The Power of the Right Advisor with Dr. Matthew Montgomery
Dr. Russell Strickland [00:41:41]
That one’s on my watch list, that was on my watch list as well. So it sounds like you recommend it. Is that something to watch and bring ideas back to the family or is it something to watch as a family?
Dr. Matthew Montgomery [00:41:54]
It depends on how old the family is. Like I didn’t have my 10 year old. If you if you have teenagers, I’d say yes. Yeah. And then dialog about it. It is. It’s just powerful. And, you know, you take any documentary with you. You have to put in the context. I’m the type of person that reads multiple news sources around the same topic to try to distill common threads. But and maybe that goes back to your idea of a critical consumer. But you have to keep that. You’re also looking at somebody’s paradigm. And, you know, there’s many different paradigms.
Dr. Russell Strickland [00:42:28]
Unfortunately, we are getting to the point where you just about have to be a Ph.D. to read the news anymore, because you’ve got to look at all of these biases that that come into the news source in the reporting and distill those out by looking for those common threads. Like you said, that we just want to, first of all, just read the news to us anymore.
Dr. Matthew Montgomery [00:42:49]
Yeah, and you can trust it. So and I find myself to want to dove into those other times where I want to turn it all off. And I try to balance between the two.
Dr. Russell Strickland [00:43:00]
Well, so what? What else do you think? What what’s next on the on the journey? Now that I understand that the dissertation is still large in the rearview mirror. But as it’s receding. Have you got any any other thoughts about what’s going to fill that void?
Dr. Matthew Montgomery [00:43:16]
So I definitely want I want to write the book. Yeah. I want to I want to ultimately, hopefully get the opportunity to speak and engage with other districts that are focused on transfer made of instructional practices. I want to somehow make it impact on a global scale with conversations around how is there a better way to play school? What have we learned from this recent endemic and what what’s going to stay the same and what’s going to change? And I think that those will be interesting. And I want to make a positive impact right now. And vision is I need a book to be able to open doors in terms of speaking engagements, not a book to make money from, but to open doors, just like the Ph.D. I think opens over schools. So I’m looking for when I went from when I matriculated from a teacher to a principal and I thought I was gonna make a want to make a bigger impact there. And then when I was a principal, I want to become a superintendent. Now, as a superintendent, I want to look at is there other ways to increase the influence to engage in meaningful work of positively impacting children?
Dr. Russell Strickland [00:44:35]
Yeah. And and that idea of having that book out there to open doors and start conversations, I think is spot on. We’re doing that with a lot of our students through Dissertation Done now that once the shackles that your your dissertation maybe puts on you or off and you defended and earned your degree, now go out and write the book that you really wanted to write for your dissertation, whether it’s the exact same message or maybe a little different that you’re popularizing it. That’s I found this to be a really enjoyable exercise because it’s it’s a little less restrained and constrained than the work on the dissertation, certainly.
Dr. Matthew Montgomery [00:45:11]
And I’m a little worried. Just wants to see you and maybe your folks that you work with have said the same thing. It was painful for me to turn into a research writer. And some people still on the committee wanted me to be drier. And I felt like I couldn’t get any any more dry. And now I’m a little worried about going back into the general populace and finding a way to get back into a writer that’s not from solely research. And that’s why I think the blogging is helping me right now.
Dr. Russell Strickland [00:45:42]
Yeah, that a really good point, because they’re very different styles. When you’re writing for a popular a book that you published, you want to have a conversational style. You want people to want to turn the page and read it. Then I get paid to turn the pages like your comedy. You want them to stay engaged and want to read that material. But I had the same journey with my first research papers. I would read these research papers and talk to my advisor and see these people seem like geniuses. I mean, how would you come up with all of this stuff and you talk about what is a long process and on and on and on. I told all I want to show that process and make it easier for people to access the work. And so I started doing that. He was I was an undergraduate. The time it was a very it was an awesome experience that I was able to work with a researcher doing real research. We actually published the work that is an undergrad. But there was this evolution where he let me do that. And then he said, well, don’t you understand how it’s confusing that we tell this little story because it failed. And they’re getting involved in it. And that failed. You know, now they’re like, oh, that’s like, yep, that’s what it felt like. Yeah, but you’re teaching now. You’re not you’re not telling your life story. You’re teaching now. And eventually that writing style got to be drier and drier. And it was, you know, exactly what everybody else was writing. By the time we published it. But he let me come to that in a kind of didactic way of, you know, being successful, writing what I wanted to and saying, well, here’s why we don’t want to do that. And I could understand what you saying. And then it was a little bit of a challenge to turn around and then be more conversational and include anecdotes and that sort of thing. When I began writing outside of academia.
Dr. Matthew Montgomery [00:47:24]
When I began writing for the dissertation, I thus trusted colleagues that I talked about. I said, just keep writing. Yeah. So I wrote and then, like you described it, transformed into research, writing. So I’m viewing the blog as the reversal, a blended approach. Just keep writing.
Dr. Russell Strickland [00:47:45]
It’s true. Practice. Practice makes permanent. As I say. So whatever you practice, if you practice being more conversational, you’ll get there. And the blog, I’m sure, is a way to do that. So that sounds really good in terms of the next things. Is there anything else? Any final parting words you might have for our audience about the future, the past or anything in this journey?
Dr. Matthew Montgomery [00:48:14]
I’m just reflecting the. It was one of the sweetest moments in my life when I finished. Yeah. So when they said Dr. Montgomery. Even though you knew it was coming, it was a sweet. It was a very sweet moment in my life. And it is one of those things that I will always look back fondly on. I imagine I will. And I don’t want to put it in the same. I mean, it’s a milestone. You know, one day of your wedding day, the day of your children’s birth. And I don’t want to I don’t want to say the dissertation is that important because my family always will trump or any of those experiences. But it is akin to those types of experiences. And the moment that it’s over, the stress melts away. And I was listening to somebody talk. I don’t know, sometime this week they’re talking about, if you can tell me about your high school experience. So fast forward 20, 30 years, whatever. Tell me who you were as a high schooler and what was your experience. And people can usually synthesize their high school experience and one to two sentences. But when you go back and you were living it, you could have talked about it nonstop, about how it was consuming your life. And I imagine that when you fast forward beyond the dissertation, the sentences are going to get smaller and smaller and smaller. And that is just a moment in time in your life that you got through. Much like this pandemic, I think will be where? Yes, we lived through it. And it’s one or two sentences of our life. So I say all that because as difficult as a process is when it’s over, it’s worth it. And that’s easy to say, but it really is. I really believe it. There was. I wouldn’t I would do it again if I could or if I had to. I just know it would be messy and horrible and terrible and everything that goes with chaos, chaos and order, we’re back to physics.
Dr. Russell Strickland [00:50:29]
So I fired or you’re in that phase of your life right now. You’re listening to this. I’ll I’ll quote Winston Churchill, “If you’re going through hell, keep going.” Don’t stop. Keep going. You will get through it and it’s worth it. Coming out the other side, it’s worth it for that moment of being addressed as Dr. You, but also for all the opportunities it opens up subsequent to that.
Dr. Matthew Montgomery [00:50:52]
Yeah. And the last thing I’ll say is, and I like to talk so, Russ, you can tell me to be quiet anytime. But, I ran four marathons before I wrote the dissertation, and I was never a runner. And my wife said that I if I if I run another marathon before I write my dissertation, we’re gonna have problems. So my fifth marathon marathon was a dissertation, but the dissertation is a wonder. The marathon is a great analogy for a dissertation. And I think training for a marathon helped me. And I’m gonna have a never to go run for marathon. But it helped my mindset of all that training for a year or more. For one day in the analogy event in the race, there were times when my friends would say, you’re in mile 22 right now if the dissertation experience. Right. So you have to understand that it’s a long, messy process. And there’s gonna be lots of times when you’re not going to want to take one step forward. But to build on Churchill, you need to keep moving forward. It’s worth it.
Dr. Russell Strickland [00:51:51]
And just like the marathon, I mean, it’s certainly physical, but so much of it is psychological. I have during this pandemic, set up a little kind of gym in the garage and got to really recommit myself to working out, which is something I left let go for a while before this, after I had kids that well, that was one of the things that kind of fell to the side for a while. And a lot of us knowing what I want to do and having marked out, this is what I’m going to do today in the gym. I’m sitting there talking to myself like, OK, just go do it while I’m there. Do the next one to do the next set. You can do it. You’re not walking out of here till you finish doing it. Do the next one. And it’s it’s tough. But keep talking yourself. Keep willing yourself through it. Perseverance, along with some guidance and instruction. You have to know what you’re doing. You know, I was lifting weights with my pinky or something like that. I’m lifting a hundred pounds. It’s never going to come off the ground. So you do have to know what you’re doing. But beyond that, perseverance, just keep going is what gets you there.
Dr. Matthew Montgomery [00:52:58]
I couldn’t agree more.
Dr. Russell Strickland [00:53:00]
Well, listen, Dr. Montgomery, tell folks how to engage with you. I know that you said you want to start a conversation with other superintendents and other folks in education about these ideas that you’ve learned about in your dissertation and how we can continue to serve our children. How can they reach you? What what’s the best way to do that?
Dr. Matthew Montgomery [00:53:20]
I mean, the easiest way is through Twitter and @SuptMontgomery. I’m also on LinkedIn as well as you can just contact me at my district office, which is in MMontgomery@RevereSchools.org. Any of those, I would be more than willing to talk through, you know, ideas that you have or if you just need a conversation of yes, I acknowledge this does suck right now and it will get better. I’m definitely willing to engage in thoughtful dialog.
Dr. Russell Strickland [00:53:49]
Awesome, we’ll include them on our show notes. If anybody who’s listening wants to go to DissertationDone.com and check out the blog, the show notes will be there, but it’s @SuptMontgomery. That’s S U P T Montgomery is the Twitter handle. And I said we’ll get all those points of contact in the show notes so that people can reach out to you and continue this conversation.
Dr. Matthew Montgomery [00:54:14]
Thanks again, Russ. I really appreciate it. And, I’ve enjoyed the conversation.
Dr. Russell Strickland [00:54:18]
Awesome. I want to just let folks know once again that this episode today has been brought to you by Dissertation Done. If you’re working on the dissertation process, you’re in the middle of this journey, and could use some guidance work directions, so forth. Check us out at DissertationDone.com/Done. And if you’re out there living your unconventional life and you want to turn your message into a book so that you can expand your own authority and you can take that next step in and further your own reach. Check us out at DissertationDone.com/Book. We’d love to have you on that journey with us as well. Dr. Montgomery, thank you again so much for it for being here. It’s been a real pleasure. I want to thank you for the work that you’re doing for our kids, because that is truly important work. You mentioned a calling before. I truly believe that it’s something that does good in this world. And I appreciate you for doing that. Thank you so much.
Dr. Matthew Montgomery [00:55:07]
Thanks again. Have a great rest your day.
Dr. Russell Strickland [00:55:08]
All right. You’re welcome. For those of you out there listening, go out, live your unconventional life.
Outro [00:55:18]
This has been An Unconventional Life. Thanks for listening. If you enjoyed today’s episode, subscribe now to keep getting inspirational stories of unconventional lives as soon as they’re released. Until then, go out and live your best unconventional life.
