Welcome to the Behind a Shield podcast. As always, my name's James Gearing, and this week

it is my absolute honor to welcome on the show, educator, strength and conditioning coach,

and the author of the book Setting the Bar, Shane Trotter. So in this conversation, we discuss a host

of topics from Shane's early life, his journey into education, training the youth athlete, creating an environment for kids to thrive, standardised testing, student mental health, physical education, and so much more.

Now before we get to this incredible conversation, as I say every week, please just take a moment.

Go to whichever app you listen to this on, subscribe to the show, leave feedback and leave a rating.

Every single five-star rating truly does elevate this podcast, therefore making it easier for

others to find. And this is a free library of over 800 episodes now. So all I ask in return

is that you help share these incredible men and women's stories so I can get them to every

single person on planet Earth who needs to hear them. So with that being said, I introduce

to you Shane Trotter. Enjoy. So, Shane, I want to start by saying, firstly thank you to Phil White for connecting us,

and secondly to welcome you on to the Behind the Shield podcast today.

Thank you, James.

Yeah, it's a pleasure to be here.

And absolutely, thank you, Phil White. He's an amazing guy and a great mentor and I'm thrilled to be here. So you have written

an incredible book as we discussed before we hit record. There's a lot of perspectives and passions

that we definitely align with. But I'd love to start with your own

personal journey and kind of walk to the point where you even decided to write it. So let's start

the very, very beginning. Where were you born? And tell me a little bit about your family

dynamic, what your parents did and how many siblings. Okay. Yeah, so I was born in Anchorage,

Alaska, or actually Elmendorf Air Force Base. My dad was, my dad explains a lot of my unique perspective on the world, I think. My dad was an emergency room physician who left the emergency room. While he was an ER doctor, he got his PhD in philosophy, and he left the emergency room while he was an ER doctor, he got his PhD in philosophy,

and he left the emergency room to get into doctoral philosophy and medical ethics.

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