Discovering Civic Engagement and Leadership With Kawika Berthelette

SPEAKER 02 : 0:03

Welcome to Restoring Education in America with Priscilla Rahn. She’s a master educator and author, leading the conversation to restore the American mind through wisdom, virtue, and truth.

SPEAKER 01 : 0:18

Well, hello, everybody. Welcome to another episode of Restoring Education in America. I’m your host, Priscilla Rahn, and I’m so excited that you decided to join the conversation today. I have a very special guest. He’s my dear friend and fellow musician, fellow music teacher, and I’m going to welcome him to a different kind of stage. My stage here today, Kawika Berthelette. Hi, Kawika.

SPEAKER 03 : 0:45

How’s it going, Priscilla?

SPEAKER 01 : 0:46

It’s going great. I’m going to share a little bit of your bio with the listeners because there might be some people who don’t know who you are. But my good friend Kawika is a 2012 graduate of Colorado State University where he earned a bachelor’s degree in music education. He has been a public school music educator in both Adam City and now in Denver for 13 years. Kawika is currently a regional team specialist leading district-wide training to other music educators. Kawika is a former curriculum director of Youth Federalist Initiative, where he designed and implemented curriculum for civics and political seminars. His community activism has included being a precinct, county, and state delegate. vice chairman of the Adams County GOP, and he is soon to be a 2026 graduate of leadership program of the Rockies. Kawika has been very active at his church, Victory Chapel, as its custodian, Bible study leader, and worship leader. In his free time, Kawika directs the Thornton Community Chorus, tends to his garden, and is husband to his amazing wife, Miriam. Did I get it all, Kawika?

SPEAKER 03 : 2:00

You got a lot of that, although I haven’t changed churches since that bio. I’m amazed my Vista church didn’t show up.

SPEAKER 01 : 2:08

Yeah, you’ve done so many things. As so many of my guests, we can’t get it all in. We’d be here for a very long time. But we can have a conversation about a lot of the things that you’re doing. We met… I think 2020 when I was running for CU Regent. Was it that long ago? And you were the vice chair of the Adams County GOP. But you and I met prior to that where you came and observed a music lesson.

SPEAKER 03 : 2:39

Yeah, I came and watched you teach a modern band lesson, I believe it was.

SPEAKER 01 : 2:44

Yes. And I thought, what a smart guy to come into my classroom to observe me teach music.

SPEAKER 04 : 2:50

It was great.

SPEAKER 01 : 2:53

Those were some fun times where the district paid for your sub day and we could go around and observe other teachers teach different lessons. And so it was really a pleasure to meet you then and We found out very quickly we were on the same side of the issues. And I decided to stick my pinky toe in the arena of politics. And you said, come on up to Adams County. I’ll introduce you to everybody. And you were such a warm person. kind, inviting person. And you really understood where I was coming from as a public school teacher in Denver. And I just really appreciated the growth of our friendship since then. And I nominated you for Leadership Program of the Rockies. And you are now How far is the water?

SPEAKER 04 : 3:44

It’s feeling pretty deep. I don’t know. I’m over my head in a lot of ways, but it’s great. I love it.

SPEAKER 01 : 3:54

That’s pretty typical of people who get into Leadership Program of the Rockies. And even though you have a lot of civic experience, I think getting in there, you learn so much and there’s so many smart people that are members of your class and then the speakers. I can’t speak highly enough of the program because wouldn’t you say even though you might know a lot, there’s still a lot you realize you don’t know?

SPEAKER 03 : 4:21

Well, yeah. And a lot of the people that I’ve met within the program have reminded me just how little I really know about the civics process. Yeah.

SPEAKER 01 : 4:31

Well, it doesn’t end when you graduate. You continue to go to different workshops and conferences and you meet more and more people and it starts to simmer and the flavors start to come together and you do wonderful things and come up with great ideas because that’s really, you know, I could go on and on about Leadership Program of the Rockies, but let’s talk about you, Kawika. Okay. Because, you know, a lot of times we as teachers, we think we’re just classroom teachers. And maybe we see people out there in the public realm that we elevate. But you’re doing important work, Kawika. And you’re so humble. Anybody who knows you, they’ll quickly realize how intelligent you are. But they’ll also realize how humble you are. And so… Let’s talk about what your journey was to becoming a teacher. Give us the story.

SPEAKER 03 : 5:31

So becoming a teacher, I really felt the call to education when I was in middle school and in high school. In elementary school, I really wanted to go after science and careers in that. I was very, very, very interested in astronomy, chemistry, anything. any science thing I could get my hands on. And then in middle school, it was my history teachers who really influenced my desire. I remember Mr. Sorenson, I remember Mr. Jenkins, really challenging how I perceived the world, how I saw things. And my band teacher, Mr. Argotsinger, who really… invested a lot into my life, into my growth and got me thinking, well, maybe I’d rather be a history teacher or maybe I’d like to be a music teacher and have that impact, give back to my community, especially because these specific teachers, they were the few male teachers that I had had. And they were really showing me what it was like to be a male servant in terms of teaching, learning and growing in that way. And men that I aspire to be like one day. And as that progressed, I remember I got my first opportunity to work with a student as a tutor. When Mr. Argot Singer, I had gone back to visit and he looked at me and said, hey, I’ve got a kid who’s really struggling to play his trombone. could you sit down with him for 30 40 minutes and just talk to him about how to play what to do and that was the spark that lit me up for music education specifically after i saw the kid progress really get engaged with that i decided that i wanted to go to college to be a music teacher um and that if i needed a secondary that i would try to go in for history

SPEAKER 01 : 7:34

I think that a lot of us who become music teachers have these wonderful stories of our music teacher who inspired a love for band or orchestra or choir. And so I think it’s really neat that you decided to pursue that and give back as a music educator. You were really young when you got into politics. What started you in politics and how did you end up becoming the vice chair of your county party?

SPEAKER 03 : 8:02

yeah that was fun um so i remember it was day one my very first question i ever got as a professional educator kid raises his hand he says mister are you gonna abandon us and for me i was completely taken aback by that i figured the first question was well what are we gonna do today i figured the first question was um what’s your name it wasn’t the very first question was Mr. Are you going to abandon us? I was the third music teacher that they had had. These kids had had different teachers every year since my my teacher, Mr. Argettsinger, retired. And so I took over that program and I looked around the community. I was in the community that I grew up in for the most part. And that hit me. Am I going to leave a better world for them? And as a result, my mom had told me, she said, you know, you really need to get involved in politics. It’s important. She said I had learned it too late, really late. But she came to the table after she had become a business owner and began learning about politics. And she told me, she said, you need to question things more. You’re not doing it enough. And so I decided to dive in. I started looking at what was going on with education at the time, and I realized that I was not going to leave my students in a better place if the status quo continued. So I jumped into politics that way. I became a precinct committee person first, and that was elected at my very first caucus. I was elected into that as well as a delegate. And then from there, I remember talking with Neil Mathai, who was the chairman at the time of Adams County. And he spoke with me about strategy and kind of how I wanted to outreach to people. And he said, you know what? Next meeting, I want you to share that. So I shared it. And then immediately after he nominated me to become a district captain, I wound up being a district captain working with people that way. And then he would wind up in the next election cycle. So a year and a half later, he’d call me up and nominate me to be the vice chairman for the county. And I took that on and worked underneath Joanne Winholtz as part of her administration for seven years.

SPEAKER 01 : 10:32

If you’re just now tuning in, my special guest is Kawika Berthelet. He’s a public school teacher in Denver Public Schools, and he is a colleague. And yeah, I think that almost everyone initially gets invited to be a part of something that you don’t typically know that it’s there, right? Someone has to be the spark. I think that’s with everything. And those invitations are really powerful, right? And to have someone who will mentor you and guide you and give you advice and encourage you. Because when you are first trying to do something, obviously it’s difficult until you spend more time and then you get better and better. And I think this is also what makes you a great teacher is because it’s in your nature to support young people to get better and better. And you’ve done a lot of work with like young Republicans and making sure that us old people knew how to use the Internet. I remember when I was running for office, you said, oh, yeah, you can go into like this back office on Facebook and look at the algorithms and know exactly which posts are, you know, getting more hits and whatnot. How do you know this stuff? You have to like be a part of my team because. I mean, it would just take me too long to learn all of this. And when I look at you as like the next generation of teachers, I’m so inspired because I’m at the end. This is year 32 for me. And you, I know what you were going to say. You don’t look it, Priscilla.

SPEAKER 04 : 12:07

You don’t look it. I’m sorry. You don’t, I’ve never thought that. I’ve never thought that you had as many years in as you do.

SPEAKER 01 : 12:14

Listen, my advice, sunscreen. Okay. Sunscreen, drink lots of water.

SPEAKER 04 : 12:20

I’m on it. All right.

SPEAKER 01 : 12:23

Look, that’s my legacy. I’m leaving for you. Okay. All right. So how do you juggle? You’re a teacher. You’re a volunteer at your church. You direct a community choir. You’re a husband. You have a mini farm. I’m just joking. But I’ve seen pictures of like you have all these raised gardens. How do you find time to juggle all of those jobs?

SPEAKER 03 : 12:49

Priorities. So God comes first. Everything is after that. So God, family, and then I do my work. And then I prioritize my work based on what’s generating the living for my family. And so I put most of my attention into my teaching work. And then after that, the community choir. and making sure that I’m putting God first, any ministry work that I’m doing for him, it’s for him. And then my wife is right there with me doing her own thing. She’s actually doing some different forms of service as well, which helps. And then from there, then we prioritize the work after that, based on what’s helping us survive and producing the means.

SPEAKER 01 : 13:40

Miriam is so sweet and she is with you every time I see you in public at an event. She’s right there being such a godly wife and I can tell that she adores you and that she is so supportive and your journey. to getting her here. I know a lot of people don’t know, but it took, what, two or three years, like, to get her. Tell the story real quickly.

SPEAKER 03 : 14:07

Okay, so we met in Veracruz, Mexico, and we had originally met online through a, we both knew a missionary. And then where is he at? India. And she kept popping up. And God told me, hey, I want you to talk to that woman. I said, you know what? No, that’s weird. If that’s what you want me to do. We had a revival the following week in my church. I said, have the minister give me this really obscure verse and say it’s about marriage. And that happened. So I said, okay, fine. I contacted my wife, who I I contacted this woman who would eventually become my wife. We met in Veracruz about a year later after we were practicing English and Spanish with one another. And then we started emigration.

SPEAKER 04 : 14:59

And that is a whole different ballgame.

SPEAKER 03 : 15:04

I knew that immigration was rough, but I didn’t know how rough. And what I found out throughout the process was that some places are really fast. So luckily we went to Nebraska when we put in our original application and they processed us in six weeks. California was six months behind, I believe at the time. And Potomac was as well. And those are the two really big ones. And then Texas had just taken half of California’s load and Nebraska had just taken half of Potomac’s load.

SPEAKER 01 : 15:40

Wait, for context, what year was this?

SPEAKER 04 : 15:43

This was during the COVID years. We got married in 2021. So that was really interesting.

SPEAKER 03 : 15:52

And then after that, we were going well. Our stuff was sent over to California where it all gets processed and finished out with the process. and when the administration changed i received a letter saying hey there are delays um things are gonna take longer than anticipated you know instead of the typical nine months you know you’re looking at a year and a half so they doubled it out and We contact my family lives in Tennessee. The senators out here weren’t responsive for us. So my grandparents contacted Senator Marsha Blackburn and she contacted them. And lo and behold, our process time went from let’s hear we were at a year and a half when that when we contacted out and they had pushed us out further. We were looking at a three to four year processing period.

SPEAKER 01 : 16:51

um but after she contacted it forced them to look at our our record and then we were processed within three months after that wow but i’m glad that she’s finally with you here because i know you were flying back and forth to mexico several times as many times as you could during the year during teacher breaks and whatnot um and and she’s doing wonderful work with you as well So as an educator who is also a strong believer, I mean, how do you manage a lot of the indoctrination that has come our way as teachers in the training? You’ve been called an oppressor. I’ve sat there right next to you. I can’t believe some of the stuff they’ve said in our professional development, like you’re just a white supremacist and make sure your music lessons are accommodate all kinds of students as if you weren’t a loving, kind and rigorous music educator. I remember one time sitting next to you when I was hearing this stuff coming out of the district. And I looked around and I just felt horrible as an educator of color sitting next to one of my colleagues. And I was appalled at how they referred to you. How do you manage as a believer with your faith being in a public education system that has for the past several years really insulted you and put you down?

SPEAKER 03 : 18:22

A lot of forgiveness and a lot of grace. I understand that it’s a broken world. I understand that we all have sin. And I do understand that there is some pain from the past. And I’m not directly responsible for it. But people want to put the weight on you. They want to throw it at people because… they’re trying to find some place to place the blame for the circumstance and instead of looking at personal responsibility instead of looking at the opportunities that they do have

SPEAKER 01 : 18:58

If you’re just tuning in, my special guest is Kawika Berthelet. He’s a music teacher in Denver and he’s a believer and he’s in leadership program of the Rockies and learning all of this civic engagement. What is something that you find fascinating so far? You’ve had how many classes, two or three?

SPEAKER 03 : 19:19

We started in October, so November. So I’ve had two classes now. I’m about to go into the third one here.

SPEAKER 01 : 19:29

What have you learned that was like, oh, my goodness, that is fascinating.

SPEAKER 03 : 19:34

You know, one of the biggest challenges that I had right out the door day one was when they said, hey, capitalism is the only moral socioeconomic system. And so that moral component that’s usually utilized in terms of spiritual things, faith and what’s right, what’s wrong, what’s good, what’s evil. And so I’ve been actually spending a lot of my time doing my own self-directed Bible study, trying to find, okay, well, what are these tenants of capitalism? We have this personal responsibility. We have this low taxation. We have this ability to freely create things. we have private property and and really looking at these different ideas and how do they line up within the within scripture you know is this really the only moral way or are there other possibilities and one of the thing that things that’s been shocking me as i’ve been going through this is how aligned capitalism really is and has been making me ask the question well why are christians so adverse to it we’re very altruistic overall i’ve been trying to deal with that word but the idea of being able to give as a compulsion and i don’t actually see evidence for that in scripture rather i’m seeing choice that we choose to give, that we choose to serve, that we choose to connect to people. We choose to love people. We choose to see sin for what it is, and we choose to reject it. We choose to seek Christ. We choose to serve God. We choose to let the Holy Spirit work in us and guide us. You see the Levitical laws. They’re very huge on property rights, protecting that, making sure that things are done fairly. We have laws that talk about weights and measures. We have laws that deal with how you work with your economics. We see in First Kings when we have a king who decided to use a distributive wealth or taxation system. And then he took that money, redistributed it in order to pay the debts that we owed to Egypt or that the Jews owed to Egypt. And the guy was thrown into an unmarked grave. As a result, the people uprose. And so I’m having a hard time reconciling this idea of things like socialism, which people are really pushing for right now in the country. Things like… Any kind of civic system that we’re seeing a lot out of the left side of the political aisle actually being reconcilable within scriptures. I mean, yes, we have gleaning laws where we give a certain percentage for people to pull from. But again, people still have to go. They have to go grab it. They have to go get it themselves. I mean, God always places the responsibility on us as people. to make that decision to serve or to go get whatever it is. So there’s a lot to be said about personal responsibility and choice. And as I see that and I see how capitalism has really lifted people up, it will raises up the poor. Our poor standard of living is enormous compared to most of them. I mean, I go to Mexico, I see they’re poor. And I mean, we are blessed. We are blessed, blessed, blessed, blessed, blessed. And it’s nothing bad to say about Mexico. It’s just it’s a different reality that we’re living in. And so it’s it’s just it’s incredible to me to see that and kind of deal with that right now and tackle it.

SPEAKER 01 : 23:30

Yeah, the freedom to interact, to create, to trade. I have something that you value. What’s it worth to you? And you can make the decision to exchange your goods or services for my goods or services. And when I think about… you know, us being made in the image of God, it’s more than just a physical image. God is a creator. And I think part of being created in his image is for us to be creators. And we know as educators, Bloom’s taxonomy, the highest level is creating. And so that’s why the mind is so critical when we talk about What’s the proper role of government? Well, to get out of the way and keep me safe and protect my individual rights and allow me to be able to use my mind to create something and then share that with the world. It has nothing to do with profit or becoming rich. It has everything to do with freedom. So that’s something I got very clearly from leadership program of the Rockies is always asking, is this the proper role of government? Is the government supposed to impose their will? That’s where we get so much bureaucracy. We as citizens need to be more involved. Yes. Civic engagement. I think we’ve become so busy. And we forget that we need to hold our representatives accountable. And how sad is it that you have state senators here that aren’t responding to you? You’re their constituent. You had to go all the way outside of the state. Fortunately, you got someone to respond. But I think even our civic quote unquote leaders are failing on their understanding of what their job is for us. So Kawika, my show is called Restoring Education in America. What do you think it’s going to take for us to restore education in America?

SPEAKER 03 : 25:33

i think going back to that personal responsibility is going to be the really big thing going back to understanding that we are a nation of free people who’ve chosen uh our course and that we value those freedoms that not everybody’s gonna have everything but what can you do with the things that you have now And what can you do with the resources that you have? And the more we instill that into kids, when we give them a good civics education, when we give them an understanding of our history, that’s balanced, that isn’t favoring a hard left way or hard right way, but really letting kids decide for themselves where they are and take that ownership of their learning, their community and encouraging parents to do that as well. that’s where we’re going to see a restoration in education.

SPEAKER 01 : 26:30

Beautifully said, my friend Kawika Bertholet. He’s a public school teacher. We’re out of time. We have to land our plane. To my listeners, thank you so much for tuning in. Catch me next time. And remember, educating the mind without the heart is no education. So seek wisdom, cultivate virtue, and speak truth.

SPEAKER 02 : 26:54

Thanks for tuning in to Restoring Education in America with Priscilla Rahn. Visit PriscillaRahn.com to connect or learn how you can sponsor future episodes to keep this message of faith, freedom, and education on the air.