If you guys have not heard yet, we’ve got ourselves Mr. Allen back in the office! He was the head of BASIS Peoria several years ago when many of our readers were not even at this school! After that year, he traveled to China and helped found a BASIS school there. As a result, Mr. Allen, although a familiar face to many of the older students, still needs to be reintroduced to our student body. And what better way to introduce him than through an interview? Let the questions and answers begin! Check out the full video version of the interview here: Mr. Allen’s Interview.
Mark: Tell us about yourself – How did you hear about BASIS, and what got you into the job?
Mr. Allen: My son and my wife were here back in 2011. My son had attended a school here. Several families heard that BASIS was coming and did some research together, and we went to information meetings. My son ended up enrolling here in 7th grade in 2011, and my wife ended up taking a part-time job at the school, and that was my entry.
M: What do you like most about your job here?
A: I like being around the kids — that’s essential for me. I really enjoy it, and it’s enjoyable to come back and see a few students I haven’t seen in four years. It must be like a parent with a child going off to college or university for four years, and you see them again. I enjoy the teachers — they’re spectacular, and it’s always a pleasure to work with them.
M: Which college did you go to, and what were some highlights while you were there? What was your major?
A: Oh gosh, I went to Stanford twice, and the first time I got a degree in chemistry. What was it like back then? Well, there was in the early ’70, a lot of social unrest in the Americas. The Vietnam War, Watergate, and a lot of those things were happening. Stanford was part of it. Although it was a fairly conservative school by reputation, its kids were anything but conservative in that era. And then years later I went back to business school after I figured out that I didn’t want to be a chemist.
M: What exactly about being a chemist did not work out for you?
A: Well, I’m the oldest of 5 sons, and my dad was a chemist, so I think that was a natural attraction, and it took learning about chemistry in detail in the real-life that I realized I wasn’t that interested in it. I don’t really think I knew the subject well enough.
One of the things that does happen at our schools, we give kids fairly good introductions to many different subjects — not all of them that are in careers of course. Certainly get your feel of Biology, Chemistry, Physics, Maths, English, History, and a few others. So, by the time you’re ready to go to college and pick a major, you have a much better idea of what to do than what I had back then.
M: What is something you love doing outside of school?
A: I like sleeping. Sleeping is good.
M: Do you have any pets? Tell us a little about them.
A: Not anymore. Before we left for China — my wife left for China in 2017 — we had a black lab of 15 years, and she passed away. I think the favorite thing about her was her energy. She just had a lot of energy. When she was young, she would chew things like crazy — she was half lab half ciao, and I’m told the ciao has the chewing thing especially when they were young. Great for our son. He grew up with the dog.
M: Do you have a favorite food? Are there any restaurants in particular you like?
A: Um, no I don’t have any here. I’m still getting used to the state of Phoenix after being away for 4 years. I’d pretty much eat anything. My wife is Indian, so I love Indian food, I love Thai food, the spicier the better, and I’m still looking for good Mexican food in Arizona. But I’d pretty much eat anything.
M: Where have you traveled, and which of those places is your favorite? Where would you like to travel and why?
A: I think the favorite place I’ve been to is Italy. Drove across the Pyrenees in Spain and hit the coast of France and Italy down to Rome, and I think that part of Italy I really enjoyed a lot. I would love to go back. I would love to visit new places. I think I would like to travel back to Europe, my wife has never been there — Eastern Europe. My youngest brother is married to a Bulgarian woman and they have plans to relocate soon to Bulgaria. And I’ve known some teachers over the years that have been from that part of the world, and they talk very well of that area — a lot of history, beautiful scenery, friendly people, and reasonable cost of living.
M: I’ve heard you traveled to China. How is the education from there compared to here in BASIS?
A: Quite a bit different. The campuses are quite bigger, land and capacity in the school are much much bigger, so you have a larger enrollment, more teachers. But the biggest change is that the Chinese revere teachers. Whereas teachers are not revered in America. Chinese families do not even have to know you well to pay you respect, it’s the position you’re in. Being in a teaching position earns you respect, and once they get to know you and if you impress them with skill and responsiveness and good communication, they’ll love you even more, but they’ll love you from the beginning. You don’t have to earn their trust. Coming from NY that’s certainly not the case here, I think there’s a lot of skepticism about what we’re doing, and every family has a different opinion about the way the schools should be run. Charter schools are also completely different, I think there’s a different characteristic to them that they are tuition-free.
M: Is there a pet peeve you have with parents?
A: I would say no. I think for the most part we have extremely loyal parents, very supportive parents, and they have done their research. They have picked this school, and they want everything to be successful. But if there’s a common theme, we’re all joined in wanting our school to be successful. I don’t hear peeves. Everyone has something to say when things go wrong, but they’re grateful. But if you’re honest — that includes students too — and say you made a mistake, and that you’re going to do this thing better the next time, people will give you the grace to do that.
M: What is a talent that you have that you’re personally incredibly proud of?
A: I have no talent. I’m very proud of that. I’ve never taught in K-12 schools, and coming to BASIS, my only teaching experience was in college and that was only in part-time adjunct roles. I admire the skill sets that the teachers have, and I think I’m not much of a threat to them from the standpoint that I can’t tell them how to do their job better. And I think that teachers are in a better position to advise their peers on improvement and I’ve really been encouraged by seeing some of the opportunities for teachers to improve our school over time. I just believe in being honest, being bold. I don’t believe in holding back; a co-worker many years ago said that if there was an award for jumping off the end of a pier, that would be me. So you know, that’s a characteristic, not necessarily a skill. I’m systems-oriented, so I really like to work with people in processes. So when things go wrong, I blame the system or the process and not the person(s). I think I’m kind, and I have some patience. But I have no skill in teaching chemistry.
I actually didn’t tell you the full story earlier, but I got to know the Head of School (HoS) after a couple of meetings at the info sessions, and the first assessments were taken at ASU West because the old campuses were not finished yet, and I took my son there, and another of his friend’s dad was going to stay there. 2-3 hours, most of the parents left, well not all of the proctors showed up, the first HoS asked my son’s (Bailey) friend’s dad, and said, “Hey, would you like to stay and proctor for us? We’re a little short of people.” And we said, “fine”, and we walked into these amphitheater sized halls at ASU west and found things like kids didn’t have pencils, and kids didn’t understand test instructions, and we just helped them out. And at the end of the day, Mr. Houser found out that I had a chemistry degree once upon a time, and a couple of weeks into the school year, I get a phone call from him asking me if I’d like to teach chemistry, and I paused for half a second and said, “No, not interested” — “Well why don’t you come into the school anyways and talk and see what happens,” and that’s how my first job came about.
M: What do you think is something quirky about yourself that no one else has?
A: Umm, I get up at 4 o’clock every morning. I don’t know if I do anything every year. I went to the Oregon Shakespeare Festival in Ashland for 20 summers in a row. It was a mini college reunion — a group of us did it — mostly because a friend of ours who grew up in Medford told us about it. Two of those friends bought homes in the area, circle of life, that kind of thing.
M: What is one of your most embarrassing moments in life?
A: I try to forget things that are embarrassing. Well, there are a lot of embarrassing moments that happen in school. When I was in school, you know, answering a question wrong in class. I have dreams about missing a final exam or showing up late — you know those stereotypical dreams that don’t actually happen. I have these dark memories of school, and I forget all the fun times, but I now spend more time thinking about all the positive things that have happened, and three are a lot of them. But probably — it wasn’t embarrassing but — it was the transition between 6th and 7th grade: My family moved from Berkeley and over the hill to an upper-middle-class white suburb and I had black hair at the time, and I felt really different because I was caucasian, and that was a shock for me. And I think from that experience I’ve become much more aware much more than I would’ve if I didn’t have the experience. How childhood experiences form our values and how we look at the world, the worldview of life and how we make sense of things. I reconnected with that when I was in Manhattan for the last 3 years, a very diverse community. But that wasn’t embarrassing, it was very uncomfortable, but not embarrassing.
M: How about your most triumphant moment?
A: I made it through chemistry at Stanford after deciding I wasn’t very good at it. That was survival. The birth of a child is always up there on the list, that was quite an accomplishment. I think being able to have diverse experiences in my job because I tend to spend more time in my jobs than I do relaxing or taking vacations so being able to have that diversity in a job for the last ten years has been really enjoyable.
M: If you were to give a tip to your past self, what would it be? How about to students?
A: I would be more inquisitive about my choices in life, much earlier in life, like in school instead of just plowing through and doing whatever was asked of me. I would be more inquisitive and maybe more challenging, that way more opportunities would present themselves earlier in life, and you can make different decisions. But I don’t have any regrets.
(To Students) I think they should lighten their backpacks. Most students are carrying too much, and it’s going to harm them physically. And I invite students to sit in the hallway with me and unload their lockers and rebalance their backpacks if they want. I have advice for parents too: buy a second set of books. Don’t run in the hallways. Be nice to others. By nice I mean respectful; you don’t always have to agree but whatever happens, be respectful. And I think that does not just include your teachers. Your friends, people you don’t know pay off long term. I often see kids under a lot of stress. And it’s getting worse over time. I don’t have an answer for that, except that you as a student need to find — just as adults — balance and margin. Balance means that you do enough fun and re-energizing activities in your life so for every person that could be different. The balance of the work you need to do whatever the word is. Sometimes work can be fun, sometimes it’s not. The other thing is margin, and I have a good example of this. A high school student was a minute late coming into the gate the other day, and my comment was “You’re cutting it a bit late,” and the response was, “I ran into three red lights along the way.” That’s not enough margin, whether a light is red or green is beyond anyone’s control. And you need to plan better for that. Give yourself the margin to do that. Same with homework, same with extracurricular activity, same with whatever goal your parents may have given you- you need to have some margin. And for everybody, again, it’s going to be different, but you have to find that. And it’s a learning process you know, you don’t discover it in 6 months, you do it in a few years.
M: What is a personal horror story that you have? (anything with animals, people?)
A: Death. Seeing someone that you know dead. Identifying somebody in a morgue. Or seeing a dead body on the street somebody you don’t know. Each one of those experiences shocked me. Same with pets — how they pass away or they get injured or with injured children and suffering. That’s awful.
M: What is a controversial food opinion you have (like pineapple on pizza, or milk before cereal)?
A: I don’t eat cereal. I barely drink milk, I’ve been lactose intolerant since my 30’s and even though we have pills, I’ve just gotten out of the habit of drinking milk or eating ice cream and cheese. I don’t have any weird habits.
M: Do you believe water is wet?
A: Yes, in liquid form it’s wet. I wouldn’t argue it. It just is.
M: When someone with an accent thinks to themselves, do you think they have an accent in their thoughts, too?
A: I believe that the language and dialects that we speak influence the way we think so that’s a different way of answering the question, but yes. I took Spanish all the way through high school, and I started to experience a little bit of it, but I never became fully fluent, but I started to think a little differently. I really enjoyed languages when I was young and had the capacity to learn Greek, German, and a few others. But yes, I think it does influence your thoughts.
M: A goose is running toward you at full speed, angrily honking at you at a park. What do you do? Do you try to fight it?
A: Gosh, I don’t know. Can’t outrun a goose. I would move perpendicularly. I would not fight the goose.
M: Create a wacky ice cream flavor of your dreams. What would it be?
A: It would be mint chip chocolate with some brittle crunch, something crunchy although I haven’t eaten ice cream in decades. They may have something like that, I don’t know. The mint chocolate chip ice cream doesn’t have enough crunchiness in it.
M: Design a class and teach it — what class would it be?
A: I would design a class around self-development. One of the things that you need to do in life is to be healthy in all aspects: social, emotional, physical, spiritual, mental. Whatever it takes to be a human being and how to do it well, that’s what I would teach.
M: Invent a country — what would it be and what would be the highlight of the country’s culture?
A: Well, I’m thinking about how messy it would be to start a country. And my immediate reaction was I’m not interested in that. Because, look at our country, it’s 250 years old, approximately. And it’s messy. It’s a great example of a republic, a democratic republic, and as many problems as we have and as messy as we are, it’s so much better than the alternatives. I’m not going to improve on that. That doesn’t sound like a fun thing to do. Maybe if it was in a video game or something like that where you create a city or country- it might be fun to do.
(Do you play any video games?)
No. My son begged me to play video games with him when he was growing up, but I just didn’t have any interest in them.
M: If you were to sell a frying pan in the most ridiculous way, how would you do it?
A: Well, I’ve actually done that. I just give them away. Because I move so many times so you have things that aren’t worth moving, so I just give them away. I don’t know if that’s ridiculous but yeah. You donate them so somebody else can use them.
M: What do you want people to remember you for?
A: Oh, I’d like people to remember that I worked really hard for their benefit, and I did it kindly. I didn’t force my beliefs or values on other people, and I did it for their benefit.
There we go, a full 25 question interview with Mr. Allen. It was quite a long one, but it really had many interesting answers in it. Mr. Allen is a wonderful, friendly man who would not hesitate to help a student in need. If you want to learn even more about him, strike up a conversation with him in his office, simple as that.
