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A 70-year-old man has created a program that helps inspire teenagers to set goals while improving their self-esteem.
By LORRI HELFAND, Times Staff Writer
© St. Petersburg Times, published November 4, 2002
If you were looking for someone to motivate your teenager, your first choice might not be a 70-year-old man -- unless you saw Frank Mathias in action.
For more than a decade, Mathias has been visiting local classrooms to help students set goals and feel better about themselves.
His positive attitude and down-to-earth style have made him a hit with teens.
"I love this program. I think it was such a good experience," said 18-year-old Christina Maldonado, a senior at East Lake High. "It makes you look inside yourself and think about where you really are."
Mathias' program is called IAMME, which means "I am me." It's taught in business classes at 13 high schools in Pinellas and is funded by a $26,000 federal grant. Mathias, who lives in Carrollwood, has also taught students in Hillsborough, Citrus, Hernando and Pasco counties.
For the past few weeks, he has visited Anne Boyd's diversified career technology classes at East Lake High School.
A key part of his eight-hour program is public speaking, and, in each class, students take turns talking about their lives and sharing their opinions.
Mathias also shares his own triumphs and tragedies, including stories about his troubled youth. He said his father was an alcoholic and was abusive. When he was 5, his parents split up in an era when divorce was a "great sin," he said.
"I think we connect because when he was our age, he went through a lot, and he wanted us to have a better chance than he was given," said Niccole Pitts, 17, a senior at East Lake High School.
Mathias has his own opinion why teens relate to him.
"I guess because I believe in them, and I talk with them as adults and not as kids," he said.
Mathias asks students to set mental, spiritual, health, social, career, educational and family goals. And in the final class, Mathias has students vote for the peer that grew the most during the program, who receives the IAMME Highest Achievement Award.
Throughout the program, he urges students to build on their positive qualities, not obsess about their negative ones.
Before the class, "I couldn't think of one thing I liked about myself," said senior Ali Flisek, 17. But feedback from Mathias and her peers helped her take pride in her kindness, bravery and concern for others, she said. This year, she won the highest achievement award in Boyd's fourth-period class.
The tone of classes ranges from quiet comraderie to raucous pep rally. In every class, Mathias encourages his students to applaud each other, give each other standing ovations and shout out a cheer: "If I act enthusiastic, then I'll be enthusiastic!"
And he offered advice for those who wake up on the wrong side of the bed. Just look in the mirror and strike a can-do, he said.
Beverly Roebuck, 18, a senior at East Lake High who won the highest achievement award last year, said the public speaking element of the program opened her up. In the past, she only felt comfortable sharing her opinions with close fiends.
"Now I share my opinions with anybody," Roebuck said.
Mathias' career path has taken a number of turns. He has served in the Air Force, sold frozen foods and owned three restaurants. And he worked for Dale Carnegie as a salesman before launching the IAMME program in 1988.
Mathias' program began in a Temple Terrace Sunday school class about 15 years ago. His pastor, the Rev. Woody Johnson, at Christ Covenant Evangelical Presbyterian Church, now University Evangelical Presbyterian Church in Land O'Lakes, asked him to teach a Sunday school class to teens. Initially, Mathias wasn't thrilled with the idea.
"I already raised two teenagers. I didn't need to put up with any more of them," he thought.
But he gave it a go anyway.
"I read a lot of motivational books, and I listened to a lot of speakers. Everyone stole something from somebody else," he said.
And one of those sources was the Bible, Mathias said. So, he used biblical themes to teach the teenagers how to set goals and make their dreams a reality. The class was such a hit that Johnson told him he should market it.
Once again Mathias questioned the idea. But, after he spoke with his children and his niece, he decided to write a secular program based on the class.
What did I do right? Mathias asked them.
"You never told us we couldn't do anything," Mathias said they told him. "You always encouraged us to try."
It's that can-do attitude that empowers students today, according to Pitts. Mathias showed them they had power in situations that they didn't think they did, Pitts said.
Pitts is a member of the Institute for Sisters of Respect, a community based organization aimed at helping young women develop social and academic skills. Recently the organization ran out of funding, and Mathias' program convinced her to apply for a grant, she said.
For more than 10 years, Joni Jonas, supervisor of Pinellas school's business technologies and workforce development, taught business classes at Dixie Hollins High. She got a chance to experience Mathias' chemistry with the teens numerous times, she said.
"They know he genuinely cares about them and he's interested in what they had to stay," she said. "When I came into my position in 1999, I felt strongly about continuing it."
Both Jonas and Debbie Fischer, who teaches business classes at Northeast High School, said that getting students to talk about themselves is beneficial to educators too.
"He's working with a diverse population so kids are having an opportunity to learn about each others' backgrounds and behaviors," Fischer said. "As a teacher, it really helps me to understand why the kids act the way they do."
Fischer is heading a new attractor at her school, a learning community called the center of finance, and she has asked Mathias to create a motivational program to supplement it. The plan is for Mathias to visit the same students for three years and monitor progress along the way.
Mathias said he thinks about training others to teach the program down the road, but Jonas said the class wouldn't be the same.
"Honestly, it's the relationship he has with the kids," Jonas said. "I don't know if he could train anybody to do it. I don't know if anyone could come in and fill those shoes."
-- Lorri Helfand can be reached at (727) 445-4155 or at lorri@sptimes.com.