Show 10 - Using Business Profits to Transform Education with Guin Geyer
In this episode, Guin and I dive into how educators can use their financial prowess to give back!
9/28/202321 min read
Show Notes
OKSpecialEducators Facebook page (Not just for Oklahoma educators!)
Show Transcript
Shaun Morgan
I'm so excited to have Gwen Guy here today for this awesome interview. We dive on in. I just want to remind everyone to, to subscribe to this, this podcast, lead us an honest rating or review and if you're, you're watching on Youtube or anything like that, give us a like just to help podcast reach as many teachers as possible as we are trying to help teachers really take control of their finances.
Guin So great to have you here today. How you doing?
Guin Geyer
am de fantastic. Thank you so much for hosting me this evening. I appreciate it.
Shaun Morgan
I'm very glad to have you, so we're just gonna dive in and with, you know, where, where are you, what do you do, in education or what have you done in education? Just tell us a bit about your education journey.
Guin Geyer
Okay. I am in Oklahoma. I'm in central Oklahoma at the, the uh, home of Oklahoma University. I actually graduated from the University of Oklahoma a very long time ago. This is my 20th year in education. I amm a special education teacher. I specialize in working with children that have autism and behavioral needs. And I'm also the department head at my school um said uh twentieth year in education I thrive on um helping teachers um we've started a Facebook page that there's almost four thousand teachers in statewide really really super cool resource for special education teachers It's got some really important key players in education in our state, so we can affect a lot of really great things for kids here.
Shaun Morgan
Well, bless you for being a Sped teacher. I I always tell people that if you think teaching is hard you have not heard about Sped teaching. It's just it's like taking the hardest job in the world and doubling it. So bless you for for doing that.
Guin Geyer
Well, thank you, I appreciate it. I I have a passion for making sure that the field is leveraged for every single person, no matter what abilities they have or are working on developing.
Shaun Morgan
Yeah, that, that's amazing. And really I can tell that you have this, this giving heart, which I feel mostly. Educators have. I mean, you've got this Facebook group where you're supporting educators, you're uh, trying to help as many people as possible. And that's kind of what we wanted to talk about today. You, you have this, this goal to really give back and um, and this thing that you, you shared with me is that you have, purchased a businesss or at least shares in a business with the intention of using the profits to give back to education. And I believe it's in Honduras, which is, you know, like kind of out there. So it's why Honduras and why purchasing a business to give back and what's your, what's your thoughts there? I just want to hear about this.
Guin Geyer
Sure so um so all of that starts off um with a organization called fund for teachers um they will give you five thousand dollars for an individual or ten thousand dollars for a group of two or more to create your own problem a professional developed to solve a problem of practice that you have so I have actually received two five thousand dollar grants fun for teachers and my 2nd one that I developed this year was to learn how to speak Spanish and I wanted to study about the Mezo American Reef that's in the Caribbean. It's the 2nd largest reef in the entire world and something that I have a love for personally and there's not a lott of reefs in Oklahoma to study I also wanted to learn from the best Spanish teacher that I could find in the entire world.
Guin Geyer
About 80 % of my students at my school are either bilingual or they are newcomers, is how it's referred to. And they are people that are emerging with the English language. So it was really important for me to be able to connect to families in their own language. It's hard to have a, a real, true conversation about a person's child if you can't understand what they're asking you. So that was kind of my basis for writing that grant to go to Andas Um, so fast forward, I started looking for the best Spanish teacher that I could find in the entire world and turns out she lives in time.
Guin Geyer
So I booked a trip and um, I got my grant to go down there and learn from her and to learn about the education system, there I got to make lots and lots of connections with teachers, with students. I got to volunteer with the school there, it's called the S. Charmont Bilingual Academy. They serve students that are homeless, students that have lost family members to Hiv or Aids, or they may have that disease theirself. So there's 80 children at that school. I got to volunteer in the kindergarten class.
Guin Geyer
I got to volunteer in the 2nd and 3rd grade class and make some great connections with the high school kids. So wonderful director there and She's running a private school and just, you know, taking care of these kids and a lot of these kids are homeless. Whenever they leave, they are going back out into the community, which is kind of the community that I pour into here in Oklahoma as well. So it was just a good fit, you know. So that was one of the connections that I made there. I also made a friend with a local on the island and he took me into all the interior of the island.
Guin Geyer
I got to meet with teachers that are like teaching in the middle of the jungle, you know, with no one or plumbing and no electricity and no water. And they've got, you know, this water tank in the corner and they've got some kind of like makeshift way to keep things cool. And it's incredible. The amount of resources that they are utilizing and the lack of resources. The things that we take for granted here. The way that people think that they live in poverty here is Nothing compared to what I saw there.
Guin Geyer
And it's literally like some of the places that some of the poorest places are like four blocks away from the port where there's people getting off and spending thousands of dollars to go on a cruise ship for a week. It's it's such a division of of resources. It's really incredible. So that's, that's why, on there, I, I went and found a Spanish teacher there. I absolutely love the ocean. I wanted to teach my students about that and um, I just made some incredible connections while was there, further than I ever drink.
Shaun Morgan
That is an awesome story. I, I love that you, really leveraged this, did you say, fund for teachers,
Guin Geyer
Fund for teachers,
Shaun Morgan
fund for teachers,
Guin Geyer
Yes.
Shaun Morgan
Alright, getting the grant to, to develop yourself with the Spanish language and then more than that, the relationships that you're creating I think are, are super. Powerful because relationships more than anything else are, are going to, Raise all boats, as the saying goes, right, rising tide raises all boats. And I think that rising tide is relationships when you connect with other people. It's not a world of, you know, if this person gets, then that person has to, to lose, right?
Shaun Morgan
It's a world of relationships where if one person in the relationship gets, the other person in the relationship can also get and can all race together. And I think that that's amazing, that you, you're leveraging those relationships, but not just for you to get ahead, but that you're wanting to, to give back to that relationship as well. And I think that that's amazing.
Guin Geyer
yeah, something so, so basically you're asking. I guess we're gonna get to that next part with the, the company and stuff that I purchased.
Shaun Morgan
So, so let's stop, right? So you purchased a company, how did that come about?
Guin Geyer
that's actually kind of a crazy story. So, I was going back and forth with, my taxi, that was picking me up from the place that I was staying at every day and running me to my classes. And somebody at the place that I was staying at was telling me about a trip to Cayos Cacs, which is kind of cool, is like, you know, I'm a Survivor fan, I'm kind of a, you know, goofy with that and Survivor was filmed on Cayo Cotos, which is 30 mi out across open sea. To go and visit this island and you can visit people there and it's just beautiful and that's where Survivor was filmed in 2020 so I thought that that was you know that would be kind of cool thing to go do while I was there and kind of make connections with the people there So I rented a boat at the end of my trip.
Guin Geyer
It was probably I don't know maybe a week or so before I was about to leave, and all these people had been helping me on the island. You know. Everybody was telling me about how beautiful this trip was and all this kind of stuff. So I invited all the different locals that I had met and the different divers that I met and different people that I had met and to go on this trip. Well, the day of the trip comes and a couple of my friends that I met from Miami that our teachers showed up and the diver that had had met down there had showed up, but none of the locals came, so we all piled into the boat.
Guin Geyer
We take this wild ride across thirty miles of open sea and I don't know anything about boats and I don't know how big a boat's supposed to be whenever you go on things or how little or whatever but we're on this little this little twenty seven foot panga boat going across this open ocean which I know now is probably a kind of a small boat to be doing that in and um so we we get out there we wild ride on the way out there Get out there. Absolutely the most beautiful place. I was giggling while I was snorkeling.
Guin Geyer
It was the most beautiful thing I've ever seen in my life. Like best moment ever, like amazing, like top the notch, right, Get out there. I'm like filling all this with my Go Pro camera. Just beautiful reef out there that I'm snorkeling on. We get back on the boat and the captain is like oh it's gonna be snooze failing on the way back we are coming back and the the wind kicks up like an extra like fifteen miles an hour and we are using this little twenty seven foot pang of boat like a like a surfboard and we are going on these fifteen foot waves and going from wave to wave and I am like tucked in I thought we were gonna die.
Guin Geyer
We finally get back and we don't die, you know, pretty scary. I went from way up here to like... so we get back. And after I like calm down and chill out, I'm like, I could market this guy as like an extreme boat guide, you know, because people like like to push things to the edge and not die and then tell people about it, right? So I was like, I could, I could talk to this guy and maybe we could do this. I noticed that you know his he needed help with marketing his company he's a local on the island he was telling me all kinds I'm a literature teacher and I love to hear people's stories so he was telling me about all these great ideas that he had and a really really super smart guy and you know it's just like you just needed to cut a break and he had like sixty three followers on Facebook so I have quite a following on Facebook I have almost six million views on google and i've gotten to where I can kind of leverage social media um for things and I was like hey how about we strike up a deal because ultimately I want to be able to teach down there but teachers only make four hundred dollars a month I can spend in about two days there, right?
Guin Geyer
I can't live down there on four hundred dollars a month I could but I'm not gonna live like that so I was trying to think what can I do to bring in extra money so that I can teach down there came up with the boat idea. So I approached my captain and I was like, Hey, I want to have a business meeting in discussion with you. So we sat down and we had like a real heart to heart talk. I was like, this is what I can do for you, this is how you come into the picture, this is what my vision is, what do you think?
Guin Geyer
And he's like, Let's do it. So we did.
Shaun Morgan
Awesome that that's, that's, that's really cool. Like once again you're, you're connecting with somebody, building a relationship. So you, you are hoping to, you know, bring in the profits from, from this businesss and you said you want to teach there. Do you have any other plans with, what you're gonna do to, to help this community?
Guin Geyer
So my ultimate goal, like one, one thing that, I noticed. Like I said, I'm a special education teacher, it's, it's my jam, you know, I can, I either know how to hang with kids or I have connections of getting supports for kids in, in this special education realm, you know, and um. Large resource for that on the island. So that's somewhere that I felt like I could really kind of fill a niche, help teachers along the island, help plugg them into our group on Facebook, help them to know, you know, just one kid on one on one, like how to help those kids that are struggling.
Guin Geyer
They have a pretty intense suspension programm for kids that are not like fitting into the mold down there. Being able to work with teachers to show them different ways of doing things with kiddos and giving them some ideas and how to work with kiddos that are a little bit different, you know, and, and just realizing that all kids are different. And just a way to, to plug into that, my ultimate goal, like beautiful goal, I would, I really, really am somebody that like, my word of the year is joy and I really want to spread that joy.
Guin Geyer
I want to start a school of joy there where kids come and they have plenty to eat and they've got clothes that they need them and they've got hygiene things that they need, and they're getting a quality education that they're coming to to feel loved and that we're pouring into their families and helping their entire family grow as a unit and just being able to help, you know, wherever we can get plugged in there. But that's what I ultimately that would be the ultimate goal.
Shaun Morgan
To do this right to invest in into a boat company, to open up a school, to put yourself in a financial position where you can go down to Honduras and live down there. I mean that that does take some financial savvy. What? What did you do to prepare four for this.
Guin Geyer
Well, I didn't know exactly what was gonna happen, on this trip, but I have a way of being able to, like you were saying about building connections, my superpower is building relationships and building connections with people. It's just what I do. I like, I mean. You have to be that kind of person to be a special education teacher. Because you're working on a team of teams, and you're working with parents and you're working with the community and figuring out how to make sure that people are getting, you know, plugged into the best job that they can get, that they're getting the best education that they can get.
Guin Geyer
That is the key to a long life for everyone, you know, and making sure that that everyone has some type of job that they're plugged into and, you know, I just, I don't know, I just wanted to make sure that. Honestly, I saved and begged, borrowed, and steal every single dollar that I could because I didn't know what kind of opportunities gonna pop up, but I was hoping something would Um, and I would be able to seize that moment, you know what I mean? I don't want to be in a situation to where it's like Somebody's trying to give me the Golden Goose, and I don't have a hand to take it, you know, and and this was such a good opportunity, even if it doesn't work.
Guin Geyer
I am learning so much, I am. I've met some incredible connections. I am plugged into this whole world of cool people right now. I met it even on the way down there, I was sitting next to a lady. She ends up being the head of the Boys and Girls Club in Miami. She was going down with her new husband, she had been invited down, but she's a Dr., her ultimate goal is to have clinics in every single place that is impoverished to make sure that people have access to healthcare. Well, now we're talking about putting a clinic at the school that I volunteer at there.
Guin Geyer
How freaking cool is that?
Shaun Morgan
That is really cool I I really I really like I wanna just hit on two things you said so you you prepared not even knowing what the opportunity would be I think that that is huge we can't just say like well nothing's gonna happen or uh it it's gonna go like this uh I mean I'm you know work every single day of my of my you know thirty five years as a teacher and I won't have to do anything because you know it'll all work out at the end with my my pension will be fine and that's gonna be enough you never know what's happen in in your life so you need to do that that up front work right you know that big barn seal type of work up front, so that way you can be ready for whatever is going to be happening.
Shaun Morgan
I think that that's huge. And then I think the other thing. My favorite word in there is superpower. I talk about superpowers all the time. Teachers have superpowers and whatever your superpowers are, there are some that we all share in communist teachers. And there's Others we all have, that's what we need to leverage in ourselves to become successful. Financially, in our, in our teaching, in our relationships. When we build on what we're good at already, we can become wildly successful without having to make two hundred thousand dollars a year or anything like that you know it's very very possible if we are you know using that superpower that we have So are you going to do anything to,
Guin Geyer
Sure.
Shaun Morgan
like in, in the setting, the school that you're trying to are, are you going to uh, maybe teach like skills to help bring these people out of poverty, financial skills or like job skills with things like that, like what, what is that gonna look like for this community?
Guin Geyer
me personally, where I developed a lot of financial skills. I actually to day Ramsey's Financial Peace University It Was Part of Our Church. Wasn't very wealthy. Whenever we went, my ex husband and I went to that together, we learned about, just wow, what a, what a way learned about how each people, you know, think about money and how people use money as a tool and not, you know, the thing that you're scraping to survive and learned about how to see money in a completely different way.
Guin Geyer
I came from an extremely, extremely impoverished situation. Became a mom at 18 years old. I also got custody of one of my siblings. My mother was very, very sick and could not take care of us, and so I was raising two kids. At the age of 18, I was working. I was going to college full time. I became a foster mom at that time, ended at ultimately having six kids in my home, you know, just a, I don't know. I want to make sure that I give those. I want them to realize that they don't have to be with their circumstances or what.
Guin Geyer
Your circumstances don't determine, you know, where you're going. You determine that no matter where you're at, whether it's there, whether it's here that you know. Your mind is what sets up your limitations, more so than anything else. And you're not thinking you can do something, you know what I mean. So if you think that you can pull all the stars out of the sky, by golly, give it a shot. I mean, that's what has, you know, and I mean, like right now, you know, my dream to go down there, my whole Fund for Teachers dream was to be able to come back and be able to have some conversations with my families and be able to, to kind of, you know, leverage language skill and to be able to do some diving cause I love to be on the reef, but The education man I'll tell you, I'll tell you, what I learned is that my families and my kids that are coming, that they are, are escaping situations that are un, I have a, a whole different respect for the education system that they are coming from and that they're coming to.
Guin Geyer
And it gives me a better, it gives me more respect for my kids that I'm working with and their families. And you know how hard it is to learn another language. I mean, I started this in like April and I'm still just Sound like a monster, you know. And I'm trying my, my, my Spanish teacher there, she gave me some really good advice, and she said learning a language is like the ocean. She goes. You wouldn't just jump into the ocean without a life jacket. And no matter how much you swim in the ocean, you're never, ever going to accomplish the entire ocean.
Guin Geyer
So you just take your a little bit at a time and you do the best that you can and the longer you swim in the ocean, the better you get at it. So I thought that that was really, really cool. But ultimately the biggest, the biggest education that I got from this whole thing was having more respect for my students, and the struggle that it is to like to learn another language, and to be brave enough to You know, have a job and be speaking in another language and you know, they're not just learning from, I mean, they've got two languages that they're learning from and, you know, they're smarter than I am.
Guin Geyer
They've got, they've got all these. Things that they've got going on and all these things that they're learning and being brave and trying to make connections in the community where they may not have. It's just a mind blowing like It's it's mind blowing. It's it's like I said, I mean. It's some of the students there. Like I was talking to the teachers. Sometimes they're not reading until like the 3rd grade. Well, if we get a 3rd grader up here, we're assuming they know how to read, right?
Guin Geyer
That's not necessarily the case, you know, and, and the way that the discipline system is down there, it's like the 1st time you get kicked out of school for a month, the 2nd time you get s kicked out of school for six months and the 3rd time it's permanent.
Shaun Morgan
Wow, that's that's....
Guin Geyer
And that's it, that's it. It's not, it's not eight steps until you get suspended the 1st time, you know, and like all this and I mean, and it is like, you know, if you want an education. You know, sorry if you've got Adhd, sorry if you're autistic, sorry if you've got a disability or whatever, you either are there for an education or you're not, and that's it. You know, I mean, it's, it's pretty intense.
Shaun Morgan
That is intense. And I think that I, I love the thing that you said earlier about the know the mind is your only limitation because that's, you know, if, if you're teaching that to, to these students in Honduras or teaching that to these students when they come showing them that, the, the limit is only what they perceive, right, that anyone can do anything. And you know, we talk about this all the time in schools, but I think the teachers need to hear this as well, right? If you're teaching your students growth mindset that they can achieve anything, there's no limits but their mind.
Shaun Morgan
Then we put limits on ourselves, on what we can do to be successful. That's just, you know, we're doing like a two face hypocritical thing. We're saying like, oh yeah, my student can do anything, I can't do anything. But like teachers, we can do anything, You know, we, we, we don't have any limits. If we, you know, put our mind to it. I, I love that you're living out a dream right now. You're, you're pushing For something that, that's huge, you are giving back in a meaningful way and it's not like you're, you know, just opening up your wallet and dumping all of your own into it. You're gonna be, you know, poor as a result and you are not, you know, letting yourself be run over by administrators because you feel like you have to give back. You are giving back in a meaningful way without doing all these limiting belief things that a lot of teachers tell themselves that they have to do in order to be a good teacher. And I think that that is a beautiful, beautiful thing.
Guin Geyer
you know, with like you were talking about growth mindset and all that kind of good stuff, you know. I I hear a lot of people, oh well, we can't because, you know, their parents don't do this or we can't because they haven't had this, they haven't had exposure to this or, you know, I heard somebody one time, it's like you can either make excuses or you can make things happen, but you can't do both. Period, you know, I mean You can make excuses, or you can find you can keep knocking on doors and keep asking questions until somebody has the answer to the question that you seek.
Guin Geyer
You know what I mean, Like it may. You think about all the people that are successful in the world. You can look up interviews with people that, all the people that are successful. You talk to Steve Harvey, you talk to, you know, Michael Jordan. You talked to these people, you know, people that just stuck with it and stuck with it and stuck it with it and didn't anybody squash their dreams and they just kept sticking with it. And I'm to stick with my dream too. I am dreaming something bigger right now than I ever dream for myself.
Guin Geyer
Like this is so beyond any scope. And I was talking to my brother the other day and he said, it sounds like all your dreams are about to come true, do you think you can handle that? So I'm like, I'm gonna give it my best try.
Shaun Morgan
I love it. I love it. Well, we're coming up on on our time here. So I I I I once again want to reiterate that it's very much so possible for you to to give back in a big way, in a meaningful way. You just need to find, find your place to do that. And you know, now that you're, doing this Do you have a bit of advice for anyone else who's Wanting to pursue a dream, maybe a dream to make a difference in education somewhere or generally or anything like that.
Guin Geyer
So I thought about this as far as advice goes, my biggest advice for anyone in this is to find other people that are like minded. There are other adventurers out there that are like minded. There are 90 people that will tell you you can't do it, but if you keep asking and you keep knocking on doors, you're gonna find your tribe of people that are adventurous, that are thinking what you're doing is cool and surround yourself by those people. Don't let anybody tell you can't do anything, that's my advice.
Shaun Morgan
I love it. I love fine. Or tribe. And I'm hoping that, you know, as we get more people listening to this podcast, we'll be able to make this, this a tribe of people who are, you know, having that growth mindset and education that we can do it, we can be successful. Know, forgetting our limiting beliefs that that too many teachers tell themselves, forgetting this unspoken vow of poverty and this unspoken vow of giving more time than is is necessary to education, while still being amazing teachers.
Shaun Morgan
And I hope that we can all just grow together as we do this. I was kind of keeping that separate from the question What is your number one tip for? Teachers have a richer wallet, Classroom, and life, but is that, is that going to be your same answer? Do you have another answer for that one?
Guin Geyer
That's it.
Shaun Morgan
Okay, that's it. So follow your dreams by making connections, having people with that same mindset around you, it's gonna help you follow your dreams and help you have a richer wallet. Classroom in life. I love it, our lot. Last question then is uh, where can teachers get in contact?
Guin Geyer
you can get in, contact me with me a few different ways. You can find me on Facebook, It's under Gwen Guyer, it's spelled G U I N, and my last name is G e y e r. You can plug into my Facebook Educators page at OK Special Educators. We have educators in there for all over the world and we help people from all over the world we have educators educatorsin there we have um files in there I have teachers from wanders in there now that we're plugging into them so that's another way that you can find me or you can check out my boat company it's called roa tan splash we've had over seventy five thousand views since I um launched our Facebook site about three weeks ago.
Shaun Morgan
Can you say the boat company's name one more time?
Guin Geyer
Roatan splash dash.
Shaun Morgan
All right. I will link to all of those in our show notes and you can find all show notes for this show at teacher money show dot com slash podcast and you'll find all of our show notes for any of the shows on on that uh page thank you so much Guin is a wonderful having you here you did fantastic job.
Guin Geyer
Thank you very much. I appreciate you having me this evening and I wish you left through with your podcast. I hope you continue to find really, really great people to interview.