This week, we are profiling Brandon Wait, an extraordinary, student-centered principal at Paladin Career & Technical High School in Coon Rapids, Minnesota.
Brandon Wait’s parents were teachers, his grandparents were teachers and—as far as he knows—his great-grandparents were teachers. So, obviously, he was never going to be a teacher.
In college, he leaned toward the social sciences. Once he graduated, he landed a job as a juvenile probation officer. He really loved the work, but one thing frustrated him.
“It seemed to be so reactive,” Brandon said. He wanted to intervene with kids before they arrived to him involved in the juvenile justice system. “I wanted to be proactive. I liked the idea of getting to the students before they got on probation. And the best way I saw to do that was through school.”
So, as it turns out, following in the footsteps of his family before him, Brandon ultimately found his way to education. He became a school counselor, focused on proactively addressing students’ needs.
‘With a little love and respect, holy crap’
Brandon was the first school counselor Paladin Career & Technical High School ever had, and he was given full autonomy to develop the school counseling program.
It’s now his 17th year at Paladin, and his ninth year as principal. His school counseling background now informs his school leadership.
As a school counselor, Brandon learned about Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs)—these are potentially traumatic events that occur in kids aged 0-17. They can spur lasting effects on health and well-being in a child’s life. They’re common, with about three-quarters of all high school students in America reporting experiencing at least one ACE. Some examples of ACEs include experiencing violence or abuse, witnessing violence in the home or having a parent be in prison. From Brandon, understanding ACEs and how they can impact children was clarifying.
“It was an ‘aha moment’ for me,” he said. “It breaks your heart, but at the same time, you understand the correlation there.”
With that understanding, he altered the way the school approached discipline and relationships with students.
“We were going to punish our kids into being good kids. But when we stopped doing that, and we started looking into the stories of our kids, the students stayed the same, but our approach dramatically shifted,” he said. “With a little love and respect, holy crap, you can really turn a kid around.”
Brandon focused on building a relationships-first approach into the foundational school culture at Paladin. From his view, talking about trauma was healthy and liberating for students and staff. The school went from having a regular carousel of fights to physical altercations now being, in his words, “almost a non-occurrence.”
“I really believe that with like a broken arm, you can see it, you can fix it, you can treat it,” he said. “But trauma can be this scary thing that no one wants to talk about. But you can treat it. We’re not afraid of talking about our feelings, and we work through them. And then our students get to define their trauma instead of their trauma defining them.”
Inspiring innovation
Brandon’s experience with autonomy at Paladin, coupled with Paladin’s ability to provide a unique educational offering for students, led him to be a school choice supporter. He’s even become a more vocal advocate, co-authoring an op-ed supporting charter school funding in The Minnesota Star Tribune earlier this year.
“We’re a great school and we serve a lot of students well,” he said. “But we are not the perfect school for all students. It’s okay to have a focus, an innovation, a mission, for a school that meets the needs of individual students. That uniqueness that charter schools bring to the table, I think is special.”
In addition to Paladin’s trauma-informed approach to supporting students, the school provides personalized, project-based learning. They offer apprenticeships and other hands-on learning experiences to help foster student investment. Prior to graduating, Paladin students work on completing job applications, résumés, and postsecondary visits (college, job shadowing, etc.). The school serves more than 200 students and has a waitlist. They got a new school building in 2022.
About 30% of Paladin’s students are in special education. These students achieved more than double the state of Minnesota reading proficiency rate last school year. In the last five years, more than 95% of Paladin families said they would recommend the school to others. And Paladin students often earn trade skill certifications in construction, arbor care and forklift training, among others.
“Charter schools inspire innovation and changes and makes all of our schools, traditional and charter, better,” Brandon said. “If you’ve seen one charter school, you’ve seen one charter school. To me, that embodies the Minnesota charter school sector.”
The students at Paladin—and the education Paladin is able to provide them—inspires Brandon and leaves him hopeful for the future.
“There are all these student groups from all these walks of life. They all get along and it’s like they can coexist! It’s a beautiful experiment,” he said. “I think society should come and check this school out.”