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Marty Devalk is Poudre High School's social/emotional wellness specialist and one of many DEANs. He has an incredible reputation among the students and staff when it comes to being understanding and generous. I've had the honor of being able to interview him regarding the evolution of his role here at Poudre. The following is a transcription of that interview.
Gunner: I mostly wanted to come to you because I know you sort of have two perspectives when it comes to staffing here at Poudre. So I wanna first begin with what you did before you were a Dean, which you are now if I’m assuming correctly
Marty: Yeah so I started at Poudre in the integrated services department so I have a quite a few perspectives on a lot of different roles, I worked in our ILS program with students with significant disabilities and then I worked in Integrated Services with students with emotional disabilities, and then I became a social emotional wellness specialist and I still have the title of social emotional wellness specialist but I do a lot of the same jobs or my job description is very similar to a Dean now. So I guess prior to this role I’ve had this role I’ve had this year as the Dean social emotional learning specialist. I was really supporting small groups of students, doin one-on-one meetings with students who struggled with either attendance, peer conflict, internal conflict. You know basically I would summarize what I do is support everything that makes you human at school which is pretty much anything. So that was my main focus there, being small group meetings, planned meetings, adding a little more structure to it and now being in the dean role I think. . . . I feel like the best way I could explain it is last year I was doing a lot with a smaller amount of kids, and now I’m doing less with a larger amount of kids, which I don’t think makes it any less impactful, it’s just a shift in the way I do things. However I really do believe the title of Dean and social emotional learning specialist are the same because you know a math teacher teaches math, an English teacher teaches English and I feel like the job as a dean has a lot to do with behavior that has to do with the social emotional realm of being human so I really do feel like the skills that I have learned from the social emotional learning world translate almost perfectly to my role as the dean and addressing behavior and processing through situations with students, it just really doesn’t seem all to different for me
Gunner: Yeah, so another thing I wanted to ask considering you kind of just answered my other question, that being “What do you do as a Dean?” because you’re kind of just doing the same work like you said. Now a question that I find sort of interesting is, now that you’re a dean, you are partially responsible for looking out for potential threats to the school before they happen. Is there any stress in that part of the job?
Marty: Yeah definitely. It’s interesting because I always felt that I knew what happened in response to a potential threat or evidence that would raise the alarm of the school, but now that I’m in and I realize there's so much more to it and there’s so many people involved, it’s very structured, and that soothes my anxiety a bit but at the same time. . . . Like I can give an example: one time when we had our first lockdown drill, I knew it was a drill days in advance, I knew it wasn’t a real threat, but when that alarm went off and we were simulating it being a real lockdown my heart-rate went up, you know I got a little more stressed, my executive functioning and some of those adrenaline pieces were harder because I had to work the cameras to try and find our fake intruder and I was not as effective as I normally am to click through cameras and be as accurate as possible. So even though I know the inner workings of things that happen, it does help me feel more safe here, but at the same time there’s. . . knowing it before other people do gives me some anxiety as well. I do find it stressful, but like I said I feel very safe because I see the process in its entirety now, where before and a lot of people staff and students here at school don’t see all of those things and in reality most people won’t see those things but I think it’s important for everybody to recognize that there’s so much that goes into it and really the safety here and all the people and protocols and responses make me feel very safe. So there’s kind of a weird mix. . . I’m still anxious even though I know I’m safe
Gunner: Yeah. For another question I’m gonna ask. . . Do you still have Ole around, the dog?
Marty I do.
Gunner: I ask cause I feel like I’ve seen them around
Marty: Yeah he has come by like four times this school year. I was bringing him Monday, Wednesday, Friday last year and I still plan to bring them Monday, Wednesday, Friday starting maybe quarter two. Because of my change in role and changing offices and all of the different complexities that come with a new office I’ve kind of slowly worked him into my schedule as I try to figure out my own schedule, which has been hard too because I miss him at school too as much as he provides for everybody else he’s also my dog and I love having him at school with me. So I think it’s been a difficult mix of I want to bring him everyday, but I also want to feel comfortable in my own routines before I introduce to much, but that’s not to say he doesn’t do an amazing job when he’s here. I think it’s less about him and more about me at this point, that being just one less thing to worry about not that he is a big worry because he is so good, but yes I do plan to have him here pretty consistently. I would say quarter two is when I might go all.
Gunner: Another question I had is: What is the kind of work relationship that you have with the other deans? Like, how often do you interact with them
Marty: Yeah. I would say it’s different to last year I would say if I could compare last year to this year. . . I don’t want to say I felt more isolated, because that’s probably not the right word but I worked by myself a little bit more, I was contained to my own space, I did collaborate with other people but now I share an office with Mr. Hollie, we’re in there most of the day, we talk through almost every situation together so we don’t make a decision just by ourselves, we like to give each others perspective, bounce ideas off each other. You know we’re in constant communication even if it’s just a lap around the school in between classes, we talk about what the plan is, where we’re going. All those things. . . not every single time but most of the time we try to be on the same page about everything and that actually is what I prefer than working more singularly or by myself, because two brains are better than one and I really think that he because he’s worked here in the dean role for quite a long time so he’s a really good recourse. So just yeah being able to learn from each other and bounce ideas off is just great I think that’s. . . It’s a close working relationship.
With that, you have read what many would consider perfectly explain why Marty is so liked here at Poudre High School. It's because he is really good at just being human, and it may also be because of his dog but I digress. What matters, is Marty is a huge part of what makes Poudre great.
Gunner Farrell is a sophomore at Poudre High School and is in his first year at the Poudre Press. You should expect articles about gaming on this column. Considering he chose gaming as the focus of his column, you can imagine that he is quite fond of the genre.
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