How Do You Become Famous?

Each morning before the students arrive, I always read the Wonder of the Day at Wonderopolis.  Today's wonder is posting the question:  How do you become famous?

As I read the wonder, I was so thankful for the slant of the article. I was pleased the wonder included so many different ways children can be famous. Today in our viral world so often children hear about movie stars and athletes, and not enough about students who have made the correct choice, teachers who stay after school or arrive early, authors who write back to their fans. I believe that being famous can be determined in a wide variety of ways including:

• helping a friend when 24 colored pencils fall out of their desk.
• choosing to ask someone to play in kickball even though they were not very nice at lunch
• taking a minute to help an ELL friend find a book in the library
• sharing a kind word after the child just struck out in baseball
• choosing to write with a friend because he said, "I just can't do this."
• helping a teacher sort papers when they could be outside on a sunny day

All of these are reasons that make students famous. My #OLW choice has been a huge conversation in our class since I returned in March. Making sure I take every chance I can in helping my students realize they are famous.

OLW: Gratitude in 2013

I don't make New Year's Resolutions because I typically never kept them so about 10 years ago I decided instead of making resolutions I was going to try to do some"things" better. I have always heard to create a habit you need to do something for 30 days continuously, so I live on that idea.   

I have been reflecting  if I wanted to continue my monthly OLW tradition that I did for 2012, and I am feeling pulled towards the word: gratitude. I heard about 26 Acts of Kindness, and I knew I had my new OLW for 2013.

As I posted earlier, I have been struggling with getting back to normal but when I heard about 26 random acts of kindness I knew in my heart that I had found my passion for 2013.  The picture above came from Teaching Madness  in which she is posting her 26 random acts and encouraging others to do the same.  I found Lesson Plans in which this teacher has her students completing random acts around their school.  There is a face book page for random acts and a twitter hashtag #26Acts.  

My plan is wide spread first for me I started a blank index card with today's date, and I am personally going to do 26 random acts and just write the date down on the card, so I can keep track of the number.  I am going to pass out to each of my students an index card the first day back and ask them to create a Random Act of Kindness card and at some point do something nice for someone and leave the card.  This flows with our class reading WONDER and Choose Kind which is our January motto.  Finally I am going to write my thank you notes for my holiday Christmas presents and include one index card with the above picture glued on it, and ask my friends/family to consider doing one random act of kindness as some point in 2013.  

So I have my OLW (gratitude) but I am not going to post my random acts because I want to keep that secret to myself; however, I am sure there will be several blog posts that come out of having gratitude in 2013.  Finally if you are interested in joining me in this endeavor, here is the note I will be including in my thank you notes.