World awareness important to popular Calabasas teacher




Brad Boelman

Brad Boelman

There’s an old saying that teachers teach for lack of another passion. But that makes light of the people for whom teaching is their passion.

Brad Boelman is a teacher who loves being in the classroom and wouldn’t have it any other way. The 28-year-old Woodland Hills resident is wrapping up his second year at Calabasas High School, and he says the key to being a good teacher is patience.

“It’s funny because in my personal life I’m not a super patient person, but I’ll explain the same thing over and over and over again for the sake of a student or say it many different ways,” Boelman said. “I think it’s because I understand they’re still kids and they deserve a little extra patience. I tell my students, ‘Don’t be afraid to make a mistake; this is the time for (that).’ Creating that environment, I think that’s part of (teaching).”

Boelman’s parents are teachers, and he jokes that he simply joined the family business, although he took a unique route to do it. After he graduated from Cal Lutheran University in 2012, Boelman, then 22, joined the Peace Corps.

He spent two years teaching social studies and English to children in Western Samoa and earned his teaching credential along the way. As a volunteer, Boelman lived with a Samoan family in a rural village and helped create a written record of the community’s folk stories.

“A lot of the Samoan culture is not written down, so I (had students) talk to older family members and get different versions of folk tales that they had grown up with, and we put them into writing and plays,” Boelman said. “It got the whole community involved, and it was fun seeing how excited everyone got to see their stories (acted out).”

A Samoan flag hangs in the back of his classroom, above pictures of Boelman and his former students. He uses his experience teaching there to engage his students in lessons.

Boelman said music is essential to Samoan culture. Many of his students there learned English by singing songs by the Beatles, Cat Stevens or Simon and Garfunkel. Now he incorporates music into his lesson plans.

On ‘Music Fridays,’ he’ll play violin or piano to give his students a connection to an era of history they’re studying.

“When we were studying Beethoven, we were talking about the concept of romanticism, or Elgar wrote this piece for his wife, a British citizen living in India, and we’re talking about colonialism in India,” Boelman said. “I thought it would be a hard sell, but it isn’t. They don’t expect their history teacher to play violin in front of the classroom. I love it.”

Boelman teaches senior classes and said that in addition to his curriculum he tries to prepare his students for life after high school. He’s done activities that break down how credit cards work and has a budget project where students are given a $3,000 budget and have to find a place to live, transportation and a job.

“ The past couple weeks they’re kind of out of it, and then we talked about credit cards and they have a million questions. It’s fun, in a practical way,” Boelman said. “A lot of my students choose to do the budget project based on where they’re going to college. That’s the No. 1 thing they’ll say (they remember), the budget project. Either ‘that really helped me,’ or ‘I wish I took that more seriously.’”

Mostly, Boelman said, he tries to connect with his students on a personal level so they can see he’s not infallible and they can be comfortable talking to him. He knows his age plays a factor as well and uses it to his advantage.

“I am still young, but I have some life experience, and that’s what students love to hear. ‘This is what I did, I bounced a check and I regretted it,’” Boelman said. “Their parents put such immense pressure on them, so it’s like, ‘okay, come talk to me about it, I don’t care, just tell me how you feel.’ I think that’s probably the biggest thing I offer, is sort of an open door, open ears.”