A poetic moment...

Today appears to be a nostalgic, poetic sort of day...I have found myself deep in thought, thinking profound statements and reminiscing about life changing moments in my life. Odd I know but I this we all do this from time to time.

Many of us find great solace in thought-provoking words from our fellow mankind. Ranging from inspriational words from Oprah or Maya Angelou, from the glorious power of Martin Luther King to Abraham Lincoln. Profound words that speak deeply into your heart reaching down into you deep, dark depths of your soul, grabbing hold your very core, and shining a light.

When I was younger, I had the opportunity to perform in the Badlands of North Dakota for four seasons in the Medora Musical. This was a huge time in my life, filled with life-forming experiences, milestones and memories. I had my first professional theatrical experience there. I turned 21 there. I made life-long friends there. I came to terms with who I was there. I clogged under the stars there. I fell in love there. I could reach out and touch the Northern Lights there. I found God there, underneath the starry skies, lying atop of a butte, with the scoria on my back, laughing with friends, and grabbing each shooting star by the tail. I experienced the words of Theodore Roosevelt there.

He stated:

"It is not the critic who counts,

not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles

or where the doer of deeds could have done better.

The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena,

whose face is marred with the dust and sweat and blood,

who strives valiantly, who errs and comes up short again and again,

because there is no effort without error or shortcoming,

but who knows the great enthusiasms,

the great devotions, who spends himself for a worthy cause;

who, at the best, knows, in the end the triumph of high achievement,

and who, at the worst, if he fails,

at least he fails while daring greatly,

so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls

who knew neither victory nor defeat."

Beautiful, profound, and life forming for me. These words have rolled around in my head for many, many years and is at the core of how I set my life goals.

In the words of Auntie Mame:

"LIVE!!!! Life's a banquet and most poor suckers are starving themselves."

May these words find their way into your lives as well.

PASSPORT ARRIVED!!

I am on the tail end of Spring Break. The downward slide as they say. I have found myself thinking more and more about my summer adventures. I find myself breathless and filled with anticipation. The entire summer is filled with terrific opportunities for travel and experiencing the world. AND a slash off a point on my bucket list of things I want to do.

I look forward to the end of school. This year, because of snow days added, we will be finishing well into June. I am planning on leaving as soon as I possibly can to head north to North Dakota and Minnesota to spend time with my family and head down to Minneapolis to hang with dear friends for a bit.

I then plan on being back to Little Rock a day or so ahead of June 19th, the day my Dad, Pam, and I leave for our Parisian adventure. I was approached by a fellow teacher friend of mine back last fall to see if I was interested in chaperoning a trip to France and Spain next summer. Now some of you may remember that I have never been overseas and had decided to center that experience around a milestone in my life. I deciede that I wanted to turn 40 overseas in a foreign country. So the idea of doing it a year earlier??? Spectacular!!!! And the chance to experience it with family...PRICELESS!!! Thank you LIZ!!!

We will spend it with students utilizing the EF Touring company. There will be three days of guided tours in Paris with another extra day to freely experience this amazing city. We will then hop a train to Barcelona to spend a day and half of more tours and then on to Madrid for another day and a half of touring and then home. What I love about this is the chance to see the world through guided tours. Seeing it without that for the first time seemed a little daunting.

I will return to Little Rock for just a little while and then Justin and I will hit the road for a fun-filled trip to California. Justin has not been able to get back to see his family in over three years. I have friends that I have not seen in YEARS and we both decided that this was the summer to make this happen. So off to Vegas to see Brento, Fresno to meet the family for the first time, and down to LA to see Disneyland, one of Justin's dear friends, my dearest friend CAROLYN NAGEL and a new friend Justin, a past student of North Little Rock West.

THEN we come back and I plan on being back in Omaha the first wekeend of August for the 20th Mr Max contest. 20 YEAR!! I am blessed to be Mr 13...but where did the years go?

Are you tired yet? I am energized about all these possibilities and also feel so blessed to be able to have this opportinuty to have a summer free to be able ot do it!!

Pole Dancing for Christ???

One of my friends, Jen Curran, just posted this to my Facebook page and I found the whole concept extremely odd.

On last week's episode of Glee, one of the judges in the regional show choir contests was a nun, who happened to have a past as a pole dancer/ stripper. One of the most hysterical moments on this episode was when the woman, dressed as a nun, in full habit, stated, " I came to the convent to stay off of the pole." HYSTERICAL!!

Does this whole thing not seem like an oxymoron? I know for a fact that there are some pretty amazing Christian Music performers out there who have some up beat, toe tapping, "get you in the spirit" types of music that I could see lending themselves to the whole aerobic workout craze. But most certainly not the toe-tapping that requires 6 inch stilleto heels.

I am thinking, "That's just plain RAUNCHY", as I sit here typing in my short shorts, tube top, and highly over-teased hairdo...

Thank you Jen for bringing this alarming trend to light. Always the trend setter!!! :)

Taking time to listen and Value their opinions

SO as many of you know...I blogged about a special unit of instruction I was attempting with my advanced acting students. To refresh your memory, it was a unit on social issues and how theatre could be utilized to bring about awareness and possible help effect a change.

My kids were instructed that they needed to present a 10 to 15 minute presentation on a topic of their choice, work together in a group, utilize technology in their presentation, whether it be to create a movie or even use a power point, include factual evidence, and modify the performance to a middle school mindset. Lots of requirements it seems. Their performances were scheduled for the last week before Spring Break and they have had the entire class time since January to help facilitate this unit. Even though they procrastinated their use of their time to achieve the end product and each performance showed a lack of rehearsal time, the outcomes were just as diverse and were extremely powerful and moving.

One group decided on a "reader's theatre" style of delivery and had planned on using Youtube videos to enhance their performance. The title of their selection was "Everything a Freshman should know to Survive High School" and included topics that ranged from sex and drugs to bullying and overeating. To say the very least, it was very powerful and memorable. It was chock full of factual evidence that no one could refute. And the scenes the student writer had put on paper were very connected. Awesome job!

Two of the groups dissolved into smaller groups for various reasons. One issue was that the folks voted to be the leaders in their group decided that they just could not get to class on a regular basis. The other dissolved over personal issues. What came out of this were mini performances involving 2 or more students.

One performance in particular stood out and had everyone in the class in tears and on their feet upon completion of the performance. The young lady stood up and announced that she and her partner would present a performance on verbal abuse and rape and that this was very hard for her as it was about her scary experience. What ensued was a horrifying, loud, angry, back and forth fight between two people struggling to make it work and going to bed angry after tearing the home apart. It then turned into a soft, quiet, very honest moment, where the young student read a poem she had written to him while he slept about how his words hurt, his hands across her face stung, and how it was not right, nor was it ever right to take something that was not rightfully his. In tears, she poured her heart out there for all of us and was probably the most amazing moment I have yet to experience in my minute teaching experience so far. Absolutely eye opening and honest and raw and so powerful. SO as the tears rolled down all of our eyes, we stood and applauded them both and thanked them for their strength to bring such a personal experience to us.

I am always in awe as to what children these days bring to the table to have to work through with all the pressures we as adults put on them to "succeed". What I am most proud of is that this entire group brought such maturity of thought to the table. Granted they have things they need to work on (i.e. procrastination, rehearsal time, using class time to the best and fullest it can be) but I have found that students of today have many profound things to say if only we will just take the time to listen and value their opinions.

Friends like these...

I have so many wonderful friends in my life. God has blessed my life and has provided me paths where I have had the chance to meet amazing spirits who have so richly provided me solace, a strong shoulder to lean on, hours and hours of laughter, and put up with my rantings and ravings.

I am going to start a blog post centered around friends of mine and how we have met.

These two are quite the pair!!! This is Mr. Geoff Carlson and Mr. Wai Yim. Since moving to Little Rock, I have lost that strong sense of core friends I had in Omaha. The moment this photo was taken was in O'Hare Airport in Chicago over Christmas Break.

Geoff works in the airport as a chocolatiere. He and his partner Keith have been together for years and have served as a huge model for me on how to "make it work". When life throws curves your way, how do you make it work and do it together? Their relationship speaks absolute volumes to me on how to have a successful relationship with one partner in a job that requires you to move around form contract to contract.

I have known Geoff for many years and appreciate his ability to be a wonderful listener. He is always there for me and is one of those friends that no matter how long we have been apart or chatted, we just pick up from where we left off and not miss a beat. I appreciate the certain sparkle in his eye, his humanity towards mankind, and his ability to grace this world with his amazing spirit.

The other glowing electricity next to him is my dear friend, Wai. I have known Wai since 1999. I remember Wai when he was still struggling to develop his English and struggling to learn our language. Originally from Hong Kong, Wai has worked as a flight attendant and travels all around the world. True story. Wai flew into Chicago because he knew that I would have a lay over and that Geoff and I were planning on being together for that time. So he hopped a plane and flew over to be with us.

Wai has this innate ability to light up a room upon entering. He has an enviable sense of comedic timing and jokes that we are all like the Sex and the City gals...him being Samantha! :) I would stand in line to see Wai in any show he is cast in as he has a strong sense of who he is when he is on stage and is not afraid to step outside the box and create amazingly hysterical, human characters that are grounded and well-rounded.

Wai struggles so much with juggling his strong sense of responsibility to his family, his job, and his craft. We all do to some sense. How do we not feel guilt for exploring our creative sense of self at the expense of others...when it comes to time and effort to make things work.

I love these boys so much and appreciate their love and friendship so much. I would not be the man I am today without your love and support.

Zach Wahls Speaks About Family

And the debate continues...

My kids in my Advanced drama class continue to make me extremely proud. How is it that a group of 30 kids from last fall, who in my mind's eye, had been labeled as Heathens and Loud-mouths and "THAT CLASS" can now turn around in the Spring of our year and bring me such joy and excitement?

I have found that they have the most amazing insight into things that are going on around them. As I had previously spoke about, this class is in the middle of a unit on Theatre for Social Change. I began the class with this basic statement: You are going to put together a 10-15 minute presentation on an issue that you think needs to be brought to the minds of America's children for the purpose of learning and discussions. I don't know what the end product could be, that is up to you. I could see this as a live presentation. I could see this as a filmed movie. I expect you to work together and have set you due date as follows. You are to create characters, come up with a theme, and present it in a fashion that middle school kids will understand. GO!

And from there, I have not ceased to be absolutely blown away. The video I have added right before this entry is of a young man in IOWA named Zach Wahls and is probably one of the most eloquent speakers I have seen in a long time... with the exception of the I have students, just like Zach, in my Advanced Drama class...and for him and them I consider myself to be the luckiest man in the entire world.

Zach's words give me hope. My student's views give me great solace for I know that change is inevitable...we just have to help them find their voice and teach them to shout it from the rooftops...that THEY CAN MAKE A DIFFERENCE. That they CAN be raised in a family with gay parents and CAN make a profound impact on those around them and in the world. It does not matter if you are gay or straight, black or white, gifted and talented or special needs, we all CAN MAKE A DIFFERENCE in someone else's life or in the life of our country...

What scares me is that someone has the "right" to dictate how others can be labeled "second rate" or "not equal". Perhaps "Marriage" is the wrong term. Perhap "civil unions or partnerships" is better choice. Whatever term they decide to choose, I just want the civil liberties that other folks in this coutry receive...those of life, liberty, and the pursuit of a bridal registry...or adopt. I refuse to be second rate. I am not sick for yearning for love. I am lovesick!!

I for one would someday like to be able to bring a young one into this world. I want to know that they will turn out just like Zach. Proud, strong, smart, kind, respectful, and willing to stand up for what they believe in. Willing to make a difference in someone else's life and not afraid to speak their mind. We need more like Zach and my students in this world...

It is a PROUD time in my life.

I am so very grateful for this day and the days ahead.