New Project

In class we are starting our end  projects. We were given multiple options to choose from and I think I'm going to do the Motivational Flip Calendar. It should be an interesting project to do. You have to find 365 different quotes to put into the calendar. Also you have to make it look pretty then give a presentation to the class about what is important in your project. On another note...Christmas is almost here!!!! There's only 4 days left to get all your Christmas shopping done. I'm a procrastinator, I haven't started my Christmas shopping yet...oops. Maybe that should be my New Years resolution, to not procrastinate so much. Anyways Have a Holly Jolly Christmas!!!!

Character Blog

Blog about Character. The most significant statement to me was when the blogger said that the people you surround yourself with will help to shape your character and morals. This means that you need to surround yourself with good people that have good morals and have good character. This impacts me in that I need to stay around good people and people that have good morals as now is kind of the growing years in how my character will be in the future and for the rest of my life. I must change now that I need to decide what my morals are going to be. I've kind of just gone with what my parents have said to do so far, but now is the time when I need to start thinking about these thing. If I have good friends to help strengthen me and encourage me and good character and morals, then I'll be set for the future.

Guest Speaker

Yesterday we had Theresa Heitman as our guest speaker. She talked a lot about job interviews. She gave good advice on what to expect when being interviewed. She gave us some of the questions that Monsanto asks their interviewees and told us what Monsanto looks for in a person. They look to see if you can build Relationships and Networks, if you have Courage and Cander, Agility, (which how well you can adapt to situations), Initiative and Foresight, (how do you plan for the future), and finally Results Orientation. She told us that these are the qualities that they find more important than how much experience you have. I thought this was a very helpful and informative guest speaker.

Presentations

Yesterday we got done doing our presentations for the administration. I thought that they were very good. I liked hearing that the administration is actually thinking through some of our ideas that were given out. I think that the group that did "seminar" as their problem brought up some really good discussions. They gave many good solutions to the seminar problem and gave pros and cons of each of them. After their presentation the administration started asking some questions and good discussions about how seminar is run and how it is supposed to be run were talked about. Even after the bell for the end of class rang people still stayed and participated in the discussion and that shows that people actually care about that issue. I'm glad presentations are over now though, time to relax =)

Presentations

Tomorrow in class we will be starting our presentations on what we think is a problem in the school. Some people from the administration will be there to hear our ideas about the issues in our school. I think it's cool that we have a way to voice our thoughts on things going on in the school and actually have the administration hear us. I hope that through this process we can get one issue fixed or at least get the problem looked at. I'm looking forward to hearing the other groups' presentations and seeing what they think is a problem in our school. Well... I better get back to working on my own project...

Class...

So in class we're continuing our projects about a problem with the school. It's getting down to the last week and we're actually having to work now. I'm starting to wish that our group hadn't procrastinated so much. But I think we'll be ok. Over the past two days or so we've gotten our power point started and we're getting some good information put down on it. I think that when we present it our graphs will help us a lot in trying to communicate what we want to say to the administration. I'm excited to see what the administration has to say about our problem and if any of our solutions will be implemented.

Trial of Napoleon

 In world history we're doing the trial of Napoleon. It shows our natural tendencies, especially for the lawyers. It shows who are natural leaders. The trial was a lot of work to begin with but now that we're in and doing it, it's getting to be kind of fun and not as bad as I thought it would be. The lawyers really test you to see if you know all you can about your character and I'm glad that I took the time to study about my character so that I didn't look dumb sitting up there on the stand with nothing to say. Moral of the story....Studying does pay off...sometimes.

Coach Ritchie

Last week we had Coach Ritchie as our guest speaker. He's a man that a lot of people respect because of how he lives his life. He talked about how Ed Thomas was a big mentor in his life and that he learned a lot of things form him. Some of the things he learned were, Never forget where you came from. Ritchie said that when he is trying to make a big decision in his life, even today, he'll go back to where he was raised. A thing that I took out of coach Ritchie's speech was that relationships are big to him. His family and the kids that he coaches are important to him. He said to be the best you can be at what you do and also to know yourself and knowing what you stand for. I really enjoyed Coach Ritchies speech I think mainly because I have a lot of respect for him. He spends a lot of time at his job trying to help out people and he's always a friendly guy. Good Speaker!

Thanksgiving

Since it was Thanksgiving this past week, I figured I should write about what I'm thankful for. So to start off with, I'm thankful for my family. They support me in everything that I do and they always love me unconditionally. Secondly, I'm thankful for those people that we can be ourselves around, friends. They're always there to have a good time but a good true friend is there to help you out in a time that you need them. Lastly, but most importantly, I'm thankful for my faith. I know that I couldn't make it through the week without it. It's a good feeling knowing that a friend is there or a family member is there for you, but they can't always be there, God can. And I'm thankful for that. So, in all, I'm thankful for everything. Go America for coming up with another holiday that we can use for eating delicious food!  Happy Thanksgiving!!

Vuk and His Country

The other day Vuk did a presentation about Montenegro. I thought it was interesting seeing how he lives back home. He said that they don't really drive cars around in Montenegro, they walk to a lot of places. He also said that they don't have all the fast food restaurants that we have. Since they don't have all those fast food restaurants and since they walk everywhere, they have a very low obesity rate. I think that America should take a few pointers from them because our obesity rate is pretty high. I'm excited to hear Ochanyas presentation and hear about Nigeria. 

En nos clase....

En clase nos somos trabajamos en nuestro projecta. Lo es muy difícil. hay mucho hacer. Estamos trabajando en las encuestas que hemos tomado la semana pasada. Nosotros usemos Excel para hacer gráficos. Okay this is too much work for a simple blog. So basically the jist of the whole dealio up top there is that we are working with the surveys that we took last week. We made some pie charts out of them so that we could see the data better. We're going to get data from the office about tardies and pink slips because of tardies. That data will hopefully allow us to see if people get a lot of tardies because of hallway congestion or not. Then, we can go on from there. Tallie ho!!

Aaron Thomas

On Thursday, Aaron Thomas came to school for a school wide assembly. He talked a lot about his dad, Ed Thomas and what he cared about. The three most important things in life to him are, Faith, Family, and Football. His football team was like his second family. He talked a lot about how he loved where he was from and how he never wanted to forget where he came from. He asked everyone if they planned on staying in the Williamsburg area after they graduate. Only a few people raised their hands. Then, he asked how many people were planning on staying in the state of Iowa after they graduate. A lot more people raised their hands. Then finally he asked how many people were planning on moving to big cities after college, a few people raised their hands. Then he challenged everyone, no matter where they went after college, to not forget where they came from. He also talked about all the former AP players that are in the NFL that came back after the tornado that destroyed the town. They didn't come back to get noticed by the media, they came back because they never forgot where they came from.

Problems Throughout School

Last week we voted on what we think are the most important issues in class. We were put into groups based on what we thought was the biggest problem. My groups problem was that we think that hallways are too crowded. We are using the PDSA process to try and solve this problem. I think this will be a cool thing to do as we can actually see the outcome of the process, unlike when we were at Kinze or when we did the problem at the workshop. So far we have come up with a code of cooperation and our systems analysis. Yesterday we came up with some questions to use for a survey. I'll be excited to get our survey out and get some data back to see what the main source of the problem is. Farewell for now..updates to come shortly.

Guest Speaker Chantal Knepper

The other day in class we had Chantal Knepper as our guest speaker. She talked about how we should be involved with different activities. She told us about some of the activities that she's involved in in college. They're all helping to teach time management skills as well as leadership skills. She helps to lead a lot of the groups that she's in. She told us to get involved in things. When you're applying for a job they're going to want to see that you did things to help you learn skills, not just that you sat in your room and did nothing with your life. They're going to want to see that you were involved in a bunch of different things they'll see that you know how to manage your time and that you can work in situations like that. So get involved in things, don't be a bum!

Whats Goin' Down in Class

So in class we're starting the PDSA tools. I think it'll be good for the rest of the class to learn. There are a lot of useful tools incorporated into this system. It will also be helpful to have more practice using it. I think that it will be nice since me and Dianna already know the system, we can help out people and give imput. I like that we're incorporating school issues as things that we want to solve and fix. It makes it personal since we all spend a good majority of our day there. We'll actually got to do the final parts of the PDSA system since we'll get to see the end result, unlike when we we're at Kinze with our project. I hope this is a good experience for all the other students and for me as well.

Problem Solving

Last week, me and a few other students had the opportunity to go to Kinze to acyually use some of the tools that we learned at the problem solving conference we went to. I liked it and thought it was a lot of fun. I thought it was cool how we all worked together really well. We got into Kinze and got done with our research in about half of the time that they expected we would. That showed that we were dilligent in our work and worked hard. Using some of the tools that we learned really helped us to think through the problem that Kinze gave to us. I'm sure I'll be able to use them later on in life. I think that this opportunity will be useful to me when I get into the real world, also this will give me a step up that most other students don't get in high school. Thanks for the opportunity to go!

Leadership Training dealio part 2

So today was our last day of the conference. We learned how to impliment some of the tools that we learned yesterday. I think that my group did a good job in making our presentation with the different tools. I'm excited to use these in a real world problem when my group goes to Kinze to try and solve a problem for them. I think that we will be able to use a lot of the tools that we were taught the past two days. Even though the project got tedious at times, I think it was good and really helped us to learn the tools better. Next week should be fun when we get to try out all the tools with the problem that Kinze gives us.

Leadership Training Part 1

So today we went up to a leadership training and problem solving conference. They're giving us multiple tools that we will be able to use with real world problems. One of the tools they gave us was the "5 whys". At first I thought that this tool was dumb because it annoyed me with all the "why" questions. Why did I answer this to this question, why did I just answer that question the way I did and so on and so forth. This became frusterating and tedious to me. Then I realized that this actually is a good tool to use because it gets down to your motives of doing and saying things. It makes you think about why you're involved in something. It'll be interesting actually using these tools when we go to our businesses. Stay tuned for part two..coming soon.

Core Values Part 2

What are core values? Core values are what is going to help make your decisions. Some of my core values are: Faith, Honest/Trust, Respect, Integrity, and Convictions. Faith is huge to me because I know that I'm not strong enough to do it on my own, I need God's help in my life every day. Honesty and Trust are important because I want people to be able to trust me and for people to trust you, you have to be honest with them. They aren't going to trust a person that has repeatedly lied to them. I want people to see something in me that is good, so that's why integrity is on my list. If you have good integrity and are consistant in how you act, then if you mess up every once in awhile, people will remember how you usually are and will be more willing to forgive and forget. Finally Convictions is a big thing because you need to have set ground rules on things in your life. These are things that you shouldn't even have to think about when situations come up, you just know that it's wrong and you shouldn't do it. We should all know what our our core values are. They're important to help guide us in our lives.

Core Values

As leaders we need to know our core values and have them set in stone. In a time of difficulty, our core values will be evident to those around us. Some good core values to have would be: Honesty, Communication, Respect, and I believe that Convictions is a big one. We need to know what we believe in and what we stand for before we can go around leading other people. Integrity is also a huge one. If people see that you have good integrity then people will be more inclined to believe you in what you're trying to get across in your message. Consistency is big when it comes to integrity because if it comes to that one time you mess up people will be more willing to forgive and forget with you. So be consistent in how you act around people. It will give people more of a reason to trust you.

Pursuing Being Happy

We just got finished watching the Pursuit of Happyness the other day and I felt like it was good to see another persons struggle to achieve what they really want. It makes you realize whats really important in life. In the movie, family was his main motivator. Chris just wanted to make his son Christopher happy. After Linda left him, Chris had to support Christopher on his own, while tring to get the internship job at the company, all while barely having any money. In the scene where they get kicked out of the motel, Chris is worried about what he's going to do with Christopher. When they're in the subway station, Christopher is sad, so Chris tries to turn their situation into something fun for his son. Chris makes the best of the situation that they're in and takes care of Christopher. Family should always be our driving force to make things better for ourselves and for them, and thats exactly how it was for Chris Gardner.

The Pursuit of Happyness

In class we are watching "The Pursuit of Happyness" and analyzing it. We are looking for the things in the movie that make Will Smith's character want to change from the way he is living in the start of the movie. It starts with him not being able to provide for his family, and that shows that he's committed to his family and he wants to be able to care for them. Also, after Linda leaves, Christopher becomes Chris' main priority. He does everything that he can to take care of his kid. In one scene he is begging the landlord to let him stay just a little longer in their apartment because he has nowhere to take Christopher. Then again when he gets arrested the only thing he is worried about is who is going to take care of his son. Chris Gardner has a lot of determination but more importantly he loves his son and would do anything to make him happy. I think that that's something that should be very important to us too, our family should be our top priority, then they become a motivation for us to work hard and want to achieve better.

More about the speech

I've been working on my speech a lot this week. It's showed me about how leaders need to be 100 percent if they are going to lead a group of people. If you're going to follow someone you have to believe in what they're trying to tell you and that's hard to do when they don't show that they're fully committed. So be the best you can be and take advantage of the resources given to you to succeed!

Guest Speaker Mr. Atkinson

Yesterday in class we had Mr. Atkinson as our guest speaker. He talked about how fear of failure can paralyze you from ever taking risks. He said that leadership begins in the dark where no one else can see you. So leadership isn't a thing that is learned in public, leadership skills have to be learned. If your pride is left unchecked then in the end it can ultimately destroy you. You are a leader worth following if you have integrity and patience with the people that you want to lead. Also, leadership must be something earned, it's not going to be appointed or given to you.

Persuasive speech

The persuasive speech project has turned out to be difficult for me. I had a hard time finding a subject that interested me and that I could work into leadership. Fritz finally helped me find "dietary supplements". He said to use the idea of a sports conference where I'm talking to other coaches about motivating athletes. In order for us to expect the best from our athletes we need to ourselves be the best. We need to push ourselves and use all the resources given to us to succeed. 

90/10 Principle

Yesterday we had Mr. Jepson as our guest speaker. He talked about the 90/10 principle. That states that 10 percent of our lives can't be controlled, but 90 percent can be. This really started setting in with me last night at the game. For the most part we couldn't control the loss, but what  we can control is what happens next. We can control that we're going to practice harder and prepare better for next week. In the huddle last night Coach Ritchie said that loosing isn't bad, what's bad is when you don't pick yourself up after the loss. I agree with what he said a lot. So lets use that 90 percent of what we can control and get better!

Seeing Things Differently

What influences how I see things? I think that the kind of environment we're in helps to influence us one way or another. If we're in a positive environment then we are more likely to see situations as positive, where on the other hand if you're in a negative environment then you might see things in a more negative light. The friends you hang out with can also help to influence you, whether positively or negatively. How you're raised also kind of goes with your environment but it can leave a more lasting impact on you. If your parents are always negative around you then you're more likely to be negative when you're older. So be as positive as you can be so that you don't have a bad influence on others.

Guest Speaker

The other day in classs we had a guest speaker. He talked a lot about the qualities that companies want when they're hiring people. He said that we have to make smart risks, but not just leave it at that, we have to learn from the mistakes we may make through those risks. He also said that we have to respect everyone in the company, no matter how big or small their role is. I think that's the same with life, we have to respect everyone with the same amount of respect that the next guy gets. Another thing he talked about was always jumping at opportunities. Also, take the initiative with things. Don't wait to be told to do a task, do it before someone says something about it. I think this weeks speakers were both very good.

Frame

Yesterday in class we talked some more about the frame principle. Fritz told us to use the words, "Perceive, Purpose, Plan, and Pursue." Then he gave us a situation to think about and to work out using these ideas. We had the situation of a captain of a team being late to practice and how we would deal with that. We came up with some ideas, for "Perceive" we said to have them realize that the mistake affects everyone on the team, not just them. In "Purpose" we said that you should get to practices on time, in "Plan" they could leave earlier to be at practice on time, and on "Pursue" that's our final goal, the place that we are striving to achieve. So, I plan on applying this the next time I am in a situation like the captain was in the example.

Tower

The other day in class right away Fritz told us that we had 5 minutes to build a tower with limited supplies. I thought that this was a good project because it showed us our natural leadership abilities. Mine was I sort of took the initiative and got the ball rolling on things. I started the talking with ideas of how we could build this tower. It also showed me the abilities of the other people in my group.
I liked this activity because we didn't have time to mess around, we had to act right away. So all in all good job with the project Fritz.

Frame Principle

Early on this week we learned about the frame principle. We each brought in a frame and were told what to do with them. He said that in each corner we were supposed to write something down. In the first corner we wrote "see". Which means our perspective and how we see things differently. In the second corner we wrote "feel". That means what are our motivations and our values. In the third corner we wrote "do". What are our goals and what is our plan of action. Then finally in the fourth corner we wrote "get". "Get" is our finish line and what we should strive to reach at the end.

 Fritz then asked us, What do we want to be known for? I thought this was a good question because I hadn't ever really thought about it before. I finally came up with I want to be someone that's known for helping out others, and that goes with our Color Personality Test where it said that I was a relational person. So I think that this is a good project for us. 

Personality Test

In class the other day we took a personality test. My results were that my primary color is white which means that I like peace and don't like conflict. I like to be respected, I like my own space, but I withhold insecurities from others.
My secondary color was blue which means that I value relationships and I like to be accepted by others. I like when others appreciate me too.
I thought this was a good test to take because it helped us to see what our strengths are and what we need to work on.

First Blog

This is my first blog so beware, it may be rough. I believe that taking the initiative is something that is honorable. We all look up to people that step up and make a change, but why not be that person? Why not be the person that people look to when something needs to be done. When I think of taking the initiative I think about sports. You look for that person thats going to step up and lead the team to a victory. Usually it's someone that you respect that will be the guy to take that leadership role. As a leader you need to respect other people so that they will respect you back.