He was given up for adoption at birth.
His birth mother was sixteen years old. His adoptive family was blue collar — his father a steel mill worker, his mother without a high school diploma. He struggled in school. He got cut from the basketball team. He had no real idea where he was going.
And then a wrestling coach pulled him aside and said four words that changed the entire trajectory of his life.
“I can see it.”
Dr. Tom Ralston did not arrive at education easily. But once he got there — he never stopped asking the question that has defined his entire career.
What if we built school around students — not systems?
Tom Ralston grew up in Chester, West Virginia — a town of three thousand people in the northern panhandle. His father lost his job at the steel mill when Tom was a freshman. The family received government food assistance. His mother had never graduated high school. One of his siblings struggled with serious drug and alcohol problems that cast a long shadow over the household.
School was not a place where Tom thrived.
He had low self-esteem. He tried out for the basketball team and got cut. On the way home that day — devastated — his father said simply: “What else do they have?”
Tom mentioned wrestling.
His father said — go try.
A wrestling coach invested time in him. He did not have immediate success. But something began to shift. And years later when that same coach watched him working with middle school students at a summer camp he said something Tom has never forgotten.
“I can see the way you and these kids click. This is something you should really consider.”
Tom changed his major to education. He never looked back.
Before education there was aviation. Tom’s father had served in the Air Force and suggested it as a career path. Tom enrolled. Took flying lessons. Gave it a real shot.
But sitting in his first aviation class he looked around and realized — everyone else in the room was the child of an airline pilot. He had never been on an airplane. His family could not afford vacations. He was on a different planet.
More importantly — he was not passionate about it.
“I wanted to do something I was going to enjoy. Money wasn’t my big motivator. I needed something I was really passionate about.”
Education gave him that. And passion — as he would spend the next thirty years proving — makes all the difference.
Every conversation on the Stay Teacher Podcast follows the ROOTS Framework — five pillars that keep great teachers and leaders grounded through every storm of the profession.
Here is how Dr. Ralston walked through his thirty years:
R — Reason
A wrestling coach who saw something in him before he saw it in himself. A father who kept pushing him forward even when the family was struggling. And a deep personal conviction — shaped by his own difficult school experience — that every student deserves to feel like they belong and that school should be something they enjoy.
O — Obstacles
Moving from West Virginia to Pennsylvania as a young principal and spending two years being compared to his popular predecessor. A school funding system in Pennsylvania that the Commonwealth Court eventually ruled unconstitutional. A political landscape that has turned public education into a football — with politicians using data to paint narratives of failure while parents of those same schools report they love their local school.
O — Overcome
By always looking for opportunities instead of obstacles. By leaning on mentors — his wrestling coach, his principal Tom Salvetti who passed away this summer, superintendent Sue Goodwin, and colleagues throughout his career. By asking one simple question every time a wall appeared — what can we do?
T — Transformation
From a substitute teacher who walked into a different classroom every day and never knew what he would find — to one of the most innovative education leaders in Western Pennsylvania. The flexibility and adaptability he built as a substitute teacher stayed with him for thirty years. He became someone who says yes — who gives teachers permission to think outside the box — and who learned from a juggling class that the most unexpected ideas often become the most powerful ones.
S — Stay
Because relationships matter above everything. Because “I can teach you to be a good math teacher — I cannot teach you to love kids.” Because public schools are the great leveler — the place where students from every background have a chance. And because every time he has been ready to slow down someone has stopped him on a sidewalk or sent him a letter or thanked him for believing in them — and reminded him that the work is never really done.
When Dr. Ralston became principal at Avonworth School District the board told him something rare and powerful: “We have a good school. We want it to be great. We are giving you the opportunity to do that.”
He did not waste it.
He walked through the building with an architect and asked one question — what walls can we take down?
Some were expensive. Some were not. He started with the ones that were not. And he began creating interdisciplinary spaces where students could work across subjects — combining English, social studies, technology, and design into integrated projects that reflected the real world.
A pretzel brand project where students designed a recipe, created packaging that could survive shipping, and developed an advertising campaign — with local candy store owners as advisors and judges.
Bridge building. Bee pollination. A twenty-year student exchange program with a school in Japan that started because a parent asked a simple question — would you be willing to host some students?
Dr. Ralston said — why can’t we bring the whole school?
That is who he is.
One of the most powerful moments in this entire conversation came when Dr. Ralston described standing on a stage in a sweltering gymnasium in Japan — looking out at a community that had turned out to celebrate his students.
He thought about the kid he had been. Growing up in a small West Virginia town. Family on government assistance. No one in his family who had gone to college. All the odds stacked against him.
And here he was — on a stage in Japan — because he said yes when everyone around him was counting the reasons to say no.
The partnership lasted twenty years. Students who went to Japan came back changed. Several went on to college. Several went back to Japan to work as English teachers.
One trip. One yes. Twenty years of impact.
“I look back at those moments — those critical interactions, conversations, opportunities — and they lead to something else.”
Dr. Ralston shared three stories in this episode that every educator needs to hear.
A wrestler he mentored individually through an injury — spending extra time with him when he could not practice. The student won a state championship. In a newspaper interview years later he gave Dr. Ralston the credit.
A parent who wrote him a letter years after he had left the school to tell him about her son Jason. He had been struggling. But the thing that helped turn him around was something he said to himself — “I don’t want to disappoint Coach Ralston. He believed in me.”
And a young man who stopped him on the way to his car at the University of Pittsburgh. A former student who had spent a lot of time in Dr. Ralston’s office. Who told him — “I just want you to know I’m doing all right. I got my life straightened out. I’m getting a degree in environmental science.”
Dr. Ralston walked on cloud nine the rest of that day.
“What does it cost me to give one additional chance to a child? But if I don’t do it — what does it cost them?”
Early in his career Dr. Ralston was part of a team building a new middle school in West Virginia. The principal told every teacher — come up with an exploratory class based on something you love. A passion. A hobby. An interest. You have one month.
One of his colleagues — a French teacher with no hobbies — looked horrified.
A month later she came back with a juggling class.
She had taken lessons over the summer. She had learned to juggle. And her class became the most popular exploratory class in the entire school. Students could juggle anything. Balls. Clubs. Back and forth between partners.
Dr. Ralston never forgot it.
“When someone brings you an idea — say yes. Don’t say no. Say yes. And then ask — what do you need to make this happen?”
Coach G asked Dr. Ralston the question that anchors every episode of the Stay Teacher Podcast.
Why does public education still matter?
His answer was personal and profound.
He thought about every person who had shaped him — his wrestling coach, Tom Salvetti, Sue Goodwin, Bart Rocco, the principal in Japan who stopped his car to help an elderly woman cross the street without saying a word.
“I can’t teach you to love kids. And that’s what you have to have to do this well.”
Public schools are the great leveler. They are where students from every background — every zip code, every family circumstance, every starting point — have a chance. Where good citizens are formed. Where communities find their identity.
And when the right teacher shows up — the teacher who sees the kid nobody else sees — everything changes.
Just like it changed for Tom Ralston.
Tom Ralston was given up for adoption at birth. He grew up in poverty. He struggled in school. He got cut from the basketball team. He had no clear path.
And then someone saw something in him.
Thirty years later he is still paying that forward — to every student in every school he has ever touched. To every teacher he has ever empowered to say yes. To every wall he has ever knocked down to make room for something better.
“You only get to go through school one time.”
Make it matter.
Hear Dr. Ralston’s full story — including the twenty-year Japan exchange program, the juggling class that took over a school, and his powerful vision for what public education can still become — on the Stay Teacher Podcast.
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If this story moved you share it with one teacher, one school administrator, a friend or family today. And if you have a story to tell reach out at stayteacher.com — we want to hear it.
Your roots run deep.
Stay teacher.
— Written by Ghirmay Alazar, PhD (Coach G)