"Life is created according to the talents you discover," a quote by Sir Ken Robinson in his TEDx Talk "Life is Your Talents Discovered". Sir Ken Robinson recalls his conversations with Paul McCartney, a singer for the band the Beatles, where Sir Ken Robinson asks if Paul's band teacher thought he was talented. He went on again to ask if the band teacher thought George Harrison had any talent to which Paul replied "No". Jokingly he says that the band teacher didn't ever realize that they had half of the band the Beatles in their class. This proves that our talents need to be discovered and as a teacher, we are here to help discover those talents. 

    We as teacher's have our next generation leaders, artists, musicians, athletes, and scientists passing through our classrooms. All of which have talents waiting to be discovered. It's one thing for someone to discover their own talents, but it takes a great teacher to help draw out those talents. 

    Growing up in school, I definitely had teachers who were more engaged than others. I remember my math teacher who inspired me to do more than I felt I was capable of. I started high school as a freshman in remedial math, because of the choices I made during middle school. When I was a junior, I walked into the classroom of Mr. Stepp. He was my algebra 2 teacher. I knew that the trajectory I was headed, I would only make it to pre-calculus before leaving high school. He saw the potential in me, and even though I wasn't going to move up into higher math classes, he helped me discover my love for math, and I made it into honors algebra 2 that year, and then honors pre-calculus. 

    One of the things that helped encourage me, was someone believing in me even when I didn't believe in myself. As a future teacher myself, I want to realize the potential in all students and help to draw the confidence and talents out to help discover those talents in our students. 

Sir Ken Robinson's TEDx Talk can be found here: https://youtu.be/FLbXrNGVXfE

     While I was watching the talk, "Trouble Online: Campus Computing and the Law" presented by C.L. Lindsay III, I had a few thoughts on the idea of plagiarism being a business. The idea of selling written works for the purposes of helping students in their classes being a big business blows my mind. I knew that plagiarism happens, but to the degree that C.L.Lindsay described is incredible. The business not only makes money on you for selling you a paper, but to extort more money from you by threatening to rat you out to your school is crazy to think. I was taken a back being naïve about things like this, but it sure makes me think to not put it past people to think of things like this. 

    Some of simplest and yet best advice Lindsay gives in his talk is, "If something is not alright to do in real life, it's not alright to do online." This advice is a reminder that we are not safe in our own home behind a computer screen doing things we're not supposed to be doing. I know illegal online activity happens and this litmus test of choices helps me to stay far away from it. 

The video described in this post can be found here: https://cdnapisec.kaltura.com/index.php/extwidget/preview/partner_id/1371761/uiconf_id/13362791/entry_id/1_0wn0c02h/embed/dynamic