Mister Brown – Empowering Children to Choose Well and Consider Others

Mom, you know what these kids need?” Katie Poburko’s son asked as he contemplated his new high school peers. “They need Mister Brown to come talk to them about taking responsibility for themselves.” As the principal of Weaverville Elementary and Trinity Prep Academy, Katie knew just what her son meant. “There’s something about Mister Brown’s presence and the way he presents things that kids really listen to and respect,” she says. “Kids from TK all the way up to eighth grade adore him. He has this magical way of presenting information that they really hear.”

Messages that connect with kids

The message kids hear from Mister Brown is this: “Choose well.” With this catchphrase (which audiences learn to follow with an enthusiastic “Oh yeah!”), Mister Brown “empower[s] students to make better choices to live better lives.” With age-appropriate openness, Mister Brown shares his own experience of growing up without a father in a rough area in Wisconsin. He and his three siblings had a front-row seat to gang violence in their neighborhood—a man was even murdered on their lawn.

“Sometimes in society, we pretend that kids aren’t going through these tough things. But when I acknowledge it, they really connect,” he says. “You can’t choose whether your parents are on drugs. You can’t choose if you’re in foster care right now. But you can always choose how you respond. Even if you have the greatest parents in the world, you still have choices to make. Whatever situation you’re in, it comes down to your choices.”

Mister Brown’s “Choose well” campaign gives kids a message of hope in what they’re going through. “You can take ownership of your own life and have that agency with yourself. Whatever situation you’re in, you can let it crush you or you can let it make you stronger, but that’s the choice you have to make for yourself.”

Sometimes Mister Brown receives messages from students expressing how his words have changed their lives. He describes reading the words of one student who had slit her wrists the night before his presentation and planned to commit suicide the following night—until Mister Brown’s message gave her hope. “As I read her story,” Mister Brown says, “it just blew my mind that this young lady, through my words, decided to live.”

Seeing challenges from a different perspective

Recently, Mister Brown launched an anti-bullying campaign with the slogan, “Consider others.” The campaign challenges kids to “think about somebody else’s point of view”—a perspective Mister Brown lives out in his own day-to-day life. For example, several years ago the delivery of a gift Mister Brown had ordered was delayed by 12 months. Tristen Aitken, the retail manager on the case, marvels how Mister Brown remained “kind and very gracious,” choosing patience and understanding despite the frustrating circumstances. As Tristen has gotten to know Mister Brown over the years, she consistently sees him building up the community around him in similar ways. “He makes everybody feel important,” she says. “He makes them feel heard and feel seen.”

Taking time to listen

Mister Brown makes people feel heard and seen because he takes the time to listen to them. When he partners with schools, for example, he prefers to speak in the morning and then spend the rest of the day visiting smaller groups, engaging in “those deeper conversations where kids ask me questions. I’m not trying to tell them what to think; I want them to think about their choices. I want to empower them to process things.”

The Choose Well program also includes professional development for school staff, an online video resource library, and family nights to coach parents on challenges like setting healthy limits for their children.

When he’s not with school kids, Mister Brown soaks in time with his own kids—Jazmyne, Sophia and Evan—and his wife, Andrea. “I love the fact that I get to be there for my kids,” he says. “When they call my name, I feel like a hero because I never said ‘daddy’ to anybody in my life. I love being a father.” The family enjoys constructing projects from CrunchLab or Kiwi Co, playing board games, watching Evan play soccer, and eating fresh produce from Andrea’s edible landscape.

As he talks with kids in the North State and around the country, Mister Brown asks, “When you want something different, when do you start?” “When we get older,” students suggest. Their eyes widen when Mister Brown shakes his head. “Now?” they ask.

When Mister Brown says “Yes,” he empowers kids with knowledge that we can all benefit from: the choices we make today impact the future—and we have the ability to choose well.