Vinson fuels joy with poignant performance at Opening Convocation

Tom Coyne

Aug 26 2025

Wellness education senior instructor Chantel Vinson fueled joy for Culver Academies students, faculty and staff Sunday evening with an upbeat performance extolling the virtue of joy, mixing song, rap, poetry and spoken word during the school’s Opening Convocation.

Within seconds of taking the stage, Vinson – known for emceeing golf cart karaoke, reintroducing pep rallies and creating the Culver Girls Academy Relays – had the crowd clapping along as she began rapping, “I am not throwing away my shot,” as she recited the first three stanzas of “My Shot” from the hit play “Hamilton.”

Vinson’s 17-minute interactive performance was fueled by the enthusiastic crowd as they clapped along, waved their arms and sang along boisterously to “God’s Plan” by Drake and “Count on Me,” by Bruno Mars. The performance can be seen here.

Vinson, wellness education department chairperson, told the crowd at Culver, a top boarding school in the U.S., she was “humbled and a bit perplexed” when she was asked to introduce the school’s theme for this year: “Find joy. Fuel joy.”

She said she asked a lot of people: What is the difference between happiness and joy? She concluded they are not the same.

“Joy is a decision – not a reaction. Happiness reacts to what happens. Joy remembers who you are, no matter, what’s happening,” Vinson said as music from Lizzo’s “Good as Hell” played. “Happiness is a feeling. Joy is a foundation. Happiness can be fleeting. Joy is rooted. Happiness is about circumstances. Joy is about perspective.”

She told the students that joy didn’t always come easy to her because of her turbulent upbringing. Her life was full of chaos, confusion and change.

Vinson’s mother was 15 years old when Vinson was born. Her father was murdered at age 19 during a drug deal gone bad when Vinson was 3. At age 9, when her drug-dealing mother hadn’t returned home for two days, some men broke into their apartment looking for drugs and money. Vinson fled with her 3-year-old brother and used a pay phone to call her aunt. Her infant brother was in the intensive care unit at the hospital.

Vinson found out her mother wasn’t home because she had been arrested. She and her two brothers were placed in foster care and the three of them and their mother never lived together again. Over the years Vinson lived with her great-grandmother, an aunt, her grandmother, a coach, friends, a short stint with her mother after she got out of prison and finally with her grandmother again.

She attended five elementary schools, two junior high schools, two high schools, had a mini-stint with a gang, had two out-of-school suspensions, all in different cities and different West Coast states before her senior year of high school.

“I was thriving in sports, but drowning in life,” she said. 

Culver Academies wellness education senior instructor Chantel Vinson tells students about her turbulent upbringing. (Photo by Tom Coyne)

She was struggling in school with an undiagnosed learning disability that kept her from a qualifying SAT score for a college basketball scholarship.

“With a lot of help, a lot of teachers, a lot of people, a lot of support, shouldering every burden, every disadvantage, I learned to manage, and I graduated high school,” she said.

She received her bachelor’s degree in physical education and exercise science from Seattle Pacific University and her master's degree in secondary administration from Arizona State University.

“I thought maybe finally an end to all the chaos, confusion, and change, maybe now joy,” she said.  “But then, in my early 30s, I woke up one day unable to feel my legs. Doctors found a 10-pound tumor in my abdomen.”

She underwent emergency surgery to have the tumor removed and also had an emergency hysterectomy. She woke up to learn she could never have children.

“That cut deep. That image of the joy that motherhood brings, was gone in a flash. I thought, ‘Maybe I wasn’t supposed to be here,” she said.

It was then when she realized that she had to know deep pain to see the gift of “real deep joy” she had been given.

“A gift of joy from people who didn’t have to give me anything at all. They just showed up for me. They gave me a joy lifeline. And that deep joy stuck. It became my story,” Vinson said.

She told the students that bad things happen all the time. But she said bad things don’t have to be your identity or steal your joy.

“I’m so grateful for all the people in my family: the moms, the dads, the biologicals, that helped me to stay hungry and scrappy in the right ways. But what I held on to is this: the plan.  That was the people who showed up for me. They didn’t love my struggle, but they loved fueling my joy so that my spark could grow. That’s who I try to be now, as a wife, a mom, a teacher, a coach. Just a joy cheerleader,” she said.

She then began singing along with Macklemore’s “Glorious,” telling the students they were born to feel joy.

“We want you to feel that glorious kind of joy,” she said.

She told her Culver faculty colleagues that they can help fuel that joy.

“We don’t just set the tone. Sometimes we are the tone, right?” she said. “We shape the living here, not just the learning. So this is not a call out, but a call in. We can make Culver a place where joy is the tone, not just for the students—but celebrating and fueling each other.”

She then urged the students to turn to the person next to them and say: “You know what? You can count on me” as the students burst into “Count on Me.”

“Be that person,” Vinson told the students. “The one who shows up with kindness, the one who shows up with joy, the one who shows up with presence.”

She finished by inviting everyone in the crowd to join her band, One Culver, and cover the song “Unwritten” by Natasha Bedingfield.

Vinson told the students they weren’t going to leave this song unwritten. She said they were going to commit to writing a song with three lyrics that matter: Finding joy, fueling joy and being the joy.

“Find joy, in your people, even in the mess sometimes. Fuel joy, with courage, with vulnerability and with connection. Promise to be the joy, every time you show up, everywhere you show up,” she said. “Somebody told me you’re always going to miss 100 percent of the shots you never take. Today, Culver, let’s not throw away our shot.”