Online Middle and High School

The school year, 2016-2017 ends in several weeks, and it's time tor nominations for Teacher of the Year.
I nominate Tai Lopez for the following reasons.

1. He uses math in many of his presentations.

2. He promotes reading. He reads a book a day. His presentation has over 7 million views on YouTube.

3. He advertizes on YouTube. He has millions of views for his videos. His message reaches many people. From his promotional email:
My recent social media accomplishments include:
-635 million minutes watched on my YouTube videos
-$21.7 million dollars in social media marketing and testing
-one of the top 15 TedX talks of all time
-My YouTube videos are used by college professors to teach marketing

4. He is a role model. An accessible role model. He serves as an example to teenagers who have dropped out of school or who are at risk of dropping out of school.

5. He has identified areas where schools could improve. Tai Lopez has listed in one of his video ads the four areas where the education system failed to provide him with information: wealth, health, relationships (love or social skills) and happiness. He has responded by developing a courses to fill in those gaps.

Tony Wagner has identified Seven Survival Skills (TinyURL.com/TonyWagner7Skills). Perhaps Dr. Wagner can include Tai Lopez in his list of business leaders who have identified the skills that young people need to move ahead. The list of skills include "Taking Initiative and Entrepreneurship" -- and Wagner encourages teachers to include activities in every lesson to support the development of the seven skills. How do we encourage students to develop initiative when we teachers are in control of the lesson plan? I do it by introducing students to "stories by Tai Lopez." Tai Lopez tells stories about how he went from $47 in a mobile home to finding mentors and learning from the Amish to starting several businesses. His narratives carry two secrets: (1) start your own business. You will be unemployed at some time, so you better have a Plan B and work for yourself. (2) Develop several streams of income, so have several businesses. (3) Invest in real estate because "they aren't making any more land and there are more people on the planet every year." Math teachers: why not include the math of real estate in your next lesson plan? See the suggestions in a math course www.TINYURL.com/21pertmath

6. He has developed a following of more than one million people who receive his updates on Youtube. A reading organization that gives Tai Lopez an award for promoting reading will certainly get attention for their organization.

7. He's annoying. A good teacher says at least something that disrupts the comfort zones of listeners. I asked a 12-year-old about "that guy with glasses and black gel hair who stands in front of his 3 luxury cars and..." The boy replied, "Oh, him. He's so annoying. He said he had 47 dollars and then suddenly he has three cars and a big house. That is such a scam."

When I gave mentioned some of the reasons why I respect Tai Lopez and when I pointed out that Tai had spent more than five years reading, the 12-year-old changed the subject.

For all of these reasons, I nominate Tai Lopez as Teacher of the Year in the USA. I suggest that there could either be a special category set up (usually Teacher of the Year is from a pool of teachers who are employed by schools and the school principals nominate one of their employees). I'm writing to the International Literacy Association to suggest that there could be a special category, perhaps "Reading Advocate of the Year."

I have titled this blogpost "reading teacher of the year" because many math teachers will not see the value of Tai's emphasis on reading. However, his tips could reach some students that my lessons have failed to reach.

Somebody, somewhere, please get out of your comfort zone and take a moment to listen to Tai Lopez. He doesn't look like a teacher (and that's a good thing).

Here is Tai's presentation on TEDx

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Here is an excerpt from the transcript

Imagine how much money you’d have in your bank account today – how much more money, I should say – if Warren Buffet was teaching you how to invest in the stock market, showing you what he used to build Berkshire Hathaway into a $140 billion company. Imagine how much happier you’d be today if the Dali Lama was your personal guide, showing you how to find fulfillment in life, in the little things that most people overlook.

Imagine how healthy you’d be today if when you woke up, you went down to your gym, and Arnold Schwarzenegger was waiting there, who was your personal trainer, showing you how he built his body into the most fit body maybe ever, right?

Imagine the change you’d be making in the world, the injustice you’d be solving today, if Mother Theresa and you were running a charity together and she was showing you what she learned on the streets of Calcutta, helping the poor, the sick, and the dying.

Mentors have the power to do this in your life. I think everybody here recognizes the importance of a role model. But in the next few minutes, I’m going to show you how mentors are more powerful than you can possibly imagine in their ability to transform your life. It’s interesting that I’m here in Luxembourg, because my grandmother was born not too far from here, in Berlin, Germany. She is 96 years old, by the way, and she said, “Tai, tell them hello.” So, hello from my 96-year-old grandma.

She said, “There was a role model, a mentor that I had when I was a little girl.” She was born in 1918 in Berlin, and she said, “We had a renter in our house.” Edith Knox, who was a famous piano player from California in the 1920s. And she said, “Tai, this woman made such an impression on me.” She rented a room for a summer, and she said, “Edith Knox wore pants.” My grandma said, “I’d never seen a woman wear pants.” Apparently, in Germany in the ’20s, no women wore pants. And not just regular pants. She had an orange jumpsuit on.

(TAI talks about mentors... and how he became a reader)

And I remember at 16, I wanted to find the good life. Aristotle talks about eudaimonia, his definition of the good life. Health, wealth, happiness, love. All those things. And I remember going, “It’s too hard. How am I ever going to figure this out? There are so many hard questions. I’m 16. I got to figure out what college I am going to go to, what religion I’m going to follow, who I’m going to marry, what politics, where to live, what career and path to pursue.” And I had this idea. I was like, “I know the perfect idea.” What I’ll do is I’ll find one person – I thought this was so genius, it turned out to not be so smart – But I’d find one person who had all the answers.

So I wrote a letter. The smartest person I could think of was my grandfather. So I wrote this letter and I was like: “Will you tell me how to design my life?” TED is about T-E-D. The “D” is about Design, the designed life. So I said, “Will you help me design my life?” And I was so excited.

I thought three days later, four days later I got this letter back from my grandpa. I read it and it said, “Sorry, Tai, I can’t help you. The modern world is too complicated. You will never find all the answers from just one person. If you’re lucky, a handful of people along the way will point the way.”

And I was like, “Ugh!” So much for my shortcut.

But seven days later, a package came. It was books. My grandfather had a 20,000-book library, and he had sent me some old dusty ones. A 1,000-page volume. 11 books. “The Story of Civilization,” by Will and Ariel Durant. I was like, “1,000 pages? This is too much.”

But I see now, he was giving me a hint, I didn’t understand it. There’s this myth that you have to go inward to find truth. But the truth he was saying is you have to go outward. If you can download the consciousness, the mindset of people who have gone before you – the smartest, the wisest, the most intelligent, the most experienced people – then you will get what you want.

And so I went on, and I started writing down note cards. I called them mental shortcuts. And I was reading these books. And then I started traveling. I went to 51 countries. I would read a book and I’d say, “Let me go visit this person in person.” So I went to New Zealand and Australia, South America, Argentina, Ireland, all over the world. And I was focused on those 4 things: health, wealth, love, and happiness. I decided to focus on health and happiness. I lived on for two years with Joel Salatin on his famous sustainable agricultural organic farm. And then I spent two and half years with the Amish. No electricity, trying to see what was life when we lived in community.

(The talk describes how he found mentors)

So I started asking around: “Will somebody help me?” My uncle said: “You know what, Tai, you need somebody who is going to show you how to make money.”

So I was like, “Great idea. I’m going to go find somebody.” But I didn’t have any gas money. So I was stuck there at my mom’s house. I had $40. So I walked to the kitchen. That’s what I could afford to do. I found the Yellow Pages and I opened these Yellow Pages and I looked in the finance section and I found this guy. I said, “I’m going to visit that guy.” So I got a suit out of the closet. It wasn’t mine, it was too big. It looked weird on me. God help me! I don’t know what I looked like when I showed up at that guy’s house. But I got somebody to drive me in, I showed up and Kathy, his secretary, opened the door and I walked back, and Mike Steinback, from the phone book, I walked up to him and I said, “Mike, you don’t know me. If you show me what you know, because I figured you must know a lot about money, if you can afford a full-page ad in the yellow pages – if you show me what you know I’ll work for you for free.”

And I’ll never forget. He was sitting in this chair. He had a big mustache. He looked kind of like Tom Selick. He was sitting there, and he just rolled his chair towards me. And he said, “You know what, Tai? I’ve been looking for someone like you for 20 years. Show up in the morning, I’ll show you what I know.”

And sure enough, he did show me.

TAI then describes his rule of 33%

Remember, everybody wants the good life, but not everybody’s willing to follow these rules. You must follow these rules.

Next, books.

Books you should see as hidden treasure. Think about it, if I told you – because as I said, mentors are great in person, but some of the great mentors are no longer alive – Shakespeare, Darwin, Freud, Mahatma Gandhi. But if I told you all those people were in my house and they’re going to be there this Saturday answering questions, – magically I can make that happen – would you show up at my house? Of course everybody would buy a plane ticket and end up in California. They are there in my house. They’re on my library. They can be in your library, too.

Talking about Sam Walton. This is a man who made $160 billion for himself, more than all the other billionaires, basically, combined. He wrote a book on his death bed. How many people have read it? It’s a tragedy that not every businessperson’s read a $5 book by a man who built an empire. But it’s because the modern education system has turned people off from books. You’ve got to rewire your brain. Let me show you a few quick tricks.

First thing: stop seeing a book like a one-time event. See a book like a friend. You read it over and over. You come back. And just like friends, you pick a handful of them. I recommend you find 150 books. There’s 130 million. You can’t read that many. But 150 you can read over and over for the rest of your life. There’s no rule, either, at how fast you have to read them, at what pace. I set my own pace. People say, “How do you read a book a day?” Sometimes I take a week. But sometimes, books only have one or two things that are worth reading. In fact, most books only have that.

So I’ll flip through the pages. One time I like to go through it three times. First time, I read the table of contents at the back. The second time, I go a little faster. The third time, I just focus on one chapter. See yourself like a gold miner just looking for that one nugget. Then put it back on the shelf.

The average American buys 17 books a year. Maybe reads one a month. You should read at least one book a week, because remember, everybody wants the good life, but not everybody’s willing to read to get it. You must read more.

And lastly, stoic versus epicurean.

One of the first books that I read, this 11-set volume that I got from my grandfather, there was a quote that I wrote down. “A nation is born stoic and dies epicurean.” Stoics were people willing to sacrifice present pleasure for something better later. You could say they were investors. Epicureans live for now. They were consumers. They said, “You only live once.”

There’s a saying, “If you’re in a room and you don’t know who the sucker is, you’re the sucker.” You never want to be the sucker. Guess what the media wants to do. I can tell you, I’m from Hollywood. They bombard you. We see on average 2,000 ads a day. They’re trying to sell you something.

Luxury comes at the cost of killing your hopes, your dreams, your ambitions. So toughen up a little bit. Be a stoic. When was the last time you went a week without eating sugar? Or walked instead of taken a car to get groceries? Or did 100 push-ups? Or turned the air conditioning off? Toughen yourself up. Take a cold shower.

You see everybody wants, but not everybody is willing to toughen up to get the good life.

You must toughen up.

So in closing, I’ll share with you my favorite poem, Chief Tecumseh. He says, “Love your life. Perfect your life. Beautify all things in your life. Seek to make your life long, and its purpose in the service of your people.” Mentors will help you do that. They are the shortcut that you want. You don’t want to do it the hard way.

Find a mentor, no matter if you’re just starting out or if you’re already experienced. There’s always someone to learn from. You must follow those rules.

Be humble. Persevere. Read more. Toughen up.

Remember, it’s going to be a little bit hard. It’s like Tom Hanks says in that one movie, “It’s supposed to be hard. The hard is what makes it great.”

If you do these things, you will find the good life.

Thank you.

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There is a quiz with 14 questions on this page

Here are the questions in the quiz.

This is my effort to find an association that will certify Tai Lopez
as a Reading Teacher

Here is the letter that I sent to the International Literacy Association:

Hello

I'm writing to your organization because you might want to create a special award for a person who had done more to promote reading to a wider group of people than anyone in recent years.

http://tinyurl.com/tailopezteacher my blog post

I nominate Tai Lopez as Reading Teacher of the Year (2016-2017)

Here is the content of the Blog Post

I'm not sure where to write with this suggestion. If I were part of an organization that promotes reading, I would create a special award for this "non teacher" who has more than 7 million hits for his TEDx presentation about reading a book a day.

If I were connected to an association devoted to promoting reading, I would want to invite such a person to a reading conference to receive some sort of recognition, perhaps "A certificate of Appreciation for promoting reading."

If you don't know Tai Lopez, perhaps this TED presentation will spur you to learn more about him and to invite him to your next conference.

Steve McCrea

Reading Teacher

Fort Lauderdale

(954) 646 8246

FreeWebsiteProject2016@gmail.com

Sent to International Literacy Association

PO Box 8139
Newark, DE 19714-8139
USA

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Since I live in Florida, I wrote a similar letter to the Florida Reading Association
Florida Reading Association
P.O. Box 151555
Cape Coral, FL 33915

This blog post can be found at www.TinyURL.com/TaiLopezTeacher

http://tinyurl.com/21pertmath for the course that includes some math lessons that Tai gives in his real estate course.

Students should work together in school.
The learning should be meaningful to the students

This is the TEDx talk by Marjo Kylloenen

LINK to the TEDx talk

She is quoted here

“There are schools that are teaching in the old-fashioned way which was of benefit in the beginning of the 1900s — but the needs are not the same, and we need something fit for the 21st century.“

Instead of individual subjects, students will study events and phenomena in an interdisciplinary format. For example, the Second World War will be examined from the perspective of history, geography, and math. And by taking the course ”Working in a Cafe," students will absorb a whole body of knowledge about the English language, economics, and communication skills.

This system will be introduced for senior students, beginning at the age of 16. The general idea is that the students ought to choose for themselves which topic or phenomenon they want to study, bearing in mind their ambitions for the future and their capabilities. In this way, no student will have to pass through an entire course on physics or chemistry while all the time thinking to themselves “What do I need to know this for?”

See this link
www.tinyurl.com/finlandnosubjects

At 21Century.education, students are asked to select internships and to choose what they want to observe closely.

If the students are interested in animals, let's ask the questions from the LEARNING GOALS of Big Picture Learning.
History of animals
When did the first veterinarians start calling themselves "vets"?
How were animals used in war?

The Science of Animals

There are TV shows that compare the bite strength of jaws. Do alligators or Tigers have a stronger bite?
What are trends in numbers? Percent of cat owners vs. dog owners?

Animals in other languages
What do dogs say in Spanish?
perro (dog): guau guau, guau (ladrar) — bark, bow-wow, arf, ruff

The math of animals