‘Mission Possible’: H.B. district brings staff together to launch school year
- Share via
The auditorium at First Christian Church Huntington Beach turned into a sea of people waving white rally towels Monday, while singing a song about the Huntington Beach Union High School District.
But these were teachers and classified staff, not students, who were making the noise.
For the first time in decades, the district held an opening of school event for its staff, two days ahead of approximately 13,500 students district-wide returning to campus on Wednesday.
Huntington Beach Union High School District Board of Trustees President Bonnie Castrey said it had been about 35 years since the district hosted such a day.
George Couros, an author and motivational speaker who is a former teacher and school administrator, served as keynote speaker for the event, which had a slogan of “Mission Possible.”
“It was all timing, right?” HBUHSD Supt. Carolee Ogata said after the morning session, which featured staff from half of the district’s six comprehensive high schools — Huntington Beach, Marina and Westminster. Staff from Edison, Fountain Valley and Ocean View went to an afternoon session.
The district also had representatives from two alternative education schools, Valley Vista and Coast high schools, at the morning session.
“It was the right time, the right space, the right speaker,” Ogata said. “We have such great professionals that we get to work with every day, so why not bring everybody together for a day?”
Tara Choat led a team that planned the event. It was emceed by the 2026-27 ASB presidents from each school — Marina’s Gyllian Gardener, Madi Phan of Fountain Valley, Brooke Overcast of Ocean View, Tea Lenore of Huntington Beach, Edison’s Lucy Jenkins and Westminster’s Jessica Nguyen.
Castrey said in an interview after the first session it was important for the entire district to come together, to allow staff to become acquainted. She added that she herself survived a humble upbringing in the Kenfield Projects in Buffalo, N.Y.
“It was because the teachers knew who I was, the secretary in the principal’s office knew who I was,” she said of her childhood. “It made me feel comfortable going to school every day and learning. It gave me a great deal of reason to be successful. It makes all of the difference in the world when somebody really pays attention to you, knows who you are.”
Couros, who described himself as a big basketball and Los Angeles Lakers fan, made it clear that he was happy to speak in Southern California. He praised the district itself.
“For a high school district, it feels so relational,” he said. “What was really fascinating is that I had no clue what any of your jobs were, but I knew they all mattered.”
A native of Canada who now lives in Florida, Couros used funny videos and anecdotes during his speech, which Castrey described as bubbling with contagious energy. He rejected the thinking that kids have to be so much better at technology than adults, using his own family as an example.
“Kids are still willing to push buttons and see what happens, and a lot of adults have lost that willingness,” he said. “My mom proves how valuable this is. She went from a point in her 70s — she could not read and write English — to now in her 80s, she’ll make me feel guilty solely through the use of emoticons. She’ll text me, ‘Why don’t you ever call me?’ with [emojis of a] phone, broken heart, tears.”
Couros also described the difference he sees between classroom teachers and school teachers, with the latter group caring about every student on campus, even outside the walls of the classroom.
“We need to make the positives so loud that the negatives are almost impossible to hear,” he said in a comment that seemed to resonate with his audience.
Other local districts also went back to campus this week. Huntington Beach City School District, which has six elementary schools and two middle schools, sent its nearly 5,000 students back to class on Tuesday.
The Ocean View School District and Fountain Valley School District both had their first days of school last week, on Aug. 25 and Aug. 26, respectively.
