My students are going to write about this topic, so I thought that I’d write about it too as they are watching me right now. This will be fun! 🙂

  1. The first word I’d use to describe myself is quiet. I am an introvert. It’s painful for me to get up and talk in front of a group of adults. But put me in front of sixth graders (or other students or my basketball team), I’m fine. Until I get to know you and feel safe being myself, I won’t say very much!
  2. The second word I’d use to describe myself is nerdy. It took me a long to accept my inner nerd because I was that kid who loved it when the teacher said, “Take out your book and read”. I used that as an escape because I wasn’t into the loud, boisterous ways of high school students. As I’ve grown older, I accepted that being a huge Star Wars fan, Harry Potter fan, Avatar the Last Airbender fan, is not “adult behavior” (my wife mocks me from time to time), but these are things that bring me joy.
  3. The last word I’d used to descibe myself is joyful. I tell my students that being positive is a lot of work, and it is. I find myself sinking into the foolishness that is social media, however, I’ve found that I find joy everywhere. Last night, I finished putting potatoes into our cellar and seeing the fruits of that labor brought me joy. Yesterday, my wife made a pot of marinara sauce from the fresh stuff in the garden and it was easily her best stuff. It just made my heart happy that she did this for us. I find joy in TikToks with the little baby hippo who doesn’t want to come inside and the trainer has to try to get her out of the pool. There’s so much out there that you can find joy in. Yes, I get grumpy, but in the end, it’s the joy that keeps me going.

We’ll see what my students write. I’m going to finish this out becuase I’ve got students who are looking at me going “what the heck” with the amount of words they see on my page. This is to show them that if they put their minds into it, the words just flow and suddenly they have over 400 words on their page.