 Mark Shclough, the host of think tech Hawaii's law across the sea program. Today we're going to talk with Wes Porter, an attorney who came across the sea to Hawaii. Wes is a magistrate judge for the US district court for the district of Hawaii. He's also a passionate teacher and coach of life and legal skills for his students, especially young people. And that is what I have asked Wes to discuss with us today. So welcome, Wes. How are you? Good to see you. Thank you for being here. First, I just want to ask you a couple of personal questions. How did you get to Hawaii? And why did you get to Hawaii? What's that about? Sure, I was a Navy Jag. So after law school, I went into the Navy as a judge advocate general or a Jag officer. And I was fortunate enough to be stationed out here at Pearl Harbor, what they call Trial Service Office specific at that time. So I quite literally made my way across the sea. I actually took a naval ship to come out here for the first time. And it was the start of my legal career here in Hawaii. Okay, and now you're a US magistrate judge, but I know that you are very passionate about teaching and coaching. Those are terms that are kind of interchangeable in a way. It's not coaching sports teams necessarily, but it's coaching students, right? And what do those terms mean to you? Yeah, I think by whatever label, we're really talking about connecting with people that are open to learning. And as you suggested, for me, it's the focus is on young people to see where their curiosities lie. If I can be of help, if it overlaps with something that I might have some knowledge and some proficiency and some expertise in, if I can share, and a lot of it, I think of coaching as sort of skill-building more than just information transfer, I think when a lot of us think back on our schooling and who's teaching us and who's coaching us, they have information. They're up on a stage, they're giving it to us. We're sitting there with Notepad taking it down and receiving the information from them. And that made sense by the availability of information back in the day when most of us went to school. And nowadays, because we all have a supercomputer in our right pocket or right next to us within arm's length, now it's more, what skills can you train folks to have such that they can marshal that infinite amount of information and use it to better their path? Okay, so you're trying to make the road to learning a little bit easier than it was, maybe when, at least when I was going to school. And what are your personal experiences about teaching and scholastic coaching? What have you done? What are you doing now? So my personal experiences, I think, I had some of the same educational rigor that everyone else had when I went from class to class and had it force-fed to me and had to spit it out on a one-time exam and kind of made my way grade to grade and school to school in the traditional way. And then I think especially as it related to a couple of different experience, one within athletics and the other was in law school when I started getting to the sort of skills training part of my education. When someone was teaching me how to do something or giving me the tools to sort of take on board the skill that I would have with me the rest of my career, the rest of my life, sort of how to approach something, how to go about handling something, whether it be a trial skill in court or how to handle something athletically, I noticed that my learning style connected up better when I was shown how to do something. It was demonstrated for me. I got to try and fail gloriously with the folks that were sharing it with me and then in sort of a feedback loop, I was given some pointers and allowed to try and do it again and actually work at my own pace and even maybe away from my teacher or coach to get better at it. That's the part that connected with me and that's the part that I focus on now with people that I coach. And what do you do? What are your teaching and coaching? So for me, it's really, if we focus narrowly, I'm a law school professor. I was a full-time law school professor before this job, but I always had my hand in it. I always continue to teach classes. I imagine that someday I'm gonna return to teaching classes just where my heart is. And for my students, really what I wanna do is I wanna teach them to how to listen, how to ask questions, how to construct arguments with actual evidence that's admissible at trial and then how to argue and how to react to arguments at trial. So that's not really a finite doctrinal teaching in law school that one would stand on the stage in front of class and tell the students. It's more, those are skills and techniques and things that we can share with students when they're confronted with their own cases and their own matters and their own things to handle. So what I hear you two are saying too is these are almost, I mean, I'm thinking social skills in a way. I don't know if it is social skills, but you're not just reading the pages in the book, you're actually getting in and practicing and learning how to do something and learning how other people may react and how you should handle a real-life situation. Am I seeing that correctly? Is that right? That's right. And if you think about it, if we were trying to do something with an effect pattern, let's say that was a criminal law effect pattern, just by the process of us asking the right questions of a witness trying to get in the pertinent documents that might relate to that case, instructing the argument by bringing together things that come from different witnesses or different pieces of evidence and then actually standing up and making that argument and reacting to the arguments of others, if you think about it, if the facts of that case happened to be criminal law, you'd be internalizing and understanding some of that doctrine just by working on the skill. Matter of fact, you might even learn it better than if it was just said at you and you wrote it down in a piece of paper to then regurgitate it months later on an exam or I think God forbid the bar exam even years later. So it's really, you're encompassing your life skills, your own life skills, I suppose, into teaching. That's right. Is that right? Yeah. That's right. I think that's how we parent, that's how we mentor, that's how we tutor, that's how remote, I mean, anyone that we're sort of interacting with that expresses some openness to learning, which can be very simple, expressing that openness to learning, we can enter this dynamic, either at a very, very surface level, a guest or an uncle or an auntie that's over for dinner, asking a question about them or what they do shows this openness to learning where that dynamic may take place or following on a day to work and asking questions throughout and taking notes and following up. Now that we've entered a deeper level of sort of being open to learning, but it can take place in one episode, but it can also take place over the course of a semester if you get the right coach that's with you or being on a team for years. I kind of sense though that, I mean, not all teachers are gonna share this viewpoint that you have, yours is more life experience as part of teaching as I see it and as I hear what you're saying now. I mean, is there an issue there? Is that a problem? Yeah, it's a great question. I don't think it all falls on the teacher and I don't think it all falls on the coach. I think if we start viewing, this is a two-way street for the learner and the one who's gonna give the coach that could dispense with some of the learning, it's a two-way street. So if the students, if young people start thinking of themselves having an obligation to this, it's my sort of canned response when someone will come from class and say, oh, we didn't do anything in class today or the teacher did X, Y, Z in class today. Well, my auto response is great. What did you do to correct that? Or what did you do? What questions did you ask to further discussion along? So for the more generalized thing, if you took it out of the law school context and those particular students that have in mind now, if I'm thinking more about whether it's my children or their friends or even younger learners, I talk about it as you have to be present first, then you have to be interested in whatever's being discussed and then you have to be inquisitive asking the right questions, asking any questions sometimes with these kids. And then how can you connect it up? How can you be assimilative? How can you actually connect it up to other learning that you have? So if you think about any young person interacting all the ways and all the adults and all the situations that they interact with, part of it, I added be present because get off your phone, get your eyes up, get be present in a human conversation and an interaction because if uncle that's over at the table for dinner that night is a fireman and even if you don't have an interest in being a fireman yourself or you don't have a particular interest in that life choice, you could be interested in the topic and it might connect up to something else that you know or something else you do have an interest in. So put your phone down, be present, ask questions and then what can it connect to elsewhere in your life? Okay, and you said your heart is into teaching and coaching and how do you get the students though? I mean, I hear you what you're saying but how do you get them to get their hearts into the same type of thing? I mean, do they get rewards or do they understand that this might result in something positive or how do you communicate that? I guess is what I'm gonna ask. Yeah, I think at some level it has to be intrinsic. You have to introduce these topics to them. You have to introduce that the idea that the real reward is if you learn to be interested in other people and to ask them questions and to connect it up with other things you learn you're gonna be probably more well liked in more of those interactions. It's probably going to work out for you in job interviews and other interactions that you have with people in career and business. The idea that you're going up to a teacher after class and asking a question that connects up this with something else you learned earlier and asking about that is that's gonna be favorable for you. So I think it has to be the way I think about our educational journey sometimes is we all figure it out somewhere along the path at least most of us figure it out somewhere along the path and it's when do you figure out how this really connects up to my learning as a person on this planet that's going through trying to figure out what they're gonna do and how they're gonna contribute and how you make it a better place. And so that and that's part of what you're coaching I guess in trying to get across as the coach of these life skills and trying to make sure they understand this and that's part of your coaching, right? That's right and some of these are smuggled, right? I think if you think about the more traditional coaching arrangement, if I'm coaching basketball to a bunch of kids, yeah, I'm gonna teach them a play I'm gonna teach them some of their individual skills and what to do and those they more readily recognize because I'm giving them something that they can put into action the very next practice, the very next game that especially if they have some success especially if it connects up and it works they're looking back on the coach like, okay now I have, I knew who you were before or I knew what kind of resume you gave me but now that I see that you've shared with me something that works now I'm all ears or now I'm wanna listen more. So I think that's the opportunity especially for the traditional coach and I think those of us that have had great coaches in athletics or in theater or music other parts of our lives that are non-academic we know that once they have our ears like that once they've shared something with us that works and that we see some progress from then they could tell us anything about life then we're ears wide open for what else do they have to offer us that can work as I'm on my path and I expect young people to be tunnel vision and to be selfish and to be thinking about themselves that is a news flash that's how we were at those ages too and I think if you share some of this as to how it can work to their advantage in life how it can work to their advantage in business how if they listen to some of these life lessons and ways of going about interacting and communicating with others that it can make their path easier or better or open more doors for them they're gonna be receptive to it. And so it really is you're really teaching them how to live life for the benefit of themselves and the rest of their lives and how they can grow and learn and be successful in life by talking to people basically that's what I hear you saying and that's the skill talking and listening to people. Now I wanna ask with your students do they ever come up with any particular question that they ask you during this conversation or during your coaching? Sure, they wanna know sometimes it's testing to see what is it about the source? Why are you able to give me this information? Why do you have some level of proficiency or expertise? And if we think about it relative to young people if you're an adult and you're a professional and you sort of made it so far you have lots to offer young people. So anyone that tells me they don't have something to teach or don't have something to coach if you know how to tie a tie or you've written a professional email in response to someone or you've negotiated a promotion situation whatever it is, you've been through it they have and you have something to offer. So I think it's we have to start thinking about these interactions as there's lots to offer particularly to young people they're not necessarily going to come at the right time or ask in the right way but if we show an openness that we're willing to help and sometimes it's just hey I noticed that you're taking you're going to take that class with that teacher I took that class a long time ago and I really figured out a way to make it work for me let me know if you ever want to talk about it that's an offer that they can take up or not but we should be extending those and giving our students and giving those who are open to learning the opportunity to come back and take it if they think about it. So you're advocating on both on behalf of teachers and the teachers are a wide spectrum of people is what I hear you say it's everybody if they have something that they can communicate and give to a student and you're advocating for the students hey participate be part of it. We absolutely think of teachers and coaches too narrowly in our community and in our society we think it's the person leading English class in sixth grade that's a teacher and we think about the person that has the whistle on the soccer field that's the coach and if we start thinking about it as productive adults are all coaches and they all have mentoring and tutoring opportunities with young people it's a matter of opening up those conversations the negative side of this of course is students are going to emulate and see the demonstrations led by their parents and other adults around them all the time. So if as the parents you go into the night after school and you have two phones out and you don't look up from them then the kids learn oh I guess our family interaction is everyone has their heads down in their phones and goes away into their closed doors well that's a learned behavior in a coaching situation too just not in the way we're talking about not the way we're advocating for but if you see these opportunities to to coach to be there for someone else and to open up those avenues I have authors that I look at that do just that if you think about it Mark your program does that right you're learning showing an openness to learning by having different people on to talk about topics but then by putting it on YouTube and broadcasting it you're sharing it and you're pivoting around and being the teacher I mean it's it's one of the reasons I think I think you know content creators and podcasts and websites and YouTube you know they're all excellent coaching and teaching mechanisms nowadays that our students and young people think of as second nature that quite frankly we have to stretch to figure out how to use in our daily lives well I like that thank you now you know I also notice that you're on a commission that has been formed about civic debate or interaction what's that about so the Supreme Court of the state of Hawaii like you know was done in many of our states across the United States decided to essentially impanel a commission a statewide commission that would address civic education it's called PACE so it's promoting and advancing civic education there's entities like them quite frankly they're some of them are further along some of them are not off the ground ours is pretty new here in Hawaii but there's all sorts of efforts that predated it in the space of civics and civics education you know for me and in the context of this conversation when there's ever a collateral duty or something extracurricular that dovetails with my job it happened to be our court the federal district court for the district of Hawaii had one of the seats on this commission so I knew someone from our court would be on this so I raised my hand because it was education oriented and because I knew it would be interfacing with young people it's more broad than that it has to do with civic education generally so there'll probably be we're gonna have a website some resources that we link and share probably content created that's gonna come from our students but as you might imagine and consistent with our conversation here one of the first things we did is figured out what type of program could we even the commission we don't really have any resources or employees or anything yet other than the commissioners that are in the room but we designed a program for high schoolers we did it we started on a neighbor island we started in Maui and we did sort of a mock trial civics problem program that was over a couple of days of their spring break and had students from all over including Molokai and Lanai and came to a program for a couple of days over their breaks where we taught skills and questioning and constructing arguments so I figured if I'm gonna be on this commission I'm gonna do something in my wheelhouse and try to share it with students and yeah, okay and that does sound like something that you would have promoted what does civic debate mean? I mean, we're having trouble let's be frank in our country there's problems with talking to one another sometimes is that what this is about? Yeah, I think it can address that for sure I mean, I think my passion if I share with someone at a dinner party my passion for civics education it's because I'm trying to stop the landslide a little bit that happens in our public arena on a nationwide scale and I think part of it comes from how are we doing with listening to those on the other side of a debate? How are we doing with actually asking the right questions of not only the people on the other side of the debate but people who are experts and who would reportedly offer information to the topics covered by that debate? It seems to turn into a lot of cable news cable talk radio where it's just who can yell louder or score a point that's clippable to go on the internet and it happens with our elected officials it happens at every level and it's demonstrated at every level so I think the idea that I'm still a huge proponent that legal training adds something to that if done the right way if you learn how to ask the right questions and actually marshal evidence to make real arguments then you're gonna be honest and adhere to those arguments as opposed to straying or yelling louder or just using ad hominem attacks and it also causes you to I always share with my law students that I used to listen to talk radio on the ideologically other side of where I sat because I wanted to hear what they were saying I wanted to listen to it and I wanted to see if I how many of the counter arguments that I have at the ready and how many would I have to sort of go out and find evidence to disprove so if you think about it like that we can actually improve the level of argument and improve the way our young people go about civil discourse and therefore their civic engagement Well, and I like what you said about law education also and I feel the same way and that is that a good legal education I think will allow you to see both sides of an argument and realize that there are two sides of an argument and that you present your side and a judge may make a decision and that's how civic discussion progresses and you have to put forward your own feelings truly and that's I think a good idea about law education yeah, from your point of view, is that correct? Is that what I'm seeing? Yeah, and if you think about it sometimes we stray away from it in legal education you know, I worry about that I don't think every class has to be purely Socratic and I certainly don't think that learning through fear or humiliation is always productive but I do think participation, interaction, argument and counter argument are foundational to any legal class so I do teach doctrinal classes I teach criminal law, criminal procedure and my real passion in the legal arena is evidence I teach the rules of evidence I teach it as, you know, make the argument for and you'll never hear me say plaintiff or defendant or prosecutor or defense attorney I talk about proponent and opponent who's the one putting on this evidence and what arguments are they gonna make for the admission of this evidence and who's the one that's in our legal system charged with getting in the way through objection as the opponent and so how do those discussion go and what's the best possible argument you could make for either side knowing that it very well could come up here to the bench and be a coin flip it's just a matter of how can we put ourselves in the best position to make evidential arguments but that training, that skill of making arguments and having a body of rules where you make arguments from those rules based on prior application of the rules, prior cases that type of thing I think is vitally important and our big problem with cable TV and talk radio is there is no court, there is no judge, nobody's called out but I think if the training's the same, you know you don't find a lot of practicing lawyers on those shows just yelling at the top of their lungs without having some evidence to support their positions. Yeah, and I like what you said about evidence training and I see that, I see what you're saying. Yeah, teaching evidence is like teaching how to have a civil, civic argument or discussion. I wanna ask you now as we're getting close to the end of our talk here, with respect to your students you know, some of them are gonna look at the future with some uncertainty, some of them will be depressed. As a teacher, coach of students, what do you tell them? How do they, what do you, what advice do you give them to get through these immediate issues they're dealing with and the social media that you talked about that people arguing and the things that you see on the news, what do you tell them? Well, one I think always on some level we have to coach folks to know that they can only control the things they can control. So the idea of worrying about everything that's outside of their control can be too much and can be overwhelming for any one of us. But what are the parts that you can control? What are the parts that you have ownership and stewardship of? And then what could you do about them? If we start to explain to our students as opposed to everything's on a landslide, it's all worse than it was when we grew up. Good luck with all that. Of course they're gonna have some of those feelings. If we start telling them that their educational pathway and the tools that they have available, they're more equipped for complex problem solving than any other generation that has ever been. If you think about just something as simple as the past three years with the pandemic, if that had happened when I was in ninth grade as opposed to my son being in ninth grade, that just would have been a long time out of school. And the same thing if it happened decades earlier, who knows how long we would have ever got back to a traditional classroom. So the idea that because of technology and because of group problem solving, that this generation and it wasn't a bunch of folks that are my age and above, it was involving lots of people in government and in tech to say, nope, we can pivot to remote learning like that and keep kids on a path and actually get creative about how they can handle things. Also in education nowadays, they work in teams and in groups far more often than we ever did on that educational path. Guess what, to go through complex problem solving that the world's handing us now, you have to learn how to work with different people on different sized groups and to have different level check-ins, to have an individual responsibility for long-term planning and a long-term goal setting. They're equipped to be on these ready-made teams to handle one task and then to quickly move on and go to another one. And it's probably why they're less likely to be in the one job of decades ago and just stay in that job and have an employer and have a paycheck for the whole time. They're gonna have opportunities and be part of sort of a gig economy where they may just have a service to offer as an individual where they assimilate and become part of these teams and consult on different problems and really find themselves having to be additive to whatever the issue is of the day. So for me, it's like you're right in the middle as a young person right now, you're right in the middle of the generation and the cusp of advanced problem solving at a level we've never seen and problems that we couldn't have anticipated and problem solving at a level, they connect up faster than we ever did. They're able to marshal resources faster than we've ever did. They're able to share their learning through technology faster than we've ever done. So if we think about it, how well they're armed for this and you couple that with the conversation that we've been having about asking the right questions assimilating what they're learning, really listening and working on some of those computer skills, they could be better equipped than anyone for a future generation. And actually what you just said gave me a lot of hope, this older fella because what you're saying is there's more assets to this younger generation and yes, they're facing maybe bigger problems but they've overcome some of them in COVID like you said, teaching went on even though they weren't at school. So yeah, well that's, gosh, that makes me feel better and that there is some hope possibly and that there are advantages that exist in this younger generation. Now I wanna ask you we're right at the end of our program here. What, I mean, is there something about Hawaii and the life and culture in Hawaii that you teach or that you add to your discussion when you are coaching students on life skills? There is because it goes back to the point that we discussed earlier about it sort of being a two-way street and I think any of us that are older generation dealing with younger generation, we know, okay, there's things that we can share, things that we can impart especially of us but we also know when it comes to setting the TV or getting a program on or doing something technological in the house that we're gonna ask the younger people for their advice and their coaching on how best to do that. So we have to recognize that the openness to learning is really a two-way street and that works in our culture here in Hawaii culture because we have the concept of Ohana and how we sit down and how we have mutual respect for everyone in the family from the youngest to the oldest. And so I think if we think of those same times when we gather Ohana as family and we go back and forth and different people have the mic and they're talking about different things that go on, we give equal audience and we give equal attention to the seventh grader in the family and the question that's posed to them as we do to the Papuna and the family. And so it's ripe for that two-way learning and it's ripe for that coaching that can go in all directions. So I think culturally, like on many issues, we're gonna be ahead of it as soon as we recognize that there's not only a learner in every room, but there's a coach in every room. Well, look, thank you. I like that explanation. That's really cool and that's really good. It really hits the point. And thank you, Wes Porter for teaching and coaching me today. I appreciate the opportunity to meet and talk with you and thank you. Aloha.