The Young Leader

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Teachers Making a Difference – 5 You Won’t Forget

As you make your way through school, you’ll learn from several teachers in the process. However, some of them will leave lasting impressions in your mind that will stick for years to come.

These 5 teachers have received recognition in the news for their positive impacts:

David Menasche: After receiving the traumatic news that he had developed untreatable brain cancer, this English teacher didn’t let his disappointing diagnosis get the best of him. When he was too weak to continue teaching, the brave educator from Florida set off on a journey to 31 cities across the country to reunite with 75 of his former students. They described him as a beloved teacher who made a tremendous effort to be present in the lives of his students.

Cheryl Tolbert: As a dedicated middle school music teacher, Cheryl has been touching the lives of her students for 46 years. For the past 9 years of her career, she has been guiding some of the most troublesome students at Crawford Middle School in Kentucky. With her strict, disciplinary teaching style, Cheryl has taught these kids how to succeed and achieve their goals. Most importantly, she has shown her students that music can help you get through the tough times in life.

Anne White: This high school Spanish teacher from Wisconsin uses highly creative strategies to keep her students engaged and ensure that they never forget the language. She spices up her teaching routines by adding in a few fun and unique activities, ranging from Spanish lip-sync battles to Latino line dancing sessions. Anne also likes to send her students on special academic trips that enable them to study abroad and embrace the Spanish culture. Many of her former students still keep in touch via email and Facebook, and some even stop by to visit on occasion.

Derrick Griffith: This 42-year-old educator from New York managed to make a lasting impact on all of his students before he was killed in the recent Amtrak train accident in Philadelphia. He devoted much of his career to assisting underprivileged students in inner-city schools. With the help of a few colleagues, he founded the Teaching and Learning Institute at East High School in Rochester. He is remembered as an extremely caring teacher and dedicated mentor.

Jennifer Brown: This applied physical science teacher was named Alabama’s Teacher of the Year for 2015-16. After teaching her 10th grade students for 16 years, she realized the true impact that teachers have on shaping future generations. Jennifer helps her students excel by making them active participants in the classroom. She wants to inspire other teachers to follow this trend.

Contributed by Nedda Grady

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Teens Making a Difference – Boyan Slat

“If you want to do something, do it as soon as possible.” -Boyan Slat

The Dutch born Boyan Slat doesn’t just say inspiration quotes, he lives them. At age 13, Slat set the Guinness World Record for most water rockets launched at the same time. From there, his ambition took off like one of those rockets leading him to become the founder and CEO of The Ocean Cleanup project by age 20.

Slat’s journey to becoming the founder of one of the largest clean-up projects in history began while diving in Greece at the age of 16. He noticed there were more plastic bags than fish in the ocean, which gave him an idea. Slat developed a science project that consisted of several floating barriers, connected to the seabed, that could capture and gather plastics littering the ocean surface, so they could be collected and recycled. The design uses the Ocean currents to do all of the dirty work, as they push the litter into the collection barriers, a task that would take humans thousands of years and billions of dollars. Seeing that the project had something special to it, Delft University of Technology awarded it with the Best Technical Design.

Slat continued to develop his project after the competition, eventually giving a Ted Talk on how it could work. The talk resonated with people around the world, going viral in the process. Slat started a Kickstarter campaign to make the project a reality, which easily reach it’s goal. Now two years later, Slat has a team of over 100 people working on implementing the project while also spinning the technology off to work on cleaning up rivers and streams as well. According to a 2014 study, the system could remove up to half of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch in 10 years.

Boyan Slat didn’t let his age get in the way of his big idea. Because of his decision to not delay, and pursue his vision and passion as soon as possible, the world could become a better pace to live in a shorter amount of time. Who knows what kind of good could be done if more teens followed Slat’s example and listened to his words: ”If you want to do something, do it as soon as possible.”

Contributed by Alex Anderson

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7 Ways Sports Can Bridge Cultures

Humans have practiced and participated in sports for thousands of years. Because sports have existed for so long and can be found in some form everywhere on Earth, they are a great way to join different societies and bring people together. Here are 7 of the ways sports can bridge cultures.

-Shared Communication

Not speaking the same language as someone can seem like an impossible hurdle to overcome when trying to communicate. One way to bridge this gap is to engage in some shared physical activity. After only a few minutes of either learning a local sport or participating in a shared one, you will start to see the non-verbal forms of communication you use to speak. This communication can be used off the field as well.

-Bring Peace

The passion individuals have for sports is so strong that it can overcome cultural tension. There are several instances of peace through sports, but one of the most famous happened in 1995 when Nelson Mandela helped South Africans differing cultures avoid a civil war through their shared passion for Rugby.

-Put Big and Small Societies on an Even Playing Field

Sometimes the hardest cultural gap to overcome is one of size. Sports solve this problem by taking two different countries and cultures and putting them on a level playing field, allowing each player and team just as good of a chance of as anyone else. It’s how Trinidad and Tobago, a country with a population of just over 1.3 million can play in the same tournament as China, with a population of more than 1.3 billion, which is what happened in the 2006 World Cup.

-Allow You to Travel Abroad and Be Immersed in a Different Culture

Programs like GLA’s Costa Rica: Sports Service Adventure(1) uses teens shared passion for soccer and sports to learn and connect with local communities. The program gives teens an opportunity to live on a coastal village while creating new friendships with local youths all through a shared passion for sports.

-Share History

Sharing the history of anthers culture can be a huge stepping stone to better understanding each other and how societal differences originally started. Learning about why certain rules in shared sports are different between cultures and how that came to be is a great way to jump start the conversation.

-Build Friendships

Branching out and getting to know people from other cultures can be difficult if you share nothing in common. Playing sports together is a great way to get to know people of all cultures and build life-long friendships.

-Teach Rules to Live By

One of the biggest rules that you learn with sports is that of sportsmanship and respecting and admiring your opponents and teammates alike. When you take this outlook and apply it to the world, it allows you to see different cultures and people as equals, no matter their background or education. Athletic activity can build a foundation to live by, and one that can shape the world in positive ways as it brings all cultures together with the shared passion of sports.

Contributed by Alex Anderson

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Water Skiing vs. Wakeboarding

If you enjoy waterskiing then you should most definitely try wakeboarding. Wakeboarding is much harder and more complicated than waterskiing, but incredibly fulfilling once you get the hang of it! Plus, after you know how to waterski, then wakeboarding will be easier to learn.

Waterskiing has skis similar to snow skis, but much wider than snow skis and while they are on the water, they’re being towed down the boat. When you use water skiis, every time you fall, you have to strap on the skiis again, no matter how tight you make them. So don’t panic! This is part of the sport.

Wakeboarding also has one thick shorter board for wakeboarding. Wakeboarding is on one board, to which you are strapped very tightly so there is no need to strap them on every time you fall. So much easier! Wakeboarding tends to be more sideways in nature while gliding across the water, so your views are less direct (but hey, when you’re on the water, the view from all sides is probably spectacular). Waterskiing is facing straightforward, so it seems much easier in that respect. However, some people believe that wakeboarding is easier than waterskiing in that your legs are not trying to go in opposite directions.

Either way, both have ropes and a handle to hold onto while going through the water. They also both require a boat to pull them as well as plenty of room to move through the water. They are most commonly used in various lakes across the country. Rivers tend to be too narrow to really get to move around much. To take part in either waterskiing or wakeboarding, purchasing a life jacket beforehand is an incredibly smart precaution, especially for your first time on the water. Summer is the perfect time to practice both and decide which one is more fun and more enjoyable for you personally.

Contributed by Author

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Say What Needs to be Said – A Bold, Remarkable Teenager Takes a Stand

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High school can be a very difficult, stressful time. It can also be an opportunity where you find yourself and what you truly believe in. You may even inspire others along the way.

There’s no way around it, school can be a grind. Even if you don’t personally care about your grades and college applications, you may gradually start to feel the weight of other people’s expectations. Your school, teachers, parents, friends, family, and pop culture can all add to this. It might all feel heavier than a freshman backpack.

One brave and insightful teenager from my high school—and this was 5 years ago—wrote an article questioning all of this. For us, our school had a dominant workaholic, constantly busy high school culture. We were also strictly grouped by class level: SP, CP, AE, and H/AP. Don’t know what these mean? Well, I still don’t even know. They were just labels.

My classmate asked all of us, “Why? Why should we feel pressured into taking all higher level classes? Maybe I don’t want to spend almost all of my time after school on homework. Maybe I have to support my family by working a job. Maybe I would rather spend time with my loved-ones and friends over grinding away to get into a ‘good’ college. But what really bothers me is the common reaction I get from people about my classes. When I tell them I’m in CP math, people seem to think it’s because I’m not smart enough to be in AE or Honors. Honestly, why should we all feel pressured to overwhelm ourselves with work and extracurriculars?”

What you see above was not taken from the article they wrote; I didn’t actually even read it. Many of my classmates and I heard about it through our friends. We found it compelling and powerful because it was something many of us were thinking about, but we never said anything. They did.

Maybe your current school or community has a different issue that’s been unacknowledged. Few people have the courage to candidly address the most important matters everyone’s thinking about. You don’t have to be smart, athletic, attractive, privileged, or in any way exceptional to do this.

If you do, though, then you have my genuine admiration. And who knows, people you never even met may still think about your meaningful contribution 5, 10, or 20 years from now.

Just speak up.

 

Contributed by Nick Fochtman

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