Friday morning I participated with a career day program at H.I. Holland Elementary School @ Lisbon in Dallas, Texas. I was assigned to three different 4th grade classes who all rotated and changed every 45 minutes.
With two out of the three groups, I had a chance to take them through an exercise where the kids were all pretending to be a group of writers working for a TV station.
The rules were that they were to choose a time, place and characters.
With this story here, they chose 1776. The place was Lego City. Characters included people like Darth Vader (Star Wars), Barack Obama (44th President of the U.S.) and Finn the Human (Adventure Time). The constitution is about to be signed but Darth Vader comes in and attacks the president. The president wins the fight with the help of Finn and Skywalker. All the good guys decide to create a new kind of constitution called the DOII (Declaration of Intergalactic Independence).
The second class picked the year to be 5600. The place was Gravity Falls, Oregon. The characters included people like Dipper & Mabel (Gravity Falls), George Jetson (The Jetsons), Jessie (Disney Channel series, “Jessie.”) and Johnny Test (a Cartoon Network / WB Series).
These guys and girls have an incredible imagination!!!!
I had a chance to talk with 4th graders about where I came from and about my times of struggle and success in school. They listened intently when I told them about my time in Special Ed for reading, writing, math and speech. I encouraged them to keep learning, keep going forward and never give up.
I also had a chance to give away a few copies of my book, “It Could Happen!” I would do it ALL over again!
