CC#76: Mr. Nicholas Owen - Southeast of Saline HS Principal

In this engaging conversation, Cool Coffee host, Rick Sola, interviews Nicholas Owen, the principal of Southeast of Saline High School, discussing various aspects of education, including the unique culture of his school, the importance of intentional professional development, and the strategies for fostering a safe environment for both students and staff to learn and grow. Nick shares insights from his journey in education, emphasizing the significance of mentoring, soft skills development, and the balance between work and family life. The discussion highlights the need for schools to adapt to the diverse post-secondary options available for students today. Connect with Mr. Owen: [email protected] (mailto:[email protected]) X: @Owenn22 (https://x.com/Owenn22) Cool Coffee w/ Mr. Don Epps (https://www.podbean.com/eas/pb-dttfd-...) (referenced in this show) Chapters (timestamp does not account for intro) 00:00 Introduction to Southeast Saline High School 02:39 Nick Owen's Journey in Education 05:38 Intentionality in Professional Development 08:23 Creating a Safe to Fail Culture 11:02 Soft Skills Development and Mentoring 16:58 Post-Secondary Options for Students 22:33 Balancing Work and Family Life 28:15 The Importance of Relationships in Education FULL EPISODE TRANSCRIPT BELOW   The mission of the Kansas Principals Association (https://www.ksprincipals.org/o/kpa) , an organization committed to educational excellence and the lifelong success of all students, is to develop and support all principals through optimized learning, collaborative leadership, networking, and service. Read more about the KPA HERE (https://www.ksprincipals.org/o/kpa) .   YOUR input on Cool Coffee is NEEDED! Click HERE (https://forms.gle/nSVj4nNw1Yn74WVu8) to share thoughts and interest for you or a colleague on being on the show! Click for ALL Cool Coffee (https://coolcoffee.podbean.com/) episodes! Connect with Cool Coffee on... Follow us on X: @KSPrincipals (https://x.com/KPACoolCoffee) ; @KPACoolCoffee (https://x.com/KPACoolCoffee) Facebook: KSPrincipals (  / ksprincipals  ) Contact the host: X @MrRickSola (https://x.com/MrRickSola) , [email protected], (mailto:[email protected],)  or [email protected] (mailto:[email protected]) FULL EPISODE TRANSCRIPT (AI generated) Rick Sola (00:01.602) Hello, cool coffee listeners. I hope this podcast finds you well and moving along just swimmingly as the 25-26 school year is now firmly underway. I'm excited to be joined here today by Mr. Nicholas Owen, principal of Saline High School, USD 306, KPA Region 5 in Gypsum, Kansas. Welcome, Nicholas. Nick (00:24.515) Wow, I appreciate it. Man, you taught me some things about that. I didn't even know the different histories and everything else, though. Appreciate the knowledge. Rick Sola (00:28.332) Hahaha So I didn't adjust my intro too much, but we were just talking about Saline High School. And I was asking about the vernacular of, I know you're really close to Salina, is it Southeast of Saline? I've seen that. Let's start with that. Can you just kind of explain how you would introduce yourself and kind of the vernacular of your high school that you're at? Nick (00:54.265) Sure, mean generally I introduce myself as you know I'm southeast of Saline. I'm right outside of Salina because nobody knows where southeast Saline is. We're basically located in a field right off of K4 Highway. We are one of those schools that the bonus is if you follow all that funding talk we get funded for everyone because nobody's close to us so we bust them all. So we live, we're basically housed in the field. We have cows on one side of us. So we do have some space and it's nice in that way. Like we're one of the few schools that have an actual cross-country course on our campus because you have the space, you have the room to be able to do stuff like that. So technically the closest town to us is Gypsum. It's a pretty small town and that's just kind of up the road about three miles or so. We serve Gypsum, we serve Assyria, which is another town just kind of down the road. We're kind of located between them. Assyria is probably about seven, eight miles away. We also have some other tiny towns of like Kip and then just we have, we have like anything. have a lot of school students that come out of district from Salina who don't want to go into the largest schools. But yeah, it's funny because people are not used to Kansas will always say Selena and we're like, no, no, it's Salina. And then they'll be like, so it's Southeast of like I said, it's so saline and Salina. It's doesn't make a lot of sense, but you know, Rick Sola (02:15.266) haha Yeah. Nick (02:19.789) I guess you can always tell who the people who are not from the area are. Rick Sola (02:23.542) I was going to say, you know who's local and who's not. So how big is t...