NHL rewards SoCal teacher who used hockey to | College News

Nareg Dekermenjian had Mother’s Day brunch with the Stanley Cup, which triggered more than a little anxiety since no one was sure what hockey’s championship trophy preferred to eat.

“I’m thinking all-meat diet for the Stanley Cup,” Dekermenjian stated before sliding into a massive nook sales space at Stanley’s Restaurant (no relation to the Cup) in Sherman Oaks. “Anything less than that, I’m going to be very, very disappointed.”

As it turned out, the Cup was fasting so the plate in entrance of it remained empty. But then the trophy wasn’t the one being feted Sunday, Dekermenjian was. Last week he was named the winner of the NHL’s Future Goals Most Valuable Teacher Program, chosen from a discipline of a whole bunch of candidates from 31 of the league’s 32 cities.

For the fifth-grade teacher, who left a well-paying job as a financial advisor for a classroom 4 years in the past, being honored by a go to from the Stanley Cup was a full-circle second in a number of methods. For starters, it was an acknowledgment of the position hockey performed in serving to him adapt to his new nation after his father, Edward, a jeweler in Lebanon who spoke only damaged English, wagered every thing when he left Beirut for the West Valley so his three youngsters may have a likelihood at a higher life.

Dekermenjian, the youngest, was just 5 and he immediately had bother becoming in.

“Making friends or having some kind of link with the kids my age, coming from a different country, that was really different,” he stated. So at some point his mom, Zovig, pushed him out the door to be a part of some neighborhood youngsters in a street-hockey sport.

“I’m glad I did,” Zovig stated Sunday. The sport, it turned out, would change every thing.

“They gave me a roller-hockey stick and I just kind of fell in love with the sport immediately,” Dekermenjian stated. “I’d never been really good at anything before, especially athletics. But I took to roller hockey.

“What it helped me do is create a lot of self-confidence and self-esteem, which is turn helped me in social situations.”

Dekermenjian went on to play at a number of ranges, grew to become a Kings season-ticket holder and now coaches his two sons on the concrete rink he constructed in their yard. He’s also utilizing hockey to break down social and cultural obstacles at the Dixie Canyon Community Charter School in Sherman Oaks, where many of the practically 700 college students come from immigrant households new to the U.S.

Nareg Dekermenjian, a teacher in Sherman Oaks who received an NHL award, watches as Stanley Cup keeper Howie Borrow units up the trophy.

(Robert Gauthier/Los Angeles Times)

“We have a big melting pot here,” assistant principal Maria Silva stated.

But if all those youngsters converse completely different languages, put on completely different garments and pack completely different meals for lunch, they all perceive sports activities. Even hockey.

“One hundred percent,” stated Dekermenjian, 41. “That’s kind of why I do it.”

There are parallels between the challenges athletes face and those college students face. The grit and perseverance needed to make it through an NHL season is just as needed to make it through an educational 12 months. There are targets and victories and defeats and teamwork, both on the ice and in the classroom.

“That connects a lot of the dots for these kids that aren’t used to hearing it that way,” Dekermenjian stated. “I actually show clips and videos of hockey games when teams are down by multiple goals and they don’t give up and then they come back, they pull the goalie, and they take it.

“That’s, I think, a better way of starting a session. Having these kids look at something so incredible and then looking at themselves and thinking, ‘You know what? I can do this.’”

Nareg Dekermenjian takes a selfie with his son, Oliver, and the Stanley Cup during lunch at Stanley’s Restaurant.

(Robert Gauthier/Los Angeles Times)

Silva stated few lecturers at Dixie Canyon are requested by dad and mom more ceaselessly than Dekermenjian, whom she calls Mr. Deker. She usually stop by his class herself just to pay attention.

“I’m just captivated by the stories that he’s sharing. And I don’t want to leave,” she stated. “I want to be a kid and listen to him too. When they announced that he won [the NHL award,] I definitely felt they got it right.”

The tales don’t at all times work, however. And when they don’t Dekermenjian, like a good coach, modifications his sport plan — as he did in his first 12 months as a teacher after welcoming a shy Ukrainian lady named Maria, who understood little English.

“We’re going over U.S. history and I’m like, ‘What does this child need to know about the Constitution?’ There’s way more important lessons we need to teach,” he stated.

Maria beloved artwork so Dekermenjian requested her to draw each day and then, after class, he and a translator would talk about the that means behind what she had drawn. She was soon thriving in her new setting.

When youngsters battle, Dekermenjian stated, the issue usually isn’t the scholar, but somewhat an engagement situation with the teacher.

“Educators, we need to kind of step it up and engage them in nontraditional ways,” he stated.

“I’ve seen it work in the classroom. So I do it more and more and the feedback has been overwhelming. I’m creating a bunch of hockey fans and Kings fans in the process, so everyone wins, I guess.”

Speaking of the Kings, that’s the second purpose Sunday’s meal was a reunion with the Stanley Cup. The first time he met the trophy was in 2014, when he posed in entrance of it with his spouse, Lori, and then-infant son Ian, who truly owes his existence to the Cup.

During the 2012 Stanley Cup playoffs, Lori got here up to Dekermenjian and recommended that if the Kings received the Cup, they need to have a child. Dekermenjian, unsure whether or not he was prepared to be a dad but sure the Kings had no likelihood to win the NHL title, agreed — and a little more than a 12 months later, Ian was born. They have since added a second son, Oliver.

“It’s a full-circle thing,” he stated.

“I definitely feel like I found where I need to be in life. And I’m 100% certain that I was meant to teach.”

On Sunday the NHL agreed, giving him an afternoon with the Stanley Cup to show it.