Nareg Dekermenjian had Mom’s Day brunch with the Stanley Cup, which precipitated greater than somewhat anxiousness since nobody was certain what hockey’s championship trophy preferred to eat.
“I’m thinking all-meat diet for the Stanley Cup,” Dekermenjian stated earlier than sliding into a big nook sales space at Stanley’s Restaurant (no relation to the Cup) in Sherman Oaks. “Anything less than that, I’m going to be very, very disappointed.”
Because it turned out, the Cup was fasting so the plate in entrance of it remained empty. However then the trophy wasn’t the one being feted Sunday, Dekermenjian was. Final week he was named the winner of the NHL’s Future Objectives Most Precious Instructor Program, chosen from a area of lots of of candidates from 31 of the league’s 32 cities.
For the fifth-grade trainer, who left a well-paying job as a monetary advisor for a classroom 4 years in the past, being honored by a go to from the Stanley Cup was a full-circle second in a number of methods. For starters, it was an acknowledgment of the position hockey performed in serving to him adapt to his new nation after his father, Edward, a jeweler in Lebanon who spoke solely damaged English, wagered every part when he left Beirut for the West Valley so his three kids might have an opportunity at a greater life.
Nareg Dekermenjian and his household eat lunch whereas the Stanley Cup sits in the midst of the desk. Left to proper are Edward, Ian, Zovig, Oliver and Nareg.
(Robert Gauthier/Los Angeles Occasions)
Dekermenjian, the youngest, was simply 5 and he instantly had hassle becoming in.
“Making friends or having some kind of link with the kids my age, coming from a different country, that was really different,” he stated. So sooner or later his mom, Zovig, pushed him out the door to affix some neighborhood youngsters in a street-hockey recreation.
“I’m glad I did,” Zovig stated Sunday. The sport, it turned out, would change every part.
“They gave me a roller-hockey stick and I just kind of fell in love with the sport immediately,” Dekermenjian stated. “I’d never been really good at anything before, especially athletics. But I took to roller hockey.
“What it helped me do is create a lot of self-confidence and self-esteem, which is turn helped me in social situations.”
Dekermenjian went on to play at a number of ranges, turned a Kings season-ticket holder and now coaches his two sons on the concrete rink he constructed of their yard. He’s additionally utilizing hockey to interrupt down social and cultural limitations on the Dixie Canyon Group Constitution Faculty in Sherman Oaks, the place most of the practically 700 college students come from immigrant households new to the U.S.
Nareg Dekermenjian, a trainer in Sherman Oaks who received an NHL award, watches as Stanley Cup keeper Howie Borrow units up the trophy.
(Robert Gauthier/Los Angeles Occasions)
“We have a big melting pot here,” assistant principal Maria Silva stated.
But when all these kids communicate totally different languages, put on totally different garments and pack totally different meals for lunch, all of them perceive sports activities. Even hockey.
“One hundred percent,” stated Dekermenjian, 41. “That’s kind of why I do it.”
There are parallels between the challenges athletes face and those college students face. The grit and perseverance wanted to make it via an NHL season is simply as essential to make it via an instructional yr. There are targets and victories and defeats and teamwork, each on the ice and within the classroom.
“That connects a lot of the dots for these kids that aren’t used to hearing it that way,” Dekermenjian stated. “I actually show clips and videos of hockey games when teams are down by multiple goals and they don’t give up and then they come back, they pull the goalie, and they take it.
“That’s, I think, a better way of starting a session. Having these kids look at something so incredible and then looking at themselves and thinking, ‘You know what? I can do this.’”
Nareg Dekermenjian takes a selfie along with his son, Oliver, and the Stanley Cup throughout lunch at Stanley’s Restaurant.
(Robert Gauthier/Los Angeles Occasions)
Silva stated few academics at Dixie Canyon are requested by mother and father extra steadily than Dekermenjian, whom she calls Mr. Deker. She typically cease by his class herself simply to pay attention.
“I’m just captivated by the stories that he’s sharing. And I don’t want to leave,” she stated. “I want to be a kid and listen to him too. When they announced that he won [the NHL award,] I definitely felt they got it right.”
The tales don’t all the time work, nevertheless. And after they don’t Dekermenjian, like a very good coach, modifications his recreation plan — as he did in his first yr as a trainer after welcoming a shy Ukrainian lady named Maria, who understood little English.
“We’re going over U.S. history and I’m like, ‘What does this child need to know about the Constitution?’ There’s way more important lessons we need to teach,” he stated.
Maria liked artwork so Dekermenjian requested her to attract every day after which, after class, he and a translator would talk about the that means behind what she had drawn. She was quickly thriving in her new setting.
When youngsters battle, Dekermenjian stated, the issue typically isn’t the coed, however quite an engagement concern with the trainer.
“Educators, we need to kind of step it up and engage them in nontraditional ways,” he stated.
“I’ve seen it work in the classroom. So I do it more and more and the feedback has been overwhelming. I’m creating a bunch of hockey fans and Kings fans in the process, so everyone wins, I guess.”
Talking of the Kings, that’s the second motive Sunday’s meal was a reunion with the Stanley Cup. The primary time he met the trophy was in 2014, when he posed in entrance of it along with his spouse, Lori, and then-infant son Ian, who truly owes his existence to the Cup.
In the course of the 2012 Stanley Cup playoffs, Lori got here as much as Dekermenjian and prompt that if the Kings received the Cup, they need to have a child. Dekermenjian, unsure whether or not he was able to be a dad however sure the Kings had no likelihood to win the NHL title, agreed — and somewhat greater than a yr later, Ian was born. They’ve since added a second son, Oliver.
“It’s a full-circle thing,” he stated.
“I definitely feel like I found where I need to be in life. And I’m 100% certain that I was meant to teach.”
On Sunday the NHL agreed, giving him a day with the Stanley Cup to show it.
