Schiller Park School District 81, in the northwest Chicago suburbs, chose me as their kickstart for this year's "Oh no, get ready, get steady, it's back to school already!" moment. Their theme for this event celebrated the many hats teachers wear — which is of course a nice way of asking them to keep on heroically doing more with less.
That said, this was one of my favorite groups of educators thus far — plus I had a funny and interesting moment with the superintendent who was in charge of introducing me. The thing is, she was hesitant to read a certain handful of words in the intro I'd given her. And she asked me if she could just ... leave them out.
Let's see if you can spot the problem words in this abbreviated version of what was written for her to read:
“Before he was an educator, speaker, playwright, and father, Tim was a left-handed undiagnosed hyperactive dyslexic rug rat raised in a small town ...
So, how'd you do? If this were, let's say, the 1800s you might have zeroed in on the left-handedness — although I was shocked to discover that as late as the 1970s there were still institutions trying to connect lefties with Satan's work. (Where was Ned Flanders when we needed him?)
