Hope Dealer Part II: Grow Better Humans

Niko Tsamoutalidis doing good and spreading hope

Photo Credit: Nikolas Tsamoutalidis

Nikolas (Niko) Tsamoutalidis has been busy since we last spoke in 2024. He completed a certificate with the International Coaching Federation  to become an executive coach, and he is on the cusp of becoming a licensed professional counselor. He has invested his time and energy into achieving these credentials to be an even better hope dealer than he already was and fulfill his purpose of helping the teachers, school administrators and students in his district understand the power of hope and that it is a pathway to a healthier life.

Niko is the Bethlehem Area School District’s administrator for student support and wellness and part of a team within the district that trains teachers, school administrators, bus drivers and general duty aides about the importance of hope, its very real benefits and what’s required to nurture, grow and sustain it. They are working to create a culture within the district where staff and students can thrive.

Wake Up Call

During our most recent conversation, Niko shared with me an experience he had around the time he was starting his current role back in 2023. He found himself in the emergency room suffering the effects of stress. He was dealing with personal and professional transitions, and the grief of multiple losses in his life, one of them being the loss of his father after being a caretaker for him for nearly five years. Moving into an exciting new position, meant moving away from a school community that he’d been a part of for 13 years, knew well and cared a lot about. He was not just leaving a position, but more importantly, relationships.

His trip to the emergency room was a wake up call, though. He began unpacking all of the stuff he did in his daily routine that set the tone for his day. As a result, he got serious and intentional about making time for daily renewal habits and practices that make him feel better, and most importantly, be in a better mental and emotional state for whomever he comes into contact with on any given day. They are wellness strategies that nurture his spirit and improve his physical, emotional and mental well-being. In short, they make him a better person. Within a few weeks of making these changes, he stopped taking the medication he was prescribed after his ER visit, and he was more hopeful.

Be Each Other’s Medicine or Poison

Niko was motivated to share what he’d learned from this experience with fellow educators that he knows battle vicarious trauma every day in classrooms and schools throughout the district. He began immersing himself in research about hope, which helped him create a slide deck and staff training that focuses on the science and power of hope within a wellness mindset. When conducting trainings, he has peace of mind that there is no gap between what he is presenting and how he lives his life. In the training, district staff learn:

• What hope is, its benefits, how they can experience more of it and nurture it in others.     

• To increase their social and emotional intelligence, so they can self-regulate. Niko says being able to regulate our nervous system is one of the most important skills any of us can have during these difficult times. 

• The why and how of integrating social and emotional learning into their lesson plans.  

Participants come away understanding that how they show up for students and colleagues matters and that each day they get to choose to be each other's medicine or poison. They learn that the acquisition of academic content and skills and healthy human development in the midst of instruction can be shared and mutually sustaining goals. Most importantly, they come away  understanding that the reason for doing all of this is to grow better humans. 

An Anchor for the Soul

Photo Credit: Nikolas Tsamoutalidis

The integrated team Niko is a part of “teaches to the test.” The five CASEL Principles - Self Awareness, Self Management, Social Awareness, Relationship Skills and Responsible Decision-Making - are the framework for their social and emotional learning (SEL) work. The hope training highlights the SEL work. It reminds staff of their “why” and emphasizes the importance of committing to daily renewal, because you can not give what you don’t have. Niko says educators are usually the worst at this, since they are always prioritizing and taking care of others.

A recent study showed kids felt tired, bored or stressed about school. Niko wonders how they can learn if that is how they feel and it drives him to ask, “How can we improve learning and how kids experience school?” The answer is to help them increase their social and emotional intelligence, learn to self-regulate and be more hopeful. This in turn will help them combat loneliness, give them direction and purpose and make them more resilient.  When we are dysregulated because we have been hijacked by our emotions, our ability to focus, think clearly and critically and problem solve are all diminished.

Hope is the number one mitigating factor that can push back against the effects of adverse childhood experiences, an anecdote to the trauma and negative messages that too many of us, including kids, experience every day. It is also an anecdote for the adrenaline and cortisol fueled times we are living in, because we all need to believe that we can create a better future whether that future is in ten minutes or ten years. Niko says it best, “Hope is an anchor for the soul. We become a social gift to one another when we are hopeful, and it helps us see that we are part of something bigger than ourselves. We can still be about the acquisition of academic content in schools and support and sustain healthy human development.”

Learn More

The first time Niko and I talked, he said, “We haven’t gone through everything we have, not to share it.” So, if you want to learn more about the work he is doing, you can contact him at yanselmart@gmail.com or ntsamoutalidis@basdschools.org