Meet Mark Raines | Speaker, Teacher, Bodybuilder

We had the good fortune of connecting with Mark Raines and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Mark, what do you attribute your success to?
Faith, family, and perseverance are the most important factors of any success I have achieved. I have been through a lot in the past eleven years: a neurological speech problem that made it hard to say simple words as I continued my career as a high school television and film production teacher, navigating the Parkinson’s medication that now controls my speech since 2011 and the continuous side effects that impact my sleep and daily life, taking a leave of absence from work in San Diego in 2018 to move in with my parents in North Carolina to help my father care for my mother as she fought ovarian cancer, losing my dad unexpectedly during that time due to complications from surgery, then resigning my job to care full time for Mom the last year of her life, and after she died, being stranded for a year in my parents’ home alone in rural NC during Covid. Through every trial I have been through, God has given me the strength and courage to persevere. And, He has used every difficult situation in my whole life to make me the man I am today. Anything I have done well in my life has been built on my Christian faith and family. I’ve never been married, so my parents were still my nuclear family, but they were also my role models and best friends, and they continue to guide my path even after their deaths. One of the things they taught me was to surround myself with caring community, so when I think of family as a factor in my success, it definitely includes my extended family like my aunts, uncles, and cousins, but it also includes my close friends and church community, or “ohana” as they say in Hawaii, where I lived as a teenager.

Can you open up a bit about your work and career? We’re big fans and we’d love for our community to learn more about your work.
I was a reporter and anchor in local television news for eight years, and I loved living out my dream of writing and telling stories often live on television to hundreds of thousands of people. Then in 2000, I felt called to step out of my television career to teach high school television and film production. When I began teaching, I had no books, no curriculum, no working equipment, the only students placed in my class just didn’t sign up for any elective, and we had one VHS video camera that I could borrow from the football team on Fridays for filming projects in three classes. Building strong partnerships with administrators, co-workers, parents, students, businesses and community members is how I went on to build local, state and national award-winning television and film production programs in three different schools during the first 18 years of my teaching career. I have sat in theaters where I never imagined I would see my students’ video and film work screened, including some of the largest and most-visited theaters in the country: AMC Times Square, the Regal LA Live in downtown Los Angeles, and the Grauman’s Chinese Theatre in Hollywood. My students produced two of the first short films to be created by high school students for IMAX and screened in an IMAX theater. One of my students was the only film student in the country in 2017 to be honored as one of 20 U.S. Presidential Scholars of the Arts that year, and I watched the film he wrote and directed be screened at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington D.C.. To see my students succeed in big ways is rewarding, but what really matters to me is having a front row seat to the transformation that takes place in a student when he or she discovers a passion for something, develops a new dream, or has an “aha” moment about a concept or skill. Because of the nature of high school visual art and career technical programs, I have the rare opportunity to teach some students every year of their high school career. That type of regular involvement in students’ lives and education is more rewarding than anything I have ever experienced. I stepped out of the classroom for three years in 2018 to care for my mother, but I have just recently returned to teaching Cinematic Arts at the San Diego School of Creative and Performing Arts, where I’ve already been able to see some of those awesome “aha” moments.

If you had a friend visiting you, what are some of the local spots you’d want to take them around to?
Because of my early life as a nomadic Navy dependent and my television career, I have moved all over the country and have friends all over the U.S. as well, so I often have the chance to give friends a tour of my hometown San Diego. I’m a beach guy, so I love to take my friends and family to my favorite beaches and restaurants, so if they were here for a week, I’d probably hit different beach areas every day and eat at my favorite spots nearby: 1) Torrey Pines State Beach for a hike and California burritos at Roberto’s. 2) Breakfast at Naked Cafe then beach hang at Fletcher Cove in Solana Beach, followed by lunch at Pizza Port 3) Donuts from V.G.’s donuts in Cardiff, then take them to Moonlight Beach in Encinitas for donuts and 7-11 coffee 4) The Crystal Pier in Pacific Beach, a block away from my first apartment in San Diego, with lunch at the P.B. In-N-Out 5) Dinner fish tacos and sunset at South Beach Bar & Grill in Ocean Beach 6) Coronado beach and drinks at sunset at the Hotel del Coronado. If my friend is into the gym and fitness like I am, we’d workout at an LA Fitness and The Gym San Diego, where I take lots of my California Thor Instagram fitness photos. A movie night at Cinépolis Luxury Cinemas Del Mar with dinner at Urban Plates and a night out in the Gaslight district would happen for sure. I’d also want them to have the fish tacos from Rubio’s which was the first fish taco I ever had, and my favorite Thai food from the original Sab-E-Lee in Linda Vista Plaza. On Sunday, we’d go together to my church, Flood, so they could experience my local church community and contemporary Christian music.

Who else deserves some credit and recognition?
My parents have had the biggest influence on my life, but I was also fortunate to have many teachers in my life who also had a major impact in my life. When I was growing up, my family moved every two to three years, because of my father’s Navy career. I rarely attended a school for more than two years. I was extremely underweight, non-athletic, and had a lot of medical problems. In most cases, I had trouble fitting into new schools, and I was often ignored, teased, or physically bullied. But, in each school, there was at least one teacher that made some part of my days at school enjoyable. There were days or weeks at many schools that the only person who talked to me or encouraged me was a teacher. My fourth grade teacher Mrs. Avery developed my passion for reading. My seventh grade English teacher Mrs. Marti encouraged me to write, speak and perform. My high school yearbook teacher Mrs. Ho made me the editor of the school newspaper as a sophomore. At my second high school, Mrs. French stayed after school once a week to help me catch up on Advanced English, while multiple teachers at that school like Mrs. Watts, Mrs. Ladner, Mrs. Becnel, Mrs. Baker, Ms. Bielstein and Mr Lembright encouraged and supported my dream to be on television which I ended up doing as a local television news reporter and anchor for eight years. While working in television, I started volunteering in youth ministry, and I discovered my own passion for teaching and mentoring teenagers. That’s when I decided to become a teacher, so I could be the person all those teachers had been for me growing up.

Website: californiathor.com

Instagram: @california_thor

Twitter: https://twitter.com/markaraines

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/markraines/

Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/californiathor

Image Credits
Kremer | Johnson photography (personal photo, classroom shot) C2 Media & Photography (beach shot with surfboard) Jason Lee Segal (TEDx talk shot) Tefotography (home shot with superhero t-shirt)