In the inaugural episode of Leaders of Tomorrow, LAJF Executive Director Helene Mattera speaks with Camp Rising Sun alumnus Carl Manalo. Carl serves as the Principal at a New York City public high school, where he has brought the lessons about leadership and community he learned at CRS to his work. Helene and Carl discuss:
What dealing with the Covid crisis has been like, and the extra burden it’s placing on educators
How to reassure and motivate students through crises like Covid, especially with a little humor
Why working on behalf of immigrant and asylum-seeking students is so personally important
How Camp Rising Sun prepared Carl to work with students as a career
The difficulties of finding one’s identity as an immigrant to the United States
Elevating young people to leadership roles—both at CRS and in life
The power CRS had to aid Carl as a young person in his journey of self-discovery
Listen now:
Transcript:
Hello, and welcome to Leaders of Tomorrow. I'm your host, Helene Mattera.
We created Leaders of Tomorrow to share a little bit of the magic that happens at Camp Rising Sun, and to give you hope for the future. I'm the Executive Director of the Louis August Jonas Foundation, which for 90 years has operated Camp Rising Sun. We identify teenagers with a high level of unrealized potential from more than 30 different countries, then we bring them together to our campus in upstate New York to live together in community as a microcosm to demonstrate what the world could be if those empower truly cared about people's wellbeing. We accomplish this by rotating our adolescent campers into and out of positions of power and responsibility, to teach in real time the power of ethical leadership. They meet face to face with people who they perceive as vastly different from them, only to learn that their needs, hopes, and dreams are far more similar than they thought.
Our alums, decades after their camp experience, look back and share that Camp Rising Sun was a trajectory changing watershed experience in their lives. It certainly was for me when I attended. In each episode of Leaders of Tomorrow, you will hear the stories of how this summer camp changed their lives, and how they are changing the world. Today I'm speaking with Carl Manalo, principal of a New York City public school. Carl came to the United States with his family from the Philippines in pursuit of a better life. He lived and went to school in the Bronx, where he was a good student and worked hard to make his family proud. In high school, a guidance counselor noticed his potential and encouraged Carl to apply to Camp Rising Sun. This is Carl's leadership story.
This is our first episode, and I asked you to be our very first guest, because even under more normal times, your job as a high school principal requires a most impressive active leadership. During COVID is difficult to imagine what is being called upon you to do to care for your school community and their families. What are you juggling that just doesn't get talked about in the news right now?
You know, everybody talks about all of the things that the testing and hybrid models, and all of those things, but nobody really talks about the juggling of the emotions that everybody has, everybody's social emotional health. From teachers, to students, to parents, it all comes at you at the door. You're not only dealing with the how-to's of starting all over again in a different environment with the health and safety precautions, you're not just thinking about that, you're also juggling everybody's emotions. Everybody's emotions about some of the loss that they've gotten from COVID. Some of my students and family members and teachers have lost people during COVID, so dealing with that trauma and dealing with that loss, as well as the trauma of being kept in for that long, as well as some anxiety about getting back to school. It's a wonderful thing that we're doing random testing, but there's anxiety that comes at every single new random test, is it going to happen today? Are we going to get closed down?
So those are all things that you juggle. The huge emotional push that needs to happen, and taking care of everybody in the school community in that sense, including people that live in the area, they want to know about what's going on in the school. So these are all things that we have to juggle that we really don't get to talk about in the news.
Yeah, it's really a lot that is being asked of principals, and I know that something that I appreciate about you is your sense of humor and, why don't you, this has been a dark year and dark times, but I really enjoyed some of the signs that you made up with a little twist on the basic health warnings. Can you give our listeners a few laughs with some examples?
Sure. You know, people always talk about the principalship like it's some serious thing. It is, it's very serious, but it's also one of the most fun things I've ever done. One of the things that I can't get away from is my humor.
Yeah, I can't get away from it either.
I'm a jokester at heart, and so part of providing people with a safe space and a feeling of safety is some humor, and I thought it was really super important that, how can I let the students know that things are serious, but also they're kind of funny. So we have signs like, “Wear your mask, but don't forget to ‘smize.’” “Smizing” is this term that a fantastic supermodel came up with, Tyra Banks, about smiling with your eyes. Since we can't see our mouths, we smile with our eyes. So there's signs all over the school for that. There's also signs about mask up, grades up. Things like that, that you kind of have to bring out in kids, because they're still kids.
Carl appearing on CUNY’s Asian American Life in 2018.
Right.
And it's something that's super important, especially during this time, is to make sure, because there's so much worry, that there's a time to laugh. There's a time to be silly, even if they, I've seen a couple of kids roll their eyes as soon as they see the sign, but I know they get it. And I know deep inside that rolling of the eyes is some normalcy. That they still have this principal who's kind of still the “jokey” principal that they have. Those are things that are important to me, keeping that culture alive is super important, and coming up with different ways of letting people know that we're still reaching out, and this is still a place for humans.
Right. And that sounds so similar to the Carl that I knew as a teacher, Mr. Manalo, about 15 years ago. I've had the pleasure of watching your career in education evolve, and back when we worked nearby in the Bronx, and your students attended my afterschool program, I visited your school where you taught and even observed you a few times.
For our listeners, Mr. Manalo is, if you haven't picked up on it already, the quintessential teacher that even the most snarky or tough teenager can love. You have a lighthearted sense of humor and give off this genuine vibe that you sincerely care about your students, and it's no wonder that by age 35, you were already a principal. You have been such an influential leader, and your approach has been featured in the news even. I know you feel your experience with Camp Rising Sun impacted you as a person, but how has it influenced how you lead your school community?
So it's a lot about the values of what camp is, is ingrained in me. It is in my DNA. It's the way I treat people, it's the way I speak to people, it's the way I relate to the world. And so when you try to be as genuine as you can at work and as authentic as you can be, which is all of the time, it seeps into your philosophy of education, it seeps into your work life, and so it becomes a tenant of your school. I really value community, and I really value a community like camp, and how it values each individual person.
I want my students to feel like their education is personalized, that they don't get overlooked, that they are seen each as an individual person with their own story and their own character, and that we have conversations with them on a regular basis and that we are always talking about how they're feeling or what they need to do to succeed, or what motivates them, and we're always looking up a different way of teaching so that we can reach as many students as we can.
Even sometimes I've spoken to teachers and I told them, I was like, "Let's personalize this lesson for one student. Who is the student that you're having the hardest time getting to? What do you think is the lever to motivate them?" And sometimes we start with those conversations, because those kids just really need to like they belong. That's one of our biggest needs as human beings is to feel like we belong, and that's super important to me. And I want every single student to feel like they belong in this school, and that they are being taken care of.
Yeah, I mean, something that I respect so deeply about you, Carl, is how you pay attention to the students as multifaceted whole people, not just as students coming to school to be taught, you see them in the context of their families and communities, and like you said before, within their traumas. Tell us about who your students are right now.
So, funny enough, I've only worked with students as a principal that are immigrants and seeking asylum. We have a diverse group of students, but I always have found a place with students who are new to the country. Also, a lot of my students from my previous school, and the school that I am in now, are actually students that were seeking asylum into the United States, or students that have trauma from the countries where they were from.
So 37% of my students are English language learners, so they are new to the country, are usually Arabic speaking, most of them did not speak English before coming to the country. But they're also from Yemen, so war torn Yemen, and seeing and talking about the trauma that they've had to escape to get to the United States for a better life. That really gets to me. And in my previous school, my students were from El Salvador and Guatemala, all of those places that are experiencing upheaval in the past few years, and some of my kids were actually kids that were in detention centers who came in through the Rio Grande. Those are the students that I feel for, and I feel an emotional attachment to be able to help.
And the school that you run is beyond just providing a meaningful education. I mean, you are really working on their social-emotional learning, and seeing how you can help alleviate some of that trauma that they've been in and been through, and then helping them to find a new way here in Brooklyn, where you are. Tell us about some of the, is there intentional social-emotional learning that's going on in your school? And is that similar at all to what we do at Camp Rising Sun?
Yeah, it is very similar. We talk about kids on a regular basis, just like in Camp Rising Sun, because I know this as a staff member, when the campers are in rest hour, we have meetings as a staff, and we talk about them, and we talk about each individual camper. And then we have a list of who's seen which camper, and who needs this help, who is missing home, who is having a hard time adjusting. It is the same thing at my school. We talk about kids on a weekly basis. We talk about the kids that we're concerned about. We have what we call kid talk, and when we follow a protocol where teachers bring up a student that they're concerned about, and other teachers talk about how they're doing in the class, and when you get a whole picture of this kid based upon what a different teacher knows. And so we get a whole idea of this kid and we invite the kid to have a conversation with us on how to help them better.
So these are things that we have. We talk about social-emotional learning in our classrooms, especially in the time of COVID where some of our kids are working remotely. That's something that we talk about as well, because we can't ignore those feelings that are at the surface, because those feelings can keep a student from learning because it's what they're thinking about, they're not thinking about the content. If we don't take care of their emotions, or help them with their emotions, how are we going to teach the content fully? And so that's something that's super important to me, and important to my community.
We have restorative circles, we have check-ins, we talk about Black Lives Matter. When a lot of the upheaval was happening, we know, and we knew that we needed to give our children a voice, and they needed to be able to speak about what's happening to them and how they're feeling and reacting to it. So we had a town hall, and we had multiple conversations with students, both in our classes, and as a whole school, or in grade level teams, to talk about how they're processing what's happening in the world around them, because they are directly impacted by it.
Yeah, absolutely. So I've heard you say before that you try and be the teacher you needed when you were a student. I wanted to rewind just a little bit and talk about you as a teenager. So paint a picture for us. It is 1995 in the Bronx, and you decide to apply to Camp Rising Sun. Tell us about 16 year old Carl and his life and family and neighborhood.
So it was just four years before that that I moved to the Bronx, by way of Guam, from the Philippines. And we really left to go to the United States for a better opportunity. My parents really valued education, and they valued the math and sciences. I always did well in school, because it was the one thing that I could hold onto that I knew I could give back to my family, a way for me to show that I loved them, and the feeling of accomplishment gets addictive.
As a young kid, as you start to define who you are and who your identity is, sometimes you hold on to something that you know you're very good at, and that for me was school. I had an amazing guidance counselor, and so he came across Camp Rising Sun through our coordinator of student affairs at school who was a mentor to a fellow alumni, Mariela Martinez, and he told him about Camp Rising Sun. And he told me to apply, because he knew it was something that I needed emotionally, which I didn't know. I just thought, "Hey, there's this camp that kids from all around the world go to, what an amazing thing to put onto my resume." That's all I was thinking, as a 16 year old.
Right, we hear that so much.
I mean, it's probably a typical application story with a lot of alum, is that I was like, "Oh my God, this is something amazing and prestigious, I have to do it." But the more I learned about it, and the more I was reading the pamphlet, I started thinking, I was like, you know, this might be a good adventure. This might be a time for me to see what it's like to be away from my family, to be away from home and all of the pressures that I had about having to do well, and it's a place that's new where nobody knows me.
And so that's something that I was very interested in. Beautifully enough, my parents were very open to it. I was a little scared of what they would think because it was a whole summer, but they were very open to it because summer camp was a very American experience, and they wanted me to have as many American experiences as I can, and it was free, which is great for my parents because they were like, "We don't have to pay for anything?"
Yeah, my parents thought that too.
I'm like, "No." And they were super shocked about that, and they were like, "Okay, go apply."
Carl’s parents were happy for him to attend Camp Rising Sun, because they wanted him to have as many “American” experiences as possible growing up.
Yeah, my parents, from my life before going to Camp Rising Sun, said that sleep away camp is for parents who don't love their children, but then when we heard about Camp Rising Sun and they found out it was free, all of a sudden they were very comfortable with sending me away.
Yeah, I mean, they know I'm probably going to be safe, because I was a very responsible kid, and so going away was fine. I was super excited about it. I had already made up my mind, this is what I wanted to do, I was excited. Of course we didn't have a lot of money, so I was going to the salvation army or thrift shops looking for sleeping bags, and what I would bring. And I was really stoked for this interview, I was super excited. I remember brushing my teeth like three times. And I get to this interview, and really honestly, this was the first ever interview I've ever had in my life.
And I find out a couple of weeks later that I was wait-listed, and it's probably also one of the first heartbreaks I ever had. And so it was because I had built myself up to get there, and during the interview I met other kids that were interviewing, I met people who went to the camp. I was super excited about it, but it also got me nervous, because I met the other applicants that were there, and I don't think I was prepared for such a thing.
Yeah, and something—I just want to interject here—something that Carl does as a volunteer service now for camp is that he actually helps conduct the interviews for the new campers, and he has this lovely way of making people feel comfortable, and he runs this group activity that's part of our application process so we can see how our young people might interact with each other once they're at camp.
Yeah, I mean, it's a different way of seeing what potential of leadership somebody has. So I was very sad. Four weeks had gone by, I was like, all right, this is all behind me, but then they called me. They said, "Why don't you come to camp?" And I said, "Yes." And the camp director, Michael Peter Borgias, was like, "Well, it's going to take you a week, two weeks to get here." I was like, "No, in two days." He was like, "What?" And I was like, "I already have all of the paperwork done, all the physicals and everything." And so off I went to camp, and it's been the most amazing thing in the whole entire world.
So tell us a bit about why it was the best thing in the entire world.
Until that time, I've never been at a place where people asked how I felt, multiple people, what my opinions were. In school I always just felt like I raised my hand to give the correct answer, and that was it. I did well in scores, teachers liked me, but it was in camp where I felt like I was seen, and I felt like I was heard, past what I offer in a classroom. It was an odd feeling to be listened to, and for people to really want to know my opinion, and want to know my life, I was kind of dumbfounded. It made me really think about, really much more deeply about myself, and it was fantastic because I really started to feel like, wow, you know what? My opinion is really important, and it's worthwhile to be listened to. And I just wanted to be better because of it.
Yeah, something that we try and do at camp is elevate the young person to leadership roles, where we give them the floor to be adults, to make adult decisions, to make adult mistakes, and be able to then grapple with those mistakes in real time alongside their fellow campers. And so, yeah, we hear that a lot, that this was the first time that I felt like I was listened to. The leadership opportunities we give our kids aren't just, you get to decide what color balloons we use in the gym, they're more meaningful, they're trying to instill a sense of responsibility and caring for other people, like truly empathic leadership.
Yeah, because people listen to me, that's what I became as a leader. I wanted to know how people were doing on my leadership day at camp, and I realized that leadership was not just about me and how well I can do, it was about how well I can serve my community. That was a big moment for me because it wasn't just about putting things in the resume anymore, it was about, I'm being a leader because I care.
Right. And so after this incredible experience, what was it like to go home? How did your camp experience spill out into your home life, and how did it impact your family, per se?
So I've always been studious, and all of these things, but I'm not an initiative kind of guy. My parents were super excited to see me take initiative on so many different levels. First of all, they were super happy that I love chores. I don't know how that happened, but somehow in camp, because I remember teamwork where we did chores around camp to beautify it, or to make sure that it's clean and it's safe for everybody, it's something that I remember. Maybe it's muscle memory, or whatever it is, or the feeling that I had, but I really enjoyed that, and I really enjoy doing that with my parents.
Yeah, part of why we do teamwork at camp is to instill a sense of responsibility for one another, that one week you might be working in the kitchen washing the dishes, and then the next week you realize, you know what, guys, it's really important that you scrape your plates before you put them in the dish rack, because somebody back in there in the kitchen who has to actually do the work. And you rotate, it's the bathroom, it's the teamwork, when you get all these kids who are super high achieving roll up their sleeves and do this hard work, and it makes them so appreciative of what may e at home seemed like something magical that happened while you weren't looking, that everything was clean and done, you leave having a sense of responsibility that you're part of that hard work, you have to be part of that hard work.
It also made me more—a different kind of “social”—in school. I was more involved in getting to know people. There was something in me, maybe it's a sense of happiness and a sense of confidence, a new sense of confidence, that people saw, that my teachers noticed, that my parents noticed, that my friends noticed, that I had come back changed. And I didn't have this mindset of, I have to get this 100, I have to do this, I have to make sure this is done exactly the way my teacher wanted. My English teacher said this, there was a lot more voice and a lot more of me in my writing, and that was eye-opening.
And the more I learned about myself because of camp, the more I wanted to know more, the more I wanted to examine my life. I wanted to get to know myself also after camp, because it opened up so many of these doors, and all of these possibilities that I wasn't done, there was no straight path to anything. I could take a turn, maybe take a creative writing class, maybe get into the arts instead of just science and math. I grew to love reading, and relating to characters in literature. These are things that have opened up all of these emotions and all of this yearning for getting to know myself.
Yeah, that's really beautiful, Carl, and I'm glad to hear that Camp Rising Sun provided that opportunity for you. And as I've said, seeing you evolve and grow, even just as an adult, has been a beautiful experience for me, and I am often inspired by you and the work that you do with young people. And I also appreciate that you make me laugh and you make me think, and you, I feel, are a wonderful example of what we hope our Camp Rising Sun program does for young people, and this beautiful ripple effect.
If you think about the fact that back in 1995, when someone made that phone call to you to say, you've been accepted off the waitlist. And by the way, I'm sorry we weren't smart enough to accept you in the first place. But when they made that call to you, I bet they had no idea what investment they were about to make in the world. Here it is, you at 16, you ended up being this amazing teacher who has affected likely thousands and thousands of lives at this point, and we're just so honored to have been part of your journey.
Not just a part of my journey, a really big part of my journey as a person, and that's why I'm still involved. I took on leadership experiences because I've had that at camp—and set up targets to make myself better. I knew I was going to go to college, but I didn't want to leave the city. But hearing other campers at camp talking about applying to Harvard, or going away somewhere, made me think, I was like, everybody is from different places, I came from a different place, why can't I keep going? Why do I have to be here and stay here because this is what everybody else was doing, why can't I think about other things? And so that's why I applied to schools outside of New York.
And this 16 year old Carl that you're talking about right now, the one who now has more courage and confidence, what do you think he would think of you today?
Wow, I'm a little choked up about that question, because when you're 16, you have a lot of questions, and you're a little angsty sometimes.
Oh yeah, I've noticed.
I was afraid about who I was going to become. Before that was about success, and all of those things, but knowing more about myself, I can say that 16-Year-Old Self would be very proud of me. He would not even recognize quite a bit of who I am now, because I've become the person that I've always wanted to be. And that's, as I told you, I'm getting a little choked up, that is powerful, because how many people can say that? How many people can say, I've become the person that I've always wanted to be.
Yeah, what a gift.
Where I feel like I have a job that I'm passionate about, that makes the difference. I know I have this inner strength that can weather through a pandemic, that can run a school through a pandemic, and not just come back out fine, but come back out with flying colors, and making life a little easier for other people. I couldn't have asked for a better life.
And we are, again, so grateful to have you in our alumni community. And I'm honestly just glad to have you out there in existence, to know that someone like you exists. The world is very lucky for you.
I'm very lucky. I always talk about how I feel like I'm lucky, to have found the things that I've found, to have been open to all of the opportunities that I've had.
And what gives you hope these days in these dark times?
You know, staying involved in Camp Rising Sun, and LAJF, the Louis August Jonas Foundation, in a deeper way, and seeing the programs that are happening, visiting camp, meeting the new alums, doing interviews, you know what that makes me feel? It makes me feel like the world is going to be fine. It's hard to feel hopeful at the height of COVID-19 in New York in April, but I did, because I stayed in contact with Rising Sun folk.
Knowing that there's another 16 year old, or 15 year old, somebody like me who was given this opportunity, who was listened to, who was given the mic and the floor, who was asked to think about what they thought about the world, and knowing that this person could end up being a teacher, a principal, a lawyer, a politician, is meaningful, and it gives me hope, because not just kindness in our program in Rising Sun, there's critical thinking, there is empowering students, and empowering campers, to really think about what's best for the world, and how they empathize with each other. Because we don't have enough of that in this world. We don't have enough empathy. And here comes another 60 young men and 60 young women coming through every single year with that same audacity. The audacity to come out into the world as a 16 year old and say, I can change it.
Yeah, and after 90 years of running Camp Rising Sun, I always love thinking about all of our alumni as these little lights twinkling around the globe, and something, Carl, that you mentioned about whether they go off to become a politician or a doctor or a lawyer, whatever it is, we have many alumni whose lives get impacted by our program, and it motivates them to become educators of some sort. And just recently, we hosted an amazing think tank of our own Camp Rising Sun alums who are educators in some way, and bringing together their minds to help us advance our own programs at Camp Rising Sun, and think about what additional programs we could be offering to the world. Often our program is considered the best kept secret, and so I'm hoping that listeners out there help us to spread the word so that we can grow and we can impact and help and support more people's development like Carl.
So Carl, thank you for talking with us today. Is there anything that you'd like to share with our listeners that we didn't cover?
The future is hopeful. I don't want anybody to think that it is not, because places like Camp Rising Sun exist.
Yeah, that gives me a lot of hope too, Carl.
Thank you for having me.
Thank you for being on the show, and thank you for being our first guest.
My pleasure.
Thank you for joining us today, and you can find all the links and show notes for today's episode at www.lajf.org/podcast. Remember to subscribe to the podcast on your favorite platform to hear more inspiring stories of leadership, connection, and hope. You can also see some of Carl's hilarious COVID safety signs that keep his students smiling, and me too.
About Carl:
Carl Vincent Manalo is the current principal of Khalil Gibran International Academy, a public High School in Brooklyn, New York. He has been involved in secondary education for his entire working career, becoming a teacher while studying for his Master’s in Teaching and Education at Fordham University, which he earned in 2004. He earned a Bachelor’s with a double major in Human and Organizational Development and English from Vanderbilt University in 2001.
Connect with Carl in the CRS Alumni Group on LinkedIn.
Carl’s Hilarious Covid Safety Signs:
