“Tony Hoffman’s ability to connect with our high school and middle school students was breathtaking. I have been in education for 20 years and have never seen two large groups of students glued to a presenter the way our students were glued to him and his story. Tony makes a genuine, heart wrenching effort to save students from taking the same path that he had chosen. He tells his story in a very real and relatable way that even the adults in the room hung on to his every word. His message was one that resonated with all of our students regardless of their age, race, social and economic status. He did not talk at the students. There was a clear and high level of engagement between student and presentor. The presentation was meaningful and touched on many serious topics that we see in our schools today.
Tony painted a vivid picture to our students of a young, good looking, popular, athletic, smart kid who had it all at his fingertips at a very early age and through many factors, including faults of his own, found a way to step through the “DOOR” of addition, crime and substance abuse. I emphasize the word, “DOOR”, because his storyline is strongly based on the decision to take that life changing disastrous step through a door that becomes a vacuum that doesn’t want to let you step back through to a good place. His message completely spells out how a person can transform from being in a very good place in their life, to a very bad place, once you decide to step through that “DOOR”. The overall storyline includes factors that could make it more difficult for a student to make a good decision such as anxiety and a genetic addictive component. Tony is in it for the kids. My conversation with Tony, post program, was one that was equally as impressive. I had a student approach me that was so taken back by Tony’s presentation that he ask if he could speak with Tony, one on one, after the program’s completion. I was aware of Tony’s busy schedule for this day but ask Tony if he could spend a few minutes with this student. Tony was more than happy to make himself available. That same student stated to me that the half hour he spent with Tony may have changed/saved his life. Tony’s heart is in the right place. If you are researching motivational speaker on this topic, look no more. I highly recommend Tony Hoffman to speak at your school. ”
The stars aligned on this Pennsylvania substance abuse speaking tour I just finished up. A staff member apart of Cambria Schools contacted me after I had set up the event for Glenn O. Hawbaker and it turned out these 3 campuses were just a short drive from each other. So naturally we worked hard to link them together and in a pretty fast and orderly fashion. I appreciate everyone’s level of intent when it came to putting this together. Sometimes schools can be extremely fussy about pulling kids out of the class to put them in front of speakers or other presentations. That was not the case for Cambria High School and Middle School.
I was set to give my speech that I really try to convey is not a “Drug Talk”, it’s so much more than that and because it’s from the heart that is why kids are connecting with me during the speech and long after in my social media inbox.
Both presentations were incredible in my opinion. The students were so awesome, I really appreciated their level of respect and engagement in my Q & A session afterwards. I stuck around for as long as I could before I had to leave to get to my flight before I missed it. One cool thing that stuck out were all the students who cheered for me as I was walking out of the school. That felt really really cool! Cambria School District, thanks so much for working hard to make this happen on short notice, you guys rock!