How did I Become “The School Doc?”

And other interesting facts

The story goes like this.

Both of my parents were teachers. My mother was an elementary school teacher in Williamsburg, Brooklyn and my father was a high school teacher in the South Bronx.

My father continued to go to school and earned a Masters and Ph.D. in psychology from Fordham University. He also accepted an adjunct professor position in the Graduate School of Education.

Through this position and his continued work in the K12 system, he became very well known and highly respected in the NY, NJ and CT area. He also was appointed lead instructor in a joint US/Puerto Rico program to help graduate students in Puerto Rico learn the latest best teaching practices.

To anyone that knew my father he was “Doc.”

As often happens with kids of highly recognized and well-known parents, people who know your parents or know of them — start to call the children, “Jr.”

When I first started my career in K12, that was my nickname, “Doc Jr.”

I first tried to correct people, but you know what happens when you try to convince people “not to call you a nickname”? That’s right, they start calling you that nickname to spite you. So “Doc Jr” kind of stuck, for a long time.

Until I became a Superintendent and obviously people became very uncomfortable calling me “Doc Jr.” By this time, my father had passed and calling an authority figure “Jr” is disrespectful, unless that is their actual name.

But I don’t have a doctorate in education.

That didn’t seem to stop people from calling me “Dr. Schwartz.”

Whenever I would first meet a parent or an educator at a conference, they would always say, “I’ve heard of you Dr. Schwartz.” And I would correct them. Again, you can’t argue with what people want to call you — and since I don’t really care. I just let them call me whatever they wanted.

Eventually, with a group of parents, I said, “just call me “The School Doc,” since it wouldn’t mean I had a doctorate in education. It just meant, that I was “The School Doc,” and that could mean anything.

And the name stuck.

I’ve been “The School Doc” since around 2010.

“The School Doc” Mission

My mission is to help people learn all five essential skills they need in order to be successful in life. These five skills are critical to you being able to make more money, get promoted at work, become more influential in your industry and also to have more power in general.

If you feel stuck, lost, confused, disenfranchised, marginalized or generally hopeless and powerless — it’s probably because you don’t know the five essential skills for success in the 21st century.

So my mission is to teach you those five skills.

And to put pressure on your local K12 school system to upgrade their high school curriculum to a 21st century skills curriculum.

If you support these two missions, please consider following my account and sharing this story with your friends and neighbors. I cannot make change happen in your community, all I can do is provide you with the facts, data and evidence you need to give you the power to put pressure on the people who control your schools.

More About “The School Doc”

D.Scott Schwartz, M.Ed. is the CEO and Founder of Leaf Academy as well as an education think tank. He writes articles for Medium, and makes posts on social media providing data, facts and evidence to the general public. He hosts a weekly LIVE podcast on Instagram called “Tuesdays with Schwartz.” For more information go to the Leaf Academy website (link in bio.)