 Hi, I'm Rusty Komori and this is Beyond the Lines. We broadcast live on Mondays from the beautiful Think Tech Hawaii TV studio in the Pioneer Plaza in downtown Honolulu. This show is based on my book which is also titled Beyond the Lines and it's about creating a superior culture of excellence, leadership, achieving greater success and sustaining that greater success and finding greatness. Today's special guest, Wes Reber Porter, is a great example of all of this. He is a former trial attorney, a law professor and president and CEO of Damien Memorial School. Wes is extremely successful and he is having a huge positive impact with all students and faculty at Damien Memorial School. And today, we are going beyond education. President Wes, great having you today. Great to see you. Great to be here. You know, I'm a graduate of Damien School as you know and very proud and very proud of everything that you've been doing for the last three years as president of Damien. I want to know your history. I want to know your youth. Can you share with me what happened in the early days of President Wes? Sure. We're proud to have you as our alumni. I can tell you that you make Damien proud. The show makes Damien proud, especially the lessons of this book make Damien proud. Thank you. Going back with me, I think I had a pretty typical childhood. I was very involved in anything that involved sports and getting out there and interacting with friends. I was lucky that I came before the draws of the cell phone in our pockets and the video games. I was an outdoor get outside and play with others type of person. I grew up in New England. I grew up in Rhode Island. I was blessed to, I went to public schools almost all the way through and then I went to a school that's actually in Damien's network. So I went to a Christian Brothers School, a faith based school in New England in Rhode Island. And I think it just opened up lots of things for me. It allowed me to interact with different coaches, different programs and really get out there and start to understand how the world works beyond my tiny pocket that I would be. So are you a big New England Patriots fan? I am. I am. Patriots, Red Sox. It's very busy this time of year for us and Celtics as well. But we've moved around quite a bit and now that I have young boys, wherever we seem to live and the teams that they're into, I have to get on that bandwagon as well. I try to have a little bit of my roots come through and the sports teams are root for. What kind of sports did you play when you were growing up? I like to answer this question first by sort of everything and anything that was going on in the neighborhood. I was one of those kids that was just outside in the middle of the street yelling car when they were coming through and we'd clear out and it was whatever was going on. I love playing with kids that were older. I love playing what they were good at more so than what I was into. It narrowed down eventually soccer, basketball, golf, tennis. It kind of narrowed down and then as we go on, went to high school and college, it became sort of basketball as a primary sport. So what college did you end up going to? I went to a small school in New Hampshire called St. Anselm College and for me, my background was I was recruited for basketball and it was really what are the schools and what's going to be the best educational choice for me to continue playing and get a good education at the same time. So did you major in communications? What did you major in? I majored in business but then I found my way to a minor in psychology and sociology, a human relations minor so I was always sort of interested in the business side of things, how it worked in the real world, some early indications there that I was trying to figure out. Yeah, communications was part of it, sociology was part of it, psychology was part of it so it was more than just a straight business econ degree. Okay, and then you became a trial attorney, how did that evolve? Yeah, I think of it now as those early sparks in education that we hope to provide for our own students all the time. I went to one class, a public speaking type class and I had some connections, I made sure to take it, just like playing sports with those older kids in the neighborhood. I took public speaking with a number of kids that were much older than me in college and I knew it was going to be additional nerves and additional pressures that were put on it because I didn't know the kids in my class, I didn't take it with my friends. And it just so happened that that teacher pulled me aside one day, these little comments that we don't think much of as adults and said have you ever thought about being an attorney, have you ever thought about actually presenting and communicating as something you do in life? And honestly I hadn't at that point thought of it but that comment stayed with me, that thought stayed with me and in addition to playing basketball I applied to law school, got into law school and I did it, aimed at someday being up in front of juries and presenting a case. Awesome, I had no idea about that. Now let's talk about your family, your wife Emily and your two sons, can you share with me about them? Sure, I trial attorney and my first job took me to the island so I was in the United States Navy, I took a job as a trial attorney with the Navy and got stationed out here in Pearl Harbor and not too long after I met my wife, I met Emily out here. She still had years left in school and she was actually in school in Massachusetts so like the foundation of any good relationship I was near her family and she was near mine and we were five thousand miles apart but we met and eventually even got to live in the same place together and start a family. I have two young boys, a 10-year-old and a 13-year-old Evan and Cameron. So it's been a path, we moved around a little bit, we lived in DC for a while, we lived in the Bay Area for a while and we eventually made our way back home where I know Emily always wanted to raise our two boys back here and have them go to school back here and really sort of enjoy that idyllic time growing up that she had back in the islands, back in Oahu. Yeah, I knew of Emily because I know her brother and sister, Brad and Cecily and Brad was on my put a whole boys varsity tennis team when I first started as head coach so they have just a great family, I mean they're her parents, amazing people. Yeah, I won the lottery with that one, I picked right that way, married into a wonderful family, I really did. For sure. Now you are also a law professor, can you tell me about where you are a law professor at? Sure, so I went from being a trial attorney full-time to essentially starting to help out on the side, a lot of us that teach, you end up teaching volunteering on the side, nights and weekends type of thing and connecting with your own students, that's what I started doing, I started doing it in DC and then when I went to the Bay Area I started helping out at a school there and eventually an opening came up, a full-time professorship and I had never thought about doing that much like I had never thought about becoming a lawyer or a trial attorney and I decided I really enjoyed on those long days especially when I was litigating and in court I looked forward to the time that I would get to be with my students, I would get to move them along and help them work on their project and help them connect up with what could be in their future for them so I applied and I became a law professor in San Francisco, I did that full-time for about seven years and I was a tenured professor, I got to work on something that really you know kind of it helped me out and thinking about athletics and how I grew up and all the great coaches I had, I was a skills professor, an advocacy professor which means I essentially took a coaching approach to being a law professor, I taught students how to communicate effectively, how to operate in a courtroom, how to get evidence in, how to present their case and it was something that those students were going to have as part of their near future, they wanted the same thing and the same career that I had so I was training my future colleagues in the legal profession and I still teach today, I teach at UH at the Richardson School of Law again back to the nights and weekends, things that are on the side so it's a great pleasure to in education to have your batch of students that you're handing something to them and you're making a piece of their future different because you interacted with them. And I loved the picture that we showed earlier about you know how you met, you and Emily met Justice Sotomayor, how was that experience? I did, I like to tell my students I did that just for you know I teach a number of different areas that Justice Sotomayor is now weighing in on like the confrontation clause under constitutional law and criminal procedure. She came out with a key decision so I like to flash that up on the screen just in case the students weren't with me and weren't listening to say by the way I might have gotten this lecture right here straight from the justice that decided it. Justice Sotomayor presided over a wedding of a friend of mine who his wife clerked for her when she was on the second circuit before the Supreme Court so pretty awesome to meet her and it does work well in class once in a while to put it up on the screen that I get a direct line to the Supreme Court. That's very cool. Now let's talk about Father Damian. Father Damian in recent years is now Saint Damian. Correct. Can you tell me about how his legacy is carrying through currently? Absolutely and this is a proud answer for us as a school community because Father Damian, now Saint Damian is an important figure in Hawaii history just because of who he was and why he came here and what he did when he came. That is he came here to serve and he came here to serve the most marginalized in our society literally those put in Kalapapa and exiled and put in a certain place because they had a condition that we didn't know what to do with at the time and really just left on the outsides of society while life moved on and his mission was to think of others first to serve others first and to be there on the ground with them as a daily activity. Like any great person like Saint Damian was I always think of this part of the story that applied to our kids today and our students at Damian like a lot of high school students and K-12 students in Hawaii they really do think of others first. They think about how they can serve their community. They think of how they contribute on a larger scale and for Saint Damian one thing that I always draw upon is that he was never supposed to come here. He was a studying in Belgium and his brother, his older brother was a priest and he was the one that was supposed to take this trip and engage in this mission and when his brother fell ill he had sort of an entrepreneurial thought. He had a seize the day thought. He wasn't yet trained as a father that could serve in this ministry but he said I'm gonna go. I think I'm supposed to go and I'm gonna go and I'm gonna help people and I'm gonna figure it out when I get there and if that's not a great lesson for today's students of they're going to go into careers and end the jobs that we don't even know about yet that haven't been created yet and they have to as they're sitting here as ninth graders and 11th graders say I'm gonna go I'm gonna figure it out there. I think that's what I'm supposed to be doing so I think Saint Damian has all kinds of practical applications for our students today. Yeah he's definitely super inspirational and so are you and you're a great leader of Damian School for the last three years now and you know when I was there it was just a high school and in recent times it starts from sixth grade now. How is that helping all of Damian right now to start at sixth grade? Oh I like to think that what we're doing with the school now is is creating a school community and a school culture where students whenever they start so we have students joining us essentially DOE makes a change and they have more of their DOE schools that are ending at fifth grade so we react to what our community's needs are and we add a sixth grade at that time we added middle school and we thought there might be an opportunity with with enrollment and a limited footprint of our campus. So for us it's important it's who we are as a community and we could flex again and iterate again to say maybe there'd be a bigger campus someday maybe there'd be a different batch of students someday. I like to think that that campus was put in Kalihi down the street from Bishop Museum right down the hill from Kamehameha Schools. It was put in that area for a reason because that's the families and the people we serve and and we doubled down and we're there today because most of our students come from the immediate area but we also have a broader application to a lot of windward families a lot of evaside families so we we have students from all over it's wonderful. I love that and when I was at Damian it was an all-boys school and and then you added girls six years ago and that's just been a great addition and you President West you've been doing incredible campus improvements. I absolutely love visiting the campus and seeing the welcome center and all of these improvements can you share what you've been doing? Sure I mean with the advent of young women and the changes to our our school community the other thing that always has to change and I think all of us that are in education in 2018 talk about iteration and innovation and how do we hand it over to kids how do we inspire kids to to find their own path and and some of that is how we make changes with curriculum and how we change what happens in a classroom and other learning environments on campus some of it is just flat out changing campus so I want our experience and I think my colleagues on the leadership team at the school want to want the experience of our students to be they're going to have more entrusted to them a little more a little less rules more freedom about where they can go if they're eating lunch it could be on a blanket outside in the grass everyone doesn't have to be at a certain place at a certain time we're taking advantage of some of our great partners in the community so we have students that are regularly as part of a class walking down to Bishop Museum or or gathering in different ad hoc areas that are not the classroom so we're trying to sort of break down the traditional classroom walls as a lot of schools are and really think what's the best way for kids today to learn problem solving and learn some of the things that are going to be tools for them to take on those jobs that we don't even know what they are yet I like that and you know when I was there we had to wear dress shirts you know dress pants dress shoes ties and that has changed it has and it's not without uh you know it's not without a lot of debate and discussion and and frankly some people aren't with it on some days we look at it from the perspective of equality we have young women on campus now and our boys were in their dress code with shirts and ties as I was when I went to high school and and our young women were had sort of a uniform and there were some inequities there and we looked at it we researched it we actually looked at the data of what what do what do students that are looking at a middle school at high school what do they want to wear what makes them comfortable to learn what optimizes their learning and we landed on like a lot of other schools have migrated to shorts and polo shirts and we're in Hawaii it's outdoor campus uh let's make students comfortable let's make our school environment inviting and let's get them in the best place where they can problem solve and they can learn for themselves that sounds good to me president west we're going to take a quick break and then when we come back we want to continue going beyond education very good you are watching beyond the lines on Think Tech Hawaii with my special guest west reber porter we'll be back in one minute i'm jay fidel think tech think tech loves energy i'm the host of mina marco and me which is mina marita former chair of the puc former legislator and uh energy dynamics a consulting organization in energy marco mangosdorf is the ceo of provision solar in hilo every two weeks we talk about energy everything about energy come around and watch us we're on at noon on mondays every two weeks on think tech aloha hello my name is deafney muck and i'm one of three hosts of think tech hawaii's hawaii food and farmer series our other hosts are matt johnson and pomay weigert and we talk to those who are in the fields and behind the scenes of our local food system we talk to farmers chefs restaurateurs and more to learn more about what goes into sustainable agriculture here in hawaii we are on at thursday's at four p.m and we hope we'll see you next time welcome back to beyond the lines on think tech hawaii my special guest today is west reiber porter he is a former trial attorney a law professor and president and ceo of damien memorial school and today we are going beyond education president west coaching and sports very very important tell me about why you think sports is important at damien school well one it's i think coaching is important i think if we look at what we want to do with students going forward it's going to look a lot more like coaching than it looks like when we think of traditional teaching unfortunately we we've passed out of that era a long past out of that era when the teacher was the most knowledgeable in the room and was the the sole source of information and i had to as a teacher stand in front of the room and deliver that information and all my students had to take notes and then regurgitate it back to me on an exam those days are gone every kid's walking around with a super computer on a phone in their pocket so how can we take on challenges how can we take on problems and how can we be on the side of our students like a coach would we should be offering them some strategies they should be going out taking a stab at it if it works great if it doesn't how can we assess and how can we improve for the next time so much like the same way a coach on the tennis court a coach on the basketball court that we try to approach it with our students for we're not talking to them during right we're taking little breaks and telling them and in their ear before and after uh you know how can how can teaching look like that how can education look like that that's that's what i'm excited about so i think there's a lot of analogies to be drawn because like us growing up our students are going to school today they are receptive to what happens on the field and on the courts they're receptive to what's happening in sports they know that model they that model works for them we see improvement all the time in that model how can we make education look like that how can we make our our subjects and our problem solving and a critical thinking and all the things that are important to what's going to be their future how can we make it look like coaching i love that vision and i like that philosophy and you know in terms of some specific sports now at Damien i mean there's cheerleading and we it's great that we can have our own cheerleaders now um but the the girls volleyball team the football can you share about some of the exciting sports that's happening with Damien we just have wonderful examples of exactly what i just described there's great examples of just passionate coaches who are on the floor or working with their pocket of kids their group of kids are working across an entire program that care first about character care first about their development care about the interaction that they're having with that young person and the difference it's going to make in their life uh when you operate that way and when you have that philosophy and especially when that philosophy holds true whether it's my my wonderful football program at Damien and the success that it's had whether it's our young women uh in volleyball that are on an undefeated season and having you know that type of year that they're having when you see those similarities and those leadership principles and those life lessons are showing up across across campus it can't help but make its way into those student conversations of course they're talking about of course they're thinking about it and how can we make education mimic it that's our challenge that's what the adults have to figure out that's why you're a great leader now let's talk football uh the head coach coach eddy klaneski super incredibly great guy he's so focused on really developing the character of his student athletes can you share more about how awesome coach eddy is yeah it's an easy conversation because he is awesome and it it's uh he's one of those shining examples on our campus of someone that's that's known and he of course had his own his own career and his own fame at uh and and the player he was but he's known for being someone that cares about young people on our campus he's known for someone that gets the best out of the young people that choose to play football at Damien there's a reason why if you're a football player at Damien the last batch of years and you're coming back to campus you're going to call upon coach eddy and go visit him right because that's that's the type of interaction and impact that he had on these young people and it's that philosophy first it doesn't have anything to do with the x's and o's doesn't even have to do with wins and losses even though that part's working itself out for coach uh it's more how do you how do you care about young people and care about their development and get them to you know the best version of themselves possible yeah i totally agree and coach eddy definitely goes beyond the lines and speaking of beyond the lines i you were at my book signing at Barnes & Noble i totally was excited to see you there um can you tell me what you like about the book beyond the lines there's a there's an analogy to draw up with education a lot of times like i'm like i'm talking about here today we can't stand in front of students and just say here's what i need you to learn please leave leave the room and learn it go read this in a book and it's it's smuggled for lack of a better word we have to tell stories we have to talk about situations we have to talk about problems that we're confronting now and they should start to glean and see leadership lessons and it doesn't have to come from someone that has a position or a rank of a of a leader it comes from everyone it can come from their classmates it can come from their siblings come from their parents come from anyone and i love that about the book because it tells stories and it will tell a story about you know a younger player on the team that's decidedly better but wants to you know step aside on the team to make sure that some senior has you know the senior year that they envision and has has the limelight there's a leadership lesson in there even though that student that tennis player never thought that they were acting as a leader or didn't do it to become a leader that day and certainly didn't have the title or or rank of a leader so the idea that you can read a book and you can hand a book to young people to say read these stories and then everyone comes away with something different that's that's a lot what we're trying to do in education and we need more leadership training in education we need we need a class a seminar an ad hoc group that's getting together that's doing the hard work of pulling apart all the lessons that are available in your book i totally agree i i love what you just said there and i i was very proud to be a part of my Damian tennis team my teammates to do a big bulk donation of books to you and Damian school um how how was the reactions to the kids when you presented them a book well it's twofold the first part of it it's awesome that a kid's getting a at school a gift in any respect right if you're walking up to a child during a day and you're saying i'm giving you this i'm giving you this gift today in your ordinary school day doesn't have anything to do with the class anything new grades anything to do with your extracurricular one you've already why me what did i do why do i deserve this the second part of it i think is so important especially for young people and especially for the young people that that i'm blessed to work with every day at Damian um it it's a symbol in and of itself that here's someone that walked the same hallway as you walked here's someone that had uh grew up on the same island and had the same path as you that's that's writing about leadership that's talking about his success um and there's a vision for you in there there's a way to think about you and the leader you're going to become there's a way to think about you and the role that you're going to serve in society it's awesome we we make sure they know every great story uh everyone that we know and we love to share more of the great people that have passed the halls in Damian and that they walk in those footsteps so i think it's twofold it's really awesome i love i love hearing that too and it's you know i hope that we can do more book donations of beyond the lines to Damian we've been doing that to some other schools as well but yeah if we can get more books to you that'd be awesome now i want to ask you some questions that directly relate to the book president west you're very inspirational you're very successful how do you define success i think success has to do with meaning has to do with fulfillment um why why are we waking up in the morning what are you off to do uh if you can't think about your contribution every day is having some meaning and some personal fulfillment to you and oftentimes when you put it in terms of meaning and fulfillment it's going to have to do with how you serve others and how you make the place you live and the place your kids go to school and the place you know your friends and their kids and their families grow up how do you make it a better place and how do you how do you contribute so i think success for me is that i've been able to get into some of these positions that hopefully maximize and multiply that impact that make it a better place that i find meaning and fulfillment in my job than i do great and you know every successful person they've dealt with obstacles along the way what do you think was your greatest obstacle in achieving your success and how did you overcome that we give too much thought to to the parts of our history or the parts of our resume or the parts that were just that were less proud of we give too much thought to other people's opinions and i don't think i was any different in that you know you can look at it and say i should have gone to this school or i should have done that internship or i i should have done this is my first job or i should have been this in life and if you spend too much time focusing on negative opinions if you focus too much time on the past and looking at what you could have done or should have done then you're going to miss out on a whole heck of a lot so i know some of that's just a mindset we take into every day but that everything that we did in the past contributes to who we are today so i just think about that there's a lot of stuff there's a lot of different twists and turns but all that makes who i am today and it and it and it at that too adds meaning and fulfillment and allows me to best serve our students and their families yeah the the choices that we made in the past got us to where we are right now and the the choices that we make now because knowledge is power can really help us get to where we want to go absolutely now what do you hope to aspire to achieve in your future the big ticket one is is education in general and particularly education back here in hawaii there's a lot of there's a lot of fixed mindsets that dictate education and the and the landscape and what we're what we can do and what we're capable of in the realm of education but if you're paying attention and if you see what's been going on particularly back here in hawaii over the last batch of years you understand that there's a lots of things that we have going for us in hawaii that actually allow us to move education further at a much greater pace than other places there's there's places on the mainland where private public and charter school leaders don't even talk to each other we meet regularly this place is where my kids go to a private school i'm the head of a private school i think only in a one dimension of a private school in hawaii we have a sense of aloha and how we care for our kiki and how we we all have families and neighbors and kids that we know go to so many different schools and the idea of how do we raise the bar for education locally that that's that's what i spend time thinking about and i really there's a lot of great thought leaders giving uh giving some important conversations important thought to that topic uh and i really think of hawaii being one of those places where because of our culture because of who we are and because how we take care of one another that we can be sort of a leader on the new wave of education not the standardized testing kids sitting in rows form of education that everyone's still holding on to i i love your insights president west and how you want teachers to become coaches i mean everyone should be a coach to really help everyone else in the best possible way so i like the vision i like where you want to take damien memorial school and you're succeeding and you've just been there three years so i know that i speak for a lot of the alumni that we're so proud so appreciative so fortunate to have someone like you as president and ceo so i really want to thank you for your time and being on the show today president west thank you for having me i appreciate it and thank you for watching beyond the lines on think tech hawaii for more information about my book and my tv shows visit my website rusty comory dot com and connect with me on facebook instagram linkedin and twitter i hope that my book and tv shows will inspire you to create your own superior culture of excellence and to find your greatness and help others find theirs aloha