Dear Hannah - I'm a #StandupStoryteller. I'm the "Brother From Another Planet". Strange people think I am strange. I think that what I experience is strange. And still I rise. I just completed another school year. I am trying to see where I have been ... and where I am going. The final "trilogy" entry is a list of six-word "stories" that present the lessons I have learned well enough to share ... 1.    Equality requires both opportunity and circumstance. 2.    Education begins when you finish school. 3.    Education requires learning, unlearning, and relearning ...

Dear Hannah - I'm a #StandupStoryteller. I'm the "Brother From Another Planet". Strange people think I am strange. I think that what I experience is strange. And still I rise. I just completed another school year. I am trying to see where I have been ... and where I am going. My road ahead is paved with "potholes" and promise. Both provide lots of opportunities to understand. I understand where I want to be. I understand where I am. I understand how to bloom where I am planted. I understand how to "move" (towards my promise while avoiding "potholes") and "use my voice" (say what needs to be said). I understand the "need to heed" (my calling) ... the "need to feed" (my spirit) ... and the "need to weed" (my personal garden) ...

Dear Hannah - I'm a #StandupStoryteller. I'm the "Brother From Another Planet". Strange people think I am strange. I think that what I experience is strange. And still I rise. I just completed another school year. I am trying to see where I have been ... and where I am going. My visit to Hannah's class was life-changing. I had met most of her classmates through attendance at other school activities.They know me as "Hannah's Dad". Today, I reintroduced myself as a #StandupStoryteller ... and host of the #SeeSayShow. I brought my best "bag of tricks" that I organized into this setlist. I performed the songs "Move" and "Joy" from the setlist. Afterwards, a student (Elia) asked me to show how them to make words rhyme ...

Dear Hannah - I'm a #StandupStoryteller. I'm the "Brother From Another Planet". Strange people think I am strange. I think that what I experience is strange. And still I rise. I just completed another school year. I am trying to see where I have been ... and where I am going. March 21 was a good day. I took the day off to dream. See, I have a dream. One day, I will use #StandupStorytelling and #The SeeSayShow to provide in-school field trip experiences to students. These experiences will be small-group fellowships delivered as concerts, gameshows, and tournaments. I visited Hannah's school (Dunleith Elementary) to participate in Career Day. I visited Hannah's 4th-grade dual-language immersion class first. I spoke of dual-language immersion's virtues earlier (while discussing the Reading Bowl) ... but they are worth repeating. Imagine learning your core academic subjects in another language ... and doing that every day for multiple school years ... that's going to build powerful language skills ... (then) those language skills build analysis skills ... self-expression skills ... numeracy skills ... and in multiple languages. I also admitted earlier that dual-language immersion provides Hannah a "safe-haven" similar to those at our high school ...

Dear Hannah - I'm a #StandupStoryteller. I'm the "Brother From Another Planet". Strange people think I am strange. I think that what I experience is strange. And still I rise. I just completed another school year. I am trying to see where I have been ... and where I am going. I made a key move this year. I was able to create a STEM partnership with a young aerospace engineer from GTRI ... who was from Marietta ... and had graduated from Georgia Tech. This partnership allowed me to host Saturday morning fellowships in my classroom. Our agenda for our Spring fellowship included a project with a required homework assignment ...

Dear Hannah - I'm a #StandupStoryteller. I'm the "Brother From Another Planet". Strange people think I am strange. I think that what I experience is strange. And still I rise. I just completed another school year. I am trying to see where I have been ... and where I am going. Here's one of this year's greater challenges. One of my geometry classes engaged in some "shortcuts and shenanigans" ...  perhaps aided by iPhones and students in other classes ... on what turned out to be the easiest test we took all year. You would know the test was easy by engaging the work with fidelity. The harsh reality is that several students have other students do most of their work. Tests reveal this.The "problem in question" was straightforward ... with a slight "twist" that deviated from the "plug and chug" script that placates students ...

Dear Hannah - I'm a #StandupStoryteller. I'm the "Brother From Another Planet". Strange people think I am strange. I think that what I experience is strange. And still I rise. I just completed another school year. I am trying to see where I have been ... and where I am going. Sometimes you teach people how to treat you. Sometimes they teach you how to treat them. I have mentioned my 3rd-block class a lot here. In the Spring, we built a certain comfort and familiarity ... which can often breed contempt. Near the end of the school year, I casually referred to my 3rd-block class as "jabronis" while telling them what we would do on that day. I was channeling Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson from his wrestling days. What I did not know, though, was what "The Rock" was "cookin'" when he used the word ...

Dear Hannah - I'm a #StandupStoryteller. I'm the "Brother From Another Planet". Strange people think I am strange. I think that what I experience is strange. And still I rise. I just completed another school year. I am trying to see where I have been ... and where I am going. Math standards changed again this year. Math, though, has not changed. Math is still as universal a language as music. It is a language that is best communicated using words ... plain, simple words. If you read math standards (the old ones or the new ones), the words might get in your way. The math standards are perhaps written by math teachers ... who may not be as adept at "turning a phrase" ... as they are in mistaking rigamarole (unnecessary compilation) with rigor (appropriate level of difficulty) ...

Dear Hannah - I'm a #StandupStoryteller. I'm the "Brother From Another Planet". Strange people think I am strange. I think that what I experience is strange. And still I rise. I just completed another school year. I am trying to see where I have been ... and where I am going. This year, I added "Connections" and another game I call "Category Challenge" to my critical thinking arsenal ... and was able to test it a lot with several classes. Each of these games either list or group items that fit specific categories (a collection of items with common attributes). Each may owe some royalties to the old-school game "Scattergories" that I played in college and grad school ...

Dear Hannah - I'm a #StandupStoryteller. I'm the "Brother From Another Planet". Strange people think I am strange. I think that what I experience is strange. And still I rise. I just completed another school year. I am trying to see where I have been ... and where I am going. In January 2024, my daughter's school won their district level reading bowl ... a reading bowl named for Helen Ruffin ... a Black librarian from the Dekalb County school system ... who envisioned this event as a test or a measure of reading comprehension ... based on all the books that were nominated for this Georgia book award, whose name escapes me ... but I understand the premise of the contest ... and I like contests like this (for the most part) ...