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Teacher Spotlight: Mr. Vallescura
by: Akshay Pall & Kenny Rozario
“Knowing how a business works teaches you how to work,” are some words of wisdom coming from this month’s teacher spotlight interviewee, Mr. Vallescura. Some of you may recognize him through the classroom or DECA, but for those of you that do not, wait no further! Continue on below to read about Mr. V’s thoughts.
First off, what’s your full name, sir?
“It’s Joseph Vallescura.”
Middle name?
“J.”
Really?
“Yes, J for Junior.”
Secondly, do you like being called 'sir'?
“Me? Not really. Mr. V is fine. I know Mr. Vallescura is a little long but Mr. V is alright. Sir sounds impersonal; do you know what I mean? You can call anyone sir.”
If you had to describe your upbringing in a few words, what would they be?
“I’d have to say: traditional. You know, played around a lot as a kid. My mother stayed home for the majority of my upbringing but my dad worked a lot; my mom took time off of work to raise the kids. Otherwise: fairly traditional.”
How many siblings do you have?
“I have two older sisters and one younger brother. So in total, we’re a family of 4 kids/6 people.”
So we've heard that your wife constantly makes various concoctions in order to improve your health. How do you personally handle living a healthy lifestyle and keeping yourself happy?
“You know what, it’s funny you bring that up because frankly, just lately, I’d say my health has suffered slightly; this is the first time I’ve gotten sick in probably two years. So, ideally I would like those concoctions every day. Normally speaking, I’d bring one every day and I find that it keeps you healthy, active, and gives you energy. But, for some reason, it feels as though getting sick kind of throws you off balance and you don’t have as much time as you think you do. However in terms of dealing with it: fantastic, because, ideally, I would be taking those things every day. Just the other day, I was talking to my wife and I said, ‘You know those things we’ve been making? We gotta keep making them! Because look, I got sick once we got off track,” so I love balancing my lifestyle alongside my own happiness.”
What are some of your most memorable high school/university experiences?
“I would say my most memorable were at Schulich School of Business. It was a very small group of students. At the time there were 60 students in our year and only 120 in the whole program. So it was small and what was nice about it (at the time, students entered Schulich in year 3 of their undergraduate) was being a part of the student body council. I did yearbook, so it made me have to get around, and I was involved with the student body council as well. We had a lot of fun through organizing activities and events, being part of clubs, and I’ve made some friends that have lasted a while. In fact, some of my closest friends are from York University.”
How would you suggest a student to successfully manage education alongside their personal lives (in terms of social and extracurricular activities)?
“I think what’s important is time management. It’s a skill you must develop, and frankly, even as adults, you find it hard to manage time. What I would suggest is practising time allocation; time for your studies, and then saying ‘I’ve accomplished that, so I’ll allocate some other time for whatever it may be, be it a social event, family event, or other things like that.’ So you allocate the time and then finish an assignment or studying within that time frame. This way, you’ve also allocated the time that you can involve yourself in other activities. From my experiences, I think that this is the best way to handle it, because otherwise, you’re going to constantly be thinking about the fact you have work to do when you’re at a social event, when in reality you want to socialize. Once again, my suggestion: set aside time for work and be sure to do the same thing and set aside time for non-work related things.
For the Final Question, Which do you believe to be more important, intelligence or common sense? Common sense or just instinct, like your estimations are usually accurate.
“I don’t know, that’s a bit of a loaded question, unless I knew a scenario or a certain context it’d be hard to answer. If I had to go purely on those two things, either intelligence or common sense, I would say common sense. Because you can be intelligent, but depending on the context, if you don’t have common sense, it’s not going to matter. Although, if you have common sense and you have intelligence, then that’s a good combination. If it’s only one or the other, I think I’d go with common sense. Then again, if you only have common sense, chances are you’re somewhat unintelligent. Wait, so where exactly did this question come from?”
It was just something we were curious about; because nowadays common sense isn’t so common. People mainly focus on either being intellectual or just going with the small amount of knowledge they have.
“When you’re talking about it from a career standpoint, common sense, I think, is something that you may just have and part of it you develop because even in school you always look at advantages and disadvantages, you won’t just go blindly into something and make a decision, especially if it’s an important one and you won’t just go all ‘willy nilly’ with a course of action. Although, if it’s an important decision and you’ve gone through it in detail, looking at the pros, cons and the alternatives, almost like the case study method, you can determine that if one thing is chosen this is what’s going to happen, or at least what we can predict. So I think the two can work together because if you are intelligent, I would imagine your common sense would improve. I think of some of the greatest chess players, whether we realize it or not, that’s what they’re doing. When they make a move, they’re not just thinking about that move that they just made. They’re trying to think of 10, 20, even 30 plus moves ahead. So it all depends on the context and on how you’ve analyzed the situation, but in the end, it’s your common sense which approves. It would suffice to say that we’re improving our common sense as we’re taking into consideration different perspectives, advantages and disadvantages, options, and criteria similar to what’s done in the case studies. If it was one or the other, I’d still stand by common sense. I also have to say that if you have common sense, you also have intelligence, but it’s not always the case.”
As a child, what was your “dream job” for the future?
“I thought of myself as an astronaut, then again I was very young and a lot of kids think of themselves as astronauts when they’re young anyways. I think I’m very analytical so I later on thought of myself as a researcher/scientist. And then once I started to learn more about business, I found an interest in it. I was thinking of practicality as well, I thought in terms of a career: studying business would benefit me the most. There is a lot of flexibility in business; you’re not constrained to one potential career or one focused career.” “I can go to so many different avenues of business, such as marketing, finance, accounting, analysis, I mean you name it. As I’ve said in class (Yes, Mr. Vallescura is our teacher), eventually we all end up working for a business and I just feel that if I had to look at the different routes that I could take, business was the one that would give me the most opportunity. In fact, now that I’ve moved to teaching, I’ve taken a little bit of a step aside, but still nonetheless teaching something that I’m interested in. As I also say in class, people change careers more often nowadays so I could be a teacher, I could do something else. I mean, I have an interest in accounting as well and may decide to do my CMA (Certified Management Accounting).”
How long have you been teaching here at Turner Fenton? “
At Turner Fenton? Since September 2013, and if it was up to me, I’d love to continue teaching, but you never know what the future holds.”
How important do you deem a degree in improving skills/experiences. Do you believe that someone can be a successful businessman/businesswoman without a formal education?
“Absolutely, though a business education will definitely help. The majority of entrepreneurs have some sort of education/training but do you have to have a business education? I would say no, because if you have the motivation and desire, let’s say you’re very entrepreneurial and have an idea, you will do what it takes to succeed. I’ve seen that from my own personal experiences from family members and people that I’ve seen in the industry.”“When I was working for TD Canada Trust as a commercial financial analyst, I saw a lot of people, not necessarily formally trained, that just had that motivation and desire to see something through. So they had a product or idea, but did they know how to market it or do anything else? No, but they involved the right people at the right times in order to market their product and run their business, to ultimately see success. So ‘do you have to have a formal education,’ I would say no, ‘would it help you,’ absolutely. It’ll give you a good foundation of knowledge regarding business and also potentially make for another career pathway, if you choose to do something non-entrepreneurial, that is. “Companies want you to think differently. Similar to what we’ve talked about Google in class: it’s a huge company but all of the higher-ups encourage thinking independently and generating new ideas similar to Google Docs. And I think you actually mentioned it once in class, what was it?"
Through Chrome; Chrome wasn’t meant to be an actual product. But now it’s the most used browser in the world.
“Exactly, it was an idea that somebody had and which they followed through with and that’s where I think the value comes from. It comes from those ideas that don't necessarily come naturally just from being in the business, they derive from being involved.”