Mr. Subach

“I took more of a non-traditional career path..

I have my own business that I started with my teaching background as well. I have been working towards getting my master’s. So, I am kind of at a point where I’m juggling a lot of things.

I used to live in a town of 1,000 people, and then moved to Milwaukee. So, there’s been a lot of change in the past year in my life with a new business, a new teaching position, new classes and a new environment living downtown.

I would say, like a lot of other teachers, what inspired me to become a teacher was a teacher in high school. I didn’t really know what direction I was going into. I had teachers I really liked and respected, but it wasn’t until I started taking business classes that I became interested. I thought that those classes offered something different than a lot of other classes.

I felt the business classes offered a lot more freedom and creativity.

Creativity drives your success in a business environment.

The business world allows you to have this different measuring stick for success. It’s not always going to be the kid with a 4.0 GPA who is going to be the best team leader, or who is going to come up with the best ideas. It’s about being able to demonstrate all the different abilities you have in an all-encompassing way. There’s never truly a right or wrong answer.

There’s always this kind of exploring a new frontier going on. There’s always new technology, new inventions, new processes and new people making a splash, and it’s cool when you’re a part of that ever changing environment.

It also allows you to take background knowledge from all different subject areas. You can be a person with a really strong math or science background, or really into public relations. There’s always an aspect of that which you can apply to business.

I’ve always thought that the way school has been done, especially at the high school level, that if it mimicked a more open-ended, business-like style environment, where you have the freedom to move around and communicate and talk to who you need to and explore projects on your own, that if you really delve deeply into that, you could apply those different principles and really have a transformative experience.

I think the days of having 30 desks in a row, handing out 100-question tests, that those are a little bit behind us. Simply recalling facts is not what we are going to need as far as our workforce going forward. For a lot of jobs, people are going to have to find a more creative way to contribute to the economy.

So, trying to get students prepared for that type of reality is where I feel like my role matters.

My goal is to create opportunities for people where there are no other alternatives. The goal of teaching and starting my business has been to grow wherever you are.

I think that a lot of students at this time in their life, being 17 or 18 years old, that they have a lot of influences in their life. They have parents telling them that this is what they should go into. They have friends that dictate what classes you take. But, it’s about trying to figure out early on what your passion is.

People say this all the time, and people have heard this a million times, but it really is all about finding what makes you happy, finding a purpose and then getting better as a professional, so you can be the best at whatever you do.

That’s the one part of your life where you need to be somewhat selfish and figure out what you want to do and go after it” (Mr. Scott Subach).