More Homework Meme

There have been numerous people doing the More Homework Meme and a few folks have tagged me. However, I am complying with the homework that my Twitter Best Friend For Life, Lyn Hilt, assigned me, as she was the first to tag me. I think it is a great way to get to know our fellow bloggers/tweeters, so here it goes.

For starters, here are 11 random facts about me many people may not know.

1.     I was a collegiate triple jumper at North Central College and won 3 indoor and 2 outdoor conference titles in that event as well as finished 9^th in the country as a junior. 

2.     When in high school, I worked on a dairy farm where I milked cows twice daily as well as other odd jobs on the farm.

3.     When I was 10 years old, my younger brother and I ran away from home. We returned about an hour later.

4.     I am constantly terrified about parenting my two boys.

5.     For the past 708 days (and counting) I have not missed a single day of running.

6.     When in college it would not be uncommon for me to sit and play video games for 5-7 hours at a time.

7.     I was a sports reporter for my small local paper when I was in high school. I wrote under a pen name because I was playing in some of the events that I covered. The coaches always found it interesting that the reporter was aware of half time speeches and such because they didn’t know it was me.

8.     I hate berries…all of them.

9.     I am an Eagle Scout.

10.I have never watched a single episode of Lost but have seen every episode of Seinfeld more times than I can count.

11.When I was young (don’t quite recall the age) I flunked swim lessons and to this day am petrified of being in deep water.

Here are Lyn’s questions and my attempts to answer them the best I could.

1.     Do you have a middle name? If so, what is it? Anything special about it?

My middle name is Daniel and it is a family tradition as my father’s name is Daniel. My oldest son’s middle name is Joshua.

2.  What color are your eyes?

Funny you should ask that. JI actually have one blue and one green eye. It is always a fun conversation starter.

3. Where would you go in a time travel machine? Would you stay?

As a history teacher, I am not sure I can really just pick one time period to visit. If I had to pick one, I would say that being in Egypt as the Great Pyramids were being built would be pretty amazing. It would be so valuable to see how the aliens really came down and built those for the Egyptians. Yet, I would not want to stick around.

4. Who is the person you most trust in the world?

Without a doubt the person I trust the most in the world would be my wife Christie.

5. What high school activities did you participate in?

In high school I played basketball all four years and baseball for one. For clubs, I worked with student council and yearbook. Hard to believe but I also had some minor roles in our school productions of Guys and Dolls as well as Grease. No, there are no known videos of those floating around.

6. If Twitter ceased to exist tomorrow, what would you most miss about it?

I would miss the people and the conversations I have at any given time. I greatly value the people I have met and the relationships I have formed. That and I would miss knowing when Dean is taking a nap.

7. Seriously, what do you think of the Miley Cyrus song, Wrecking Ball?

Not a fan but as soon as Steve Anderson does it for karaoke I will probably like it.

8. Do you cook or bake? What is your specialty?

I will occasionally cook and make a mean Chicken Parmesan.

9. What is the first concert you ever went to? (Excluding school concerts)

In all seriousness, I am not sure if I should really admit out loud the answer to this question. When I was a young adolescent, I was a big fan of the New Kids on the Block. Yes, you read that correctly. One year for Christmas, Santa brought me and my older brother tickets to go see their concert and I am man enough to admit I had a blast, sang along while wearing my NKOTB concert shirt and may still have a button from those boy band years.

10. Have you ever been “starstruck?” Explain.

This was a tough question as I have been fortunate to meet some pretty amazing people in the past few years. I was surely starstruck when I was fortunate to meet some Chicago Cubs players as I threw out a first pitch at Wrigley Field. However, I would have to admit I was more starstruck when I met President Barrack Obama in the White House last year. It was a bit overwhelming and a moment I will never forget.

11.  How far away from your birthplace do you live now?

I currently live about ten minutes away from the hospital where I was born.

Next Up:

1.    Chris McGee

2.     Will Chamberlain

3.     Ben Grey

4.     John Spencer

5.     Tyler Amidon

6.     Paul Bogush

7.     Brianna Crowley

8.     Pernille Ripp

9.     Kathy Melton

10.Cale Birk

11.Josh Allen

Here are your questions:

1.     What was your favorite children’s book as a child or favorite to read as a parent?

2.     If you had won that insane lottery jackpot, what is the first thing you would buy?

3.     Can you touch your tongue to your nose?

4.     If I were to meet you up at a bar, what drink would I buy for you?

5.     When was the last time you laughed so hard it hurt, and what was it that made that happen?

6.     What is that one movie that shows up on TV that even though you have seen it a hundred times you still leave it on and watch?

7.     If you could sit down and interview one person, living or dead, who would it be?

8.     Paper or plastic?

9.     What is something you have always wanted to do but continue to procrastinate and make excuses as to why you have not done it yet?

10.Have you been able to unlock the code and figure out what a fox says?

11.If you could pack it all up today and move, where would you land?

Here’s how it works:

• Acknowledge the nominating blogger.
• Share 11 random facts about yourself.
• Answer the 11 questions the nominating blogger has created for you.
• List 11 bloggers.
• Post 11 questions for the bloggers you nominate to answer, and let all the bloggers know they have been nominated. Don’t nominate a blogger who has nominated you.

The Forgotten Ones

Lately in my language arts class our focus has been on listening and speaking skills. Specifically, we are working on public speaking, which can be very difficult for some students…and adults. I model and help them along the way as best I can. We start out with doing some silly speeches, which are short with the goal of getting the students comfortable in front of their peers. Last week we decided to take a little bit of a turn and I tried to infuse a little bit of character education within the speeches.

We were having some class discussions about reputations and how we establish and change them. That led us into a conversation about a legacy and what an individual leaves behind when they move on into another phase of their life. It was a fantastic conversation so I decided to make the next speeches around that topic. I asked the students to write a one-minute speech about how they thought their peers viewed them. In other words, what did they think their reputation was? On top of that, I wanted them to go into what they wanted their legacy to be when they left our school in three years and went on to the high school.

I was a little skeptical on what I was going to get back because students, I assumed, would not really have a grasp on how they were viewed by other people. I was pretty confident that most students would come up and think they were good kids and everybody liked them and they just want to be remembered for being a good kid who got good grades.

On the day of the speeches I noticed a lot of the students were hesitant and I would say almost a little nervous looking. We had a conversation about making sure we had an environment of trust and anything shared during these conversations would be kept in the room. The kids were all about it and it seemed like there generally was a touch of excitement about the speeches behind the nervous energy you could sense in the room.

The first few were nothing special in terms of content. They got up and they knew they were good kids they wanted to keep being good kids. Then I had one of my very quiet and shy female students come up front and give a speech. Everybody in the room went dead quiet. She gave a speech about who she thought she was. She assumed that most people, even those in our own class, didn't even know her name because she was so quiet. She shared how she was tired of living in other people’s shadows. She went on to talk about how she wants to change and she wants people to see her, hear her and know her. Her legacy was she wanted people to simply know her name. I am not sure why this particular speech struck me but the fact that a 6th grader wanted their legacy to just simply be known took me by surprise. She didn't say she wanted to be known for being a fantastic athlete or a musician or even a high achieving student. She simply wanted her name to be known.

For some reason I just thought about this student and I could not get her speech out of my head. I have so many conversations with teachers about how we're meeting the needs of all of our learners. I look at what we do in school everyday to push kids in all of the varying groups and subgroups. I think about how much time, energy, money, and resources is spent on the “lower end” of our student population making sure we get them above that sacred “meets” line. Then I see how much time we spend trying to enrich and push our gifted kids.

Yet, I bet if you look at your classrooms and your schools, the squeaky wheels always get the oil. That is to mean that we often forget about our quiet kids or the forgotten ones. The kids who sit and do their work and are quiet and don't cause a problem. These kids can go through an entire day without a single teacher or peer speaking to them. It really made me look at what I'm doing this school year. I've made no secret about the group of students that I have this year and the challenges they have brought me as a person and as a teacher. It is very easy for 10 percent of the students to take up 90 percent of my time. There are days where I feel like those 10 percent consume 98 percent of my time and attention.

This particular student’s speech struck a chord reminding me to make a renewed effort to focus on and build relationships with those quiet kids. This particular student really brought home for me the idea that they often have the most to say and the most to offer as well as are the most likely to be forgotten and ignored. What are you doing to connect with the forgotten ones in your school or your classroom?