Q&A with Signature School teacher José Mota, Innovate WithIN’s Teacher of the Year
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José Mota, a teacher at Evansville-based Signature School, won Teacher of the Year at the 2024 Innovate WithIN State Finals held at Butler University in June. The award recognizes outstanding dedication to fostering a culture of innovation in the classroom.
Mota spoke with Inside INdiana Business about his work at Signature School, his former students’ successes, and his involvement in the STARTedUP Innovation Educator Fellowship.
Tell me about your career at Signature School.
This is my 8th year at Signature School. I’m a social studies teacher, so I teach AP Government, AP World [History] and—depending on the needs of the school—other social studies courses along the way. Since the very beginning, this school has super motivated students. And that’s great as motivated students motivate teachers even further.
When I first started, some students I had taught in middle school, we had done economic stuff. They were like, “Hey, we want to start a club.” We started a business club in the first year. I was bright-eyed and like, “I don’t know what I’m getting myself into.” It started with asset management. The kids were super into stocks, and we did it after school once a week. They pushed the boundaries of what it was to do asset management in a school.
It evolved along the way to also be asset management and entrepreneurship. From the very beginning, some students were like, “What can we do with asset management?” The students had heard of other places and schools that were managing actual money. That was their goal. They didn’t want to do simulations or gamified stock market stuff. They wanted to feel the heat of representing people with actual money behind it.
So we got with a local asset management firm, and they coached them on how to do a presentation. We did a presentation to the board, and some individuals from the board said, “Go for it. We’ll figure this out as we go.” That led to about $140,000 they were quasi-managing.
Why do you think fostering a culture of innovation is important in high school?
A lot of times, students get validated through AP exams, which is fantastic. They use them for college credit and stuff like that. It gives them a leg up. At the same time, an innovative student understands that some goals you don’t get feedback on immediately. There’s a constant push and work that needs to get done to improve yourself in terms of who you are, the student you are, the learner you are and the person you want to be.
Innovative classrooms help students understand a little bit more about their personalities. It helps break their barriers. Sometimes they create these perceived barriers and it helps them say, “I can do this,” or “You know what? It didn’t work out this time, but I can pick myself up and I’ll approach it in a different way.” Where in the classroom, you have a summative thing. There’s an end to that particular class and that particular subject.
In a club where you continuously do something, it doesn’t have to be right. It’s something that is ongoing. Innovation, especially within this fellowship and within the partnering with the STARTedUP Foundation, allows teachers and students to understand that.
Tell me about the STARTedUP Innovation Educator Fellowship.
I’ve been a part of the fellowship for five years. A fellow teacher was like, “This is kind of what you guys do in Business Club already.” So I looked into it and put in an application to be a part of the fellowship.
One part is the involvement of the students who participate in the Innovate WithIN competition. In Business Club, we had already started thinking about how to add entrepreneurship. I had worked at Evansville Day School, and we had done entrepreneurial units, economics, business plans and things like that. Business Club is not just assets but also for those interested in seeing the resources that are available in the state of Indiana to start a business.
On the fellowship side, it’s a group of teachers who are trying to figure out how to instill those values of curiosity, motivation and hard work in students and allow them to see they don’t have to wait until they’re older to do something. We meet once a month online to give each other motivation and resources to help students.
Some of my students [Ethan Hilton and Tolen Schreid] won the Innovate WithIN competition through their business, Caseflood.ai, which is an AI legal assistant company that takes calls for law firms. One of the biggest things they found was the average law firm has about two to three lawyers on hand. And the reason they lose money is because they physically can’t answer the phone. So they created a company that could help alleviate that and won the competition.
While the competition is great, and it gives resources and avenues to students who win, it’s really about learning about themselves. Students realize, “I could do this,” and that’s what’s fantastic about it.
How did you react when Ethan, Tolen and Emily Rudolph of New Tech Institute won the 2024 Innovate WithIN state finals?
That was amazing. I had been super focused on that. The announcement of winning Teacher of the Year caught me off guard because they announced the winners afterward. I was more paying attention to, “Okay, they did an amazing pitch, right?”
All the pitches were amazing. This particular group of students was so knowledgeable in their subject because Ethan had participated in and started up the idea of a company the previous year, which was about legal leads. So he was always interested in law and what lawyers need. Through that curiosity, he found out the biggest need was not necessarily firms finding clients but clients trying to contact them.
How did it feel to win Innovate WithIN’s Teacher of the Year award?
I don’t think it hit me then, and I don’t think it kind of hit me yet. I like to be the person behind the curtain. I was struck by the lights at that moment. It was amazing to be recognized, but at the same time, it’s being recognized for how the students buy in. It’s a beautiful thing because your work gets validated in that way, in their successes.
Two of your former students, Kerry Ao and Naina Muvva, won the 2022 Innovate WithIN Regional Finals with their startup, Intertwined. They were also named on the 2024 Forbes 30 Under 30 list. What did you think when you heard that news?
That was great. Kerry and Naina were in Business Club in leadership positions. To have them reach those heights is not even surprising because of who they are and their work ethic. I still communicate with Kerry often. I tell a lot of my students as they graduate, you can send me an email, and I’m always a reference if you need one and things like that. They’re both super hard workers. They are the people pushing the future.
How can you tell when a Signature School student is going to be successful?
If you give students the opportunity to blow you away, they will blow you away. It might not necessarily be in your topic of choice. Not everybody likes every academic topic. But if there’s something innovative in that topic and they’re like, “I really like this, I can do this,” then you give them a task and that’s it. You have to find the eagerness of the student. Every student has that possibility to tap into their eagerness. Then you give them that opportunity, and they’ll do it.
How does Signature School prepare students for entrepreneurial competitions?
It’s the openness in the classroom and the collaboration among the teachers to make sure that students succeed. The communication between the students and the teachers is probably some of the most connected I’ve seen.
When they become freshmen, we ingrain in them, “You are the advocate for your education.” And by the time they’re in the middle of their freshman year, they buy into that. Like, “This is my experience, and I only have four years of this experience, so I should make it the best that it can be.”
So students typically push the boundaries of teachers. Oftentimes, I’ll have a student say, “Mr. Mota, can we try to do this?” And I’m like, “I don’t know, let’s see. Let me look it up, and we’ll see if we can do that.” Then it’s on me to figure out how to create some sort of unit or module, grading curriculum, all that stuff that fits in with our standards and the state standards to fulfill the curiosity and the needs of the students.
What are you hoping to accomplish this year at Signature School?
I always like creating connections between the students in the classrooms. So every year, I try to figure out ways I can create some sort of curriculum regardless of the class so the students can make meaningful connections. That’s the goal, to have a profound sense of the topic but also to create connections between the students so they get a better sense of community. Then that community is there for them throughout high school and beyond.