And he had the same name as my son, who I was actually pregnant at the time. So every time I would say, can I say his name? Is that okay? I he's an adult now.

I mean, my son's name is Sebastian. So my student would laugh because I would always be talking about Sebastian. And then he ended up, you know, we just kind of really bonded. had a lot of, multilingual training and being a reading specialist and reading teacher. I was able to sometimes help my students that were learning English, master their content a little bit easier. So he ended up taking my world history class. And then I offered an AP European history class to students who didn't necessarily get into like our AP program, because Florida has all these tiers. It's a little wacky. And so he decided he wanted to take my AP class. And I was like, listen, this is like the real deal now. This is the big show. And he's like, no, I'm going to take it. And I said, OK, well, there's no pressure. But if you can get a three, four, or five at this test at the end of the year, they'll give you college credit. And he's like, OK, let's do it. And so all year, we worked and worked and worked, and his writing got better and better and better.

And he did, he earned himself a four, not even a three, but a four on this test. And I just remember that was such a big deal. And then two years later, he was admitted to a new online program for freshmen at UF. And it was just one of those moments where all these things clicked. And I mean, I've had lots of kids like that, where you, I guess there's a couple of different types of teachers out there.

I'm one of those teachers that if students are really invested and they really need help, I'm going to help them as much as I can. As long as they're willing to put in the work, you know what I'm saying? Like, and so we kind of gravitate towards each other. And those moments are really cool. Like last year, two of my students graduated. They're both new Americans and they're both up at a school in Northern Vermont. And both of them came from central Africa, not speaking a lot of English.

You they both lived in camps for multiple years of the, mean, just crazy stories to what we as Americans, you know, experience. And they're both amazing. They both got scholarships. They're both going into finance. You know, the things that they're doing, it's a hundred percent them, but, you know, I like to, I like to think that I help open the doors and they got to decide whether they're going to walk through them or not.

Or maybe I just show them the doors. Maybe I don't even open the doors. But you know what I mean? Like sometimes kids don't know things are out there. And I think maybe that's the entrepreneur side of me. Like entrepreneurs look at a problem and they figure out how to solve it. So I got kids in front of me that don't know what they want to do. They like business. They're going to have to do something with their life because I like to look at them and say, you're going to want some money at some point. know, money does motivate people to go to work.

And it's really nice if you go to work and you like your job because then it makes it easier. So you have something you like and this can make you money. And there's all these things you have to do in the middle. But if you keep focused and you just keep opening those doors, then hopefully you can get the money. And that sounds like a Scarface quote, but no, we won't go there. But you know what I mean? It's motivating and it's also real. Like, you know, some of our kids don't have

Spencer Payne: Thanks

Linda Alvarez: a lot at all. have kids that, you know, they don't even have parents. They're like in the system or they've been adopted or I had a student that was homeless and I didn't even know, I didn't know for six months. And then I was like, how do I not know this? Like, why didn't you come to me? And then there was all of that and, you know, getting help and he's getting ready to go to college, which is really amazing.

But if you don't have that open line of communication or that trust with each other or that feeling that we're here to help solve problems, and we can't solve all the problems, but it goes back to like that mission and vision. Like, what is it? Well, we belong. Well, if you belong and I belong, then we got to make this belonging thing real, or it's just a saying, and then that doesn't work.

Spencer Payne: Yeah. yeah. Thank you for, thank you for sharing all that. like you said, and all that, you know, that scar face, maybe, maybe directional quote, I went up, about getting the money is also like, let's just be honest. That's rooted also in just like, you know, trying to, trying to go live a better life. Right. that's, it's really about just like climate climbing the ladder, living the American dream, trying to do better than the, the, the, what you came from.

Linda Alvarez: You have to look that one up if you don't know it.


Spencer Payne: Like that's really all that's coming from. And when you see somebody who is willing to put in the work, like, yeah, like.

Linda Alvarez: Let's encourage them. Let's show them some of the ways and give them some options that they didn't even know were available to them. And then let's see where they go.

Spencer Payne: Yeah, 100%. 100%. Well, a couple more rapid fire, quick, hitter questions as we get close to wrapping up here. What is will be your number one piece of advice to teachers who are maybe in their first year right now? And they're thinking, Oh, man, this is the real deal. This is a little tougher than I thought. Maybe they're feeling a little overwhelmed. Like, like, what will be the number one piece of advice that you would give to a teacher in their first year who's in that spot?

Linda Alvarez: Right? Yes, and it is.

Well, I am mentoring right now our new chef and she's done all sorts of things, but teaching is new to her. And one of the things that I've had to sit down and say to her is, listen, you're gonna have plans and they're not going to happen. So you need to figure out what is the most important to you in the overall curriculum, like you're teaching culinary. So at the end of the year, what are like, three things you want these students to walk away with. And like that idea of belonging is a big one. Because you have so many things to learn your first year of school, your first year of teaching that you don't even realize until you get in.

And so if you keep hyper-focused on, I know that I'm teaching my students things that are important. We're on track with our curriculum. They are learning. It might not be anything that I thought it was going to be but they are learning and you have the attitude of it's going to get better. I'm gonna get better. I'm gonna get more organized. I'm gonna understand how to effectively lesson plan or how to manage this classroom better, all those things you learn in school. If you really keep focused on it's crazy right now, but I am going to grow just like you do from freshman year to senior year in high school, a new teacher, there are so many things. used to call it, pants on fire year with another teacher I mentored who's our LNA teacher who's super, super good. She was a school nurse forever and a nurse. And I said, listen, this is your pants on fire. Every day you're gonna walk in and you're gonna think you're not prepared. You're gonna feel underprepared. You're gonna feel like, you know, imposter syndrome, but the kids don't know any of that. They don't know that you had five things you wanted to do and you only do one.

So if you don't make a big deal out of it, they're just gonna think you're spectacular anyways. And so new teachers really have to like find somebody to help them with the emotional side of teaching, like that grounded, you're doing a good job, you're going to work every day and the kids are learning something. And all those other things come and it usually takes two or three years before you really have that sense of, I think I know what I'm doing. And I just went through it and I taught 15 years before I started this position.

And I'm on year five and I'm finally feeling like I have like a direction of my lessons. I feel comfortable with some of the projects we do and I'm still looking for new things. But my first couple of years, it was all hit and miss and this worked or that didn't work or how do I present this new hard topic? It doesn't just happen magically. It takes a lot of work and a lot of talking to other people to help you.

Spencer Payne: and what to you is the single number one best thing about this profession, education?

Linda Alvarez: it's just, mean, you know, even way, way back when I worked at a school for students who had really, really severe emotional disturbances, you really feel like you're helping. I mean, you could have a really crappy day. And if you just kind of focus in the car for that 15 minutes where you're trying to decompress and you say, I'm doing something that's helping these kids in a way that I might not even know yet. And that can really sometimes get you through the tough times or the why times or, you I'm not getting paid enough times or, you know, all of the craziness that goes on. I mean, I've had rough principles. I mean, when I started teaching, I think when I was a para, I started at 4.25 an hour. So I'm going to talk about like not making any money. And that was in like 2003. That wasn't even like in the 1900s.

But teachers have all of these pressures and then a lot of young teachers have young families. So you got kids at home and it's crazy all the time. Just really focus on the, I'm doing something good, even if my kids are acting up or even if they don't seem like they appreciate it, they really probably do. And they're just have such difficulties in their lives that they can't give it to you so that you always have to try to give it to them. Give them that sense of, I'm here, this is what we're gonna do, baby steps together, and we're gonna learn together. And then I think it makes it more fun.

Spencer Payne: And anything that we didn't have a chance to explore in this episode that you want to share as final words of wisdom or anything that you did share that's just so darn important. You want to say it one more time relating back to our mission statement and repetition. So any new or repeated words of wisdom.

Linda Alvarez: Man. Yeah, no, I mean, I think that, you know, that personal mission, that classroom mission, you know, getting involved with the leadership committees at your school. If you have ideas that are outside the box, like, don't be scared to go to the principal and say, I have kids that want to do this. I want to do it this way this year. It doesn't have to be like that forever.

I mean, I had a teacher who wanted to do spoken word before it was a big thing. Like now everyone does spoken word contests, but she had students who couldn't write, but they came up with amazing poems. It's like, go to the principal, see if you can do this. Why not? It's all the same, it's learning. So, try to be that person who...fights for what you think is important for your kids that are sitting in front of you. And then the other thing that's super important is never stop learning yourself. Like, I mean, I just keep taking these classes and then when I'm halfway through them, I'm like, why do I do this to myself? Like this program through Harvard I'm doing is hard. It's a lot of work, but I'm learning really great things and that's important.

So I feel like getting really like new ideas through new, really good professional development. And sometimes those are things you have to search out yourself or find that team of teachers that teach like you or go to another school and see who that teacher is that's you and talk to them. And don't be afraid to send an email and say, hey, I teach business down here in Southern Vermont. And I see that you teach business in Albany, New York. What are some things that you do or can we chat one day? And a lot of teachers, they're like, yeah.

You know, they like to make those connections. So put yourself out there and don't be afraid of making mistakes because the kids don't know and you can correct them. And at the end of the day, they're going to learn if you try hard.

Spencer Payne: Thanks so much for sharing your story from a coffee shop owner when there was not one in Gainesville, Florida, which I'm guessing there's many of them today.

Linda Alvarez: Right? yeah, we had Starbucks open across the street from us and that Starbucks closed like two years ago. So we outlived them. It's still there under different ownership, but 30 years later, it's still there. So yeah.

Spencer Payne: Ha! Well, congratulations on that and congratulations on your, I'm sure, well-earned win of Vermont Teacher of the Year. So congratulations and thanks for sharing your story. Appreciate you.

Linda Alvarez: it's so crazy. I'm very honored. Thank you.