Following his two talks Tuesday—first with the entire school and then later with a smaller group of recognized student leaders of LR—student Sylvia Brownlow had a quick 5 minute interview with Mr. Gerety, asking questions about what our students and staff here at LR wanted to know.
Sylvia: How did you get into public speaking?
Gerety: When I was in highschool, I was involved with leadership organizations like SAD, Students Council, FBLA. I also played two different sports. I played football and baseball. Through those organizations, and through the different sports that I played, I had some great coaches and teachers and advisors that really taught me some important leadership skills that had a big influence on my life. And my mom and my dad also had a big influence on me growing and developing as a leader and learning how important it was to have a positive attitude. Because of all of that, that’s how I became involved with public speaking.
Sylvia: What formative experience(s) not mentioned in your talk helped you craft your message of gratitude, kindness and courage?
Gerety: The biggest influence on the message that I share with students comes from students, comes from the conversations, comes from the stories, comes from the different experiences that students are sharing with me all over North America. In a sense, the program is really a students program, because it comes from the stories and the insights of the students.
Sylvia: What challenge have you faced that was not easily overcome by positive thinking?
Gerety: The challenge of losing a close family member was something that was and continues to be a challenge. Losing my mom and dad and navigating that just involved me trying to stay positive, but there were other things that I needed to do. That involved me writing about it, talking about it. That was something where I needed more than just a positive attitude, but I also needed support from family and from friends and time to grieve and to heal.
Sylvia: How would you define a healthy school community?
Gerety: I think a health school community can be defined as a community where people feel safe, people feel valued and people feel like they belong, where people feel like they’ve been seen, they’ve been heard, and they matter.
Sylvia: How do your children feel about having a public speaker for a father?
Gerety: More importantly than how they feel about me being a public speaker, it’s more important to me that they just know that I’m a good person. And that they know just how much I love them and how proud I am of them.
Sylvia: If you were a type of tree, what type of tree would you be?
Gerety: I would be a palm tree on a tropical island, on a beautiful remote beach.
Sylvia: If you were a Croc, what color Croc would you be, and what Gibbets would you have?
Gerety: If I had colored crocs I would do green crocs, because green is my favorite color. Green is also The fourth chakra which is your heart chakra which is a really powerful chakra of your energy chakras so I chose that for green….The gym inside have would be a four-leaf clover a Boston Bruins logo a New England Patriots logo a Boston Red Sox logo and another one would be a little thing that says “Be Kind” with a smiley face and one would have a heart on it.
Mr. Gerety ended his final session with the LR leaders by giving each person his book, Shine Your Light: Navigate Your Way to a Life You Love. He personally signed a copy for each student. He also performed a special fire trick (that he definitely didn’t teach them how to do 😉).
