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Showing posts with the label fathers and sons

Will Calls Bill to the River / Adventures of Earth, Wind & Fire / #storytelling #Fathers&Sons #humanrights

When we meet people, if we let ourselves yield to each other, we open up and our stories can come forth. They can impact us, change our perspective, create empathy and even get us to change our actions. During my last visit to Florida, I met a father and son team straight out of a crocodile dundee movie. The young boy, Will, was very outgoing and met me with a big smile upon my arrival. Two of my sisters and I had visited his 'estate' as guests of his Dad. My eldest sister is friends with him. It is a log cabin home filled with stuffed alligators and mounted heads of hunted stags of the field. This is a man's home, nay a cowboy's home. In the entrance to the property there is a humongous Oak Tree and as my experience that afternoon and night unfolded I would soon learn that I was a guest at the estate of two living Oaks. A Dad Oak and a son Oak, if ever there could be one.  Will's Dad was taking us out on their airboat on the St. Johns River a half hour ...

Against All Odds w/ #MountainClimbing as an #ExecutiveFunction Tool

How can I as a Special Educator take my understanding and application of best instructional practices and methods (pedagogy) to uncharted territory?  How can I ensure I am still innovating for the benefit of my students? What are the metrics to stay effective as an Executive Function Skills Coach to infants, kids and adults with executive function skill deficits, ADD/ADHD or autism? Can athleticism become an analogy for the abstract and concrete challenges and obstacles individuals face on a daily basis? Recently, a student I mentor and coach climbed Mount Kilimanjaro with his father. The teenager has a form of high-functioning autism referred to as Asperger's. Don't tell him though. He likes to act like that is no big sweat. He wants to climb the seven summits of the world and has just completed 1/7th of his journey by reaching his first summit with Kilimanjaro. His trip involved brutal cold, 12-14 hour days of hiking in thin air conditions and moving only at night to avoid sl...