It’s fair to say Justin Boudreau empowers students, partly by embarrassing himself.
The motivational speaker, born in Shediac, N.B., took to the stage at Hunting Hills High School on Friday and proceeded to sing a Backstreet Boys song, do his best Kate Winslet impression from the movie Titanic, and show off some Michael Jackson-inspired dance moves. But all the self-deprecation did come with a message.
“I invite you to stay connected to who you really want to be and don’t take the easy way out — turn to someone beside you and say, ‘Your dreams are important,’ ” Boudreau told the crowd, made up of student leaders and advisors from high schools throughout Alberta.
The theatrics Boudreau deployed on the audience of more than 600 people attending the Alberta Student Leadership Conference (hosted this year by Hunting Hills, Lindsay Thurber and Notre Dame high schools) are meant to do more than entertain, they are done to prove a point.
“There’s a cost to being cool and we all pay a price,” Boudreau said.
“The price we pay sometimes is doing stuff we normally wouldn’t do, just to get people to accept us.”
Boudreau, who now lives in Encinitas, Calif., with his wife Santana and his son Kai, travels to leadership conferences and student gatherings all over North America, delivering the same three-point message — opportunities are taken, not given; connect to your dreams; and accept yourself.
Boudreau showed pictures from his childhood and said that his parents divorcing when he was in Grade 1 led to great personal sadness, which he carried like a stone until a favourite teacher encouraged him to try out for his school’s soccer team in Grade 5, he said.
“I told him ‘Come on man, I don’t have any friends and I have a mullet,’ ” Boudreau joked, pointing to his fifth-grade class photo, displayed on two huge screens.
“But since he was my favourite teacher, I tried out because I didn’t want to let him down and it changed my life.”
Boudreau told the gym full of teenagers he considered trying out and making the soccer team the jumping-off point for the happiness he’s gone on to experience in his life. He met his wife while working on a cruise ship after high school; something he probably wouldn’t have done had it not been for that one teacher giving him the confidence boost he so desperately needed, he said.
“You have to stay surrounded with people who are going to bring you up and let you become who you want to be,” Boudreau said. He encouraged the student leaders in the room to become that person in someone else’s life.
Boudreau is the founder of Gear Up for Excellence, a cost-effective leadership retreat service for non-profit student groups in the U.S. He also started Calling for Gratitude in 2007, a hotline campaign that encourages people from all over the world to call in and leave voicemail messages, thanking someone who has impacted their lives in a positive way.
Boudreau played a few minutes of messages left on the hotline before inviting the peer-support delegates to grab the microphone and share a story of someone who changed their lives.
Students, often fighting through tears, shared stories of loved ones who’d been instrumental in giving them the courage they will now use to lead.
syoung@www.reddeeradvocate.com