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Teaser: Collin Miller is extremely hard working and extremely passionate about education and works hard to improve the lives of his students. His passion shines through in Episode 15 of the Defining Success Podcast as he shares what he’s doing to improve the lives of the students that step foot in his school.

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Recap:  At 33 years old, Collin Miller is one of the youngest administrators in Southern California and was recently nominated as a new administrator of the year by the HLPAA. He started as a teacher at Sparks Middle School and he’s now the principal at the school he originally started working at.

Collin graduated from California State University, Fullerton with a degree in TV, Radio and Film and got a job with a multimedia company and he wasn’t sure if that wasn’t his passion.  The only way he knew he would go anywhere in the industry, he knew he would have to move to Los Angeles.

He had a friend who was a second grade teacher who gave him the opportunity to teach a five-step lesson plan on soccer and he knew he found his passion.  He then took all the necessary steps to become a classroom teacher and quickly moved into the classroom and up the ladder to administration.

When you’re young you have people you look up to and Collin had some great mentors who helped guide him to become an administrator.  Collin loved exposing people to their passions and building relationships with them.  He teaches in a low income area.  As a teacher he saw how resilient many of his students were.  As an administrator the same goes for building relationships with students and growing them.  Collin now feels like he has the same opportunity to work with teachers and help them become better in the classroom.

One of Collin’s goals for Sparks Middle School is to help get more parents and partners involved with the school.  Collin works really hard to get his students college ready. One thing Collin stresses to his students is that “Success is the only option.”

I was actually fortunate enought to attend a career day put on by Collin at Sparks Middle School where I taught students how they can use the Internet to achieve their goals.  Collin worked really hard to put on the event in order to show students how many job possibilites there were out there.  Too often students don’t understand what options they have when it came to a career choice and his career day was designed to open the eyes of many students at his school.

One of Collin’s favorite things is to get a yearbook and have student’s sign his yearbook and his personal reflection is reading what student’s say and is his best evaluation of himself for that year.

One of the challenges Collin faces is that you’re always looking for what’s in the best interest of the students.  And that’s challenging because we have feelings and mistakes are made and he always tries to learn from his mistakes and not make the same mistake twice.

Collin considers himself to be a great motivator and is very passionate at what he does which sets him apart from some other educators.  Learn how Collin works tirelessly exposing people to their passions.

Engaging Discussion Questions:

• How do we work on exposing people to their passions?
• What can we do to help our schools and educators?

Links to Great Stuff:

• Sparks Middle School – Sparks Middle School is located in Hacienda – La Puente in Southern California.  Collin Miller is the school principal.
• The Tutoring Solution – The Tutoring Solution tutors students in Corona, Chino, Ontario and across Southern California.  Visit our website to learn more about our Share Your Passion scholarship gven to students who complete an essay about their passions and how they are using their passion to help others.
• Welborn Media –

Success Quotes:

• “Success is being involved with something . . . and seeing a greater result.”
• “Living every day like you couldn’t have done anything else.”
• “We want students to own their future.”

Special Requests:

• Share The Tutoring Solution’s Share Your Passion Scholarship with any passionate individual in grades K-12 who is willing to share what they are passionate about with others.
• Download, review and subscribe to the Defining Success Podcast on iTunes.
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