Hans Appel has been a Counselor at Enterprise Middle School in the Richland School District in WA for the past 17+ years. Recently, Hans launched his own blog about School Culture and this fall rolled out a student-led leadership podcast called Award Winning Culture: Hosted by Wildcat Nation.

Hans is absolutely driven to helping students and educators find purpose and joy in life. Just listening to his passion when he talks about school culture and Character Strong made me want to learn more about him, his life, the kids, and his school. Below are excerpts from our conversation.   
 
About you and where you live
I was born in Westfield, New Jersey, and an only child. My family moved to Corpus Christie, Texas when I was a little kid. My dad was a chemical engineer and my mom was an art teacher and interior designer. When I was in second grade, we moved to Richland, Washington so he could work at the Hanford Nuclear site. I spent most of my life here and went to Hanford High School where I met my wife, Jennifer and been married for 19 of the 24 years we’ve been together. Jennifer is a passionate educator and teaches at the same school as me, Enterprise Middle School, as a Language Arts teacher and teaches leadership. We are fortunate to work together and talk the same language.
We don’t have children of our own. Our kids are the kids at our school where we spend our energy. We have two dogs that are Shelties who are babies who we love and spoil. We live in the city of Kennewick which is in the Southeast corner of Washington and is much drier than Seattle. It is more like the climate of Napa, CA so it is conducive to growing wine.

Your journey in school
A school was good up through elementary school. Middle school was where school got really hard for me. My parents were fighting a lot in kind of an abusive home and not the greatest situation for me at that age. Learning in school really became secondary. I didn’t get good grades in middle school and didn’t find my own until high school where I got into sports. I’m 6’4” so I was a basketball player. The more I got into basketball, the more I realized that grades mattered. I had to keep my grades up to stay eligible, but that is also where I started getting excited about my education. I went to Central Washington University which was 2 hours away. I took business and psychology classes. The more psychology classes I took, the more I realized I was more into human behavior and how to help others.
While I was in college, my parents went through a divorce, and I became their mediator. This was a weird role to play as a 19 or 20-year-old kid, but I kind of helped both of them through that experience. So while all of that was going on, Jennifer was in the education program. She had come from a long line of educators who asked me if I ever thought of education. As I took more psychology classes and was learning to help others, it just felt like a natural fit. When I was graduating with a masters in school counseling and because of my own experiences, I knew, unequivocally, that I only wanted to work in middle school. I believed that was where the kids needed me the most.

School Counselor at Enterprise Middle School (EMS Counselor)
When I graduated, I went to work at Hanford Middle School which was my alma mater which closed in 2005. The district built Enterprise MS where most of the Hanford MS staff went. There’s this core group, two-thirds of us, that have been together for 15 to 20 years. It’s like we’re a family here, and it is pretty special. I’m lucky to have the best administration in the district and top of the line support staff and teachers who put kids first and care about making this place amazing. I realized as a school counselor there are a lot of things I don’t have influence over what happens to students at home or aroun...