The youth in Ketchikan are our greatest investment now and in the future. We need to provide them with the best environment so they are able to feel safe, be challenged to grow academically and thrive. These are challenging financial times and we need to stay focused and keep the youth of Ketchikan the priority for our community.

Priorities:

1. Safety -- Research has shown that if a student does not feel safe, he/she will not be able to engage in the learning process. Their brain will stay in survival mode. We need to continue to strengthen our efforts for students to feel safe in the classroom and at every activity on and off campus.

2. Listening -- Good leadership listens first and foremost. We need to invite all voices (young and not so young) to the table to genuinely listen. We are at a pivotal point in our education system and we need all voices to come together for the sake of our youth and unite for a stronger future.

3. Community Involvement -- Another priority will be involving more adult mentors/anchors in the lives of our students. Research has shown each young person needs a minimum of 5 healthy adult mentors/anchors in their lives to help them succeed and be able to learn and bounce back from failures or bad decisions. Let us work together to increase our community involvement in the lives of our youth.

4. Fiscal Responsibility -- These are challenging times for funding in Alaska. We need to clarify the lens in which the School District will determine what is a priority in the education of our youth. The development of this lens is where safety, listening and community involvement play vital roles.

Snapshot of Matt:

• Married for 15 years to Julie Tibbles. We have experienced dreams being created and made. We have seen dreams become reality and we have seen dreams destroyed. But through this journey called life, we have stayed committed to each other.
• Father of two strong and enthusiastic daughters who love to learn, draw/color, play soccer, swim, and play outside with friends. Both daughters are students at Houghtaling Elementary.
• Education Services Manager at Women in Safe Homes
• Bachelor of Arts in Youth and Family

Leadership Positions:

Education Services Manager at Women in Safe Homes. I manage the Education and Prevention Department. Some of the programs we utilize are: Girls on the Run, Coaching Boys into Men, and the Compass Toolkit for Young Men (Alaska Men Choose Respect). We are in most of the Ketchikan Gateway Borough schools on a weekly basis mentoring and talking with students about healthy relationships, respect, dating violence and helping them build resiliency and protective factors in their lives.

Adult Advisor to the Youth on the board of the Ketchikan Youth Initiative. I am currently the interim President of KYI while the current president is out fishing for the summer.

Facilitator for the Empowering Youth Taskforce of the Ketchikan Wellness Coalition. We are currently working to create and build mentoring/anchoring awareness in Ketchikan and increase protective factors in every youth in Ketchikan.

I have worked with youth and their families all over the globe. From the United States to Scotland to Uganda, I have had the privilege to help mentor/anchor youth and their families as they journey through adolescence.

I would love to sit down with you and answer any questions you have of me. Please feel free to email me and I will get in contact with you.

May peace find you today.

Matt Tibbles
http://tibbs12.wordpress.com/

‎"God is the friend of silence. See how nature - trees, flowers, grass - grows in silence. See the stars, the moon, and the sun, how they move in silence. We need silence to be able to touch souls." Mother Teresa

‎"To be silent does not mean to be inactive; rather it means to breathe in the will of God, to listen attentively and be ready to obey." - Dietrich Bonhoeffer

"We need to create times and places of stillness. Silences carves us out, as a bowl is carved out, that we may be able to have room for our God, that we may discover we dwell in him and he in us. Silence is part of any act of love or adoration, far richer than words and opens our heart to the other...in the silence we can enthuse in our God." - David Adam

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