Young people and students
Why Teaching Kindness To Their Kids Matters
“It’s hard to explain to kids that it’s a blessing in life to be able to give to others.” These were the first words shared by Pet Wants co-owner/founder Michele Hobbs (with her wife Amanda Broughton) when she posted about her beautiful family participating in a group that gives to Cincinnati’s homeless.
Instead of just explaining, Michele and Amanda teach their beautiful young children the importance of generosity and kindness through action. On that day, at the invitation of Larry Bergman, they bought bulk food from the Restaurant Depot and delivered it to the Drop Inn Center aka The Shelterhouse.
“Giving my kids a happy childhood and life is my first priority, but not far from that priority is for them to understand just how fortunate we are. I do not want them to experience homelessness or poverty, but I want them to know it exists and that they have a responsibility to help others who are experiencing pain of any sort. They are beginning to see that helping others is one of their privileges. And Privilege is a theme I will remind them of as long as I’m alive,” Michele told me.
Having known Michele for many years, none of this surprises me. She is a woman of immense integrity, who has shown kindness to me in so many ways. She works tireless hours making their Pet Wants and soon their Knox Joseph Distillery and OTR Stillhouse, a huge success, affording them the opportunity for quality family time and for giving back to their community.
I wanted to know more about where this drive and passion comes from so I asked Michele to share her story, one you may not know about this Cincinnati change maker.
Early Lessons
By their 25th birthdays, Michele’s mom and dad were already parents to four children. Her father left when she was young, and their landlord tried to evict them…unsuccessfully, at first anyway. Then one night, Michele remembers her mom taking her and her little brother on a train from Morristown to the Cincinnati Terminal.
“I remember that train ride, it was dark and there were no lights in the box car. We were in the last car before the caboose. It had wooden benches. There were doors on the side just like you see in the movies and this is where all the poor people were. Mommy had packed us a sandwich in a brown bag. I remember getting my sandwich out and I saw this really old man in the very back. There were no rules about kids walking around this dirty old train car. I walked back and gave the old man my sandwich. I don’t know why.
I do not how my mom found my dad, but I do know we got our car and went back to Tennessee. I don’t know who had my other brother and sister, but I know the house had been packed and all of our stuff was in the front room when we got back. We were getting thrown out and were homeless. My mom somehow pulled it together. Daddy showed up with a Uhaul that very day (by this time our phone had been shut off, so I have no idea how she got him there). We packed up our car and that truck and I remember the landlord standing in the yard and clapping as we left. This is how I landed in Cincinnati.
It is my prayer that my kids will never experience that, nor how tough things would be for my dad for essentially the rest of his life. All he ever did was work…just to keep his family housed, fed and clothed,” Michele told me.
And THAT is why teaching her kids the important lesson that giving back is a privilege is a top priority.
“What will they do with their Privilege? That is a question that is with me every single day as I navigate this world and try to understand the why.
They talk about not wasting food because there are others who are hungry. They ask to go the the homeless camps, (which are now gone) and they don’t understand why I don’t give money to the guys on the corner, both of those concerns are difficult to explain, but I do my best.
Amanda and I are good parents, there are many parents I know who do much more with their kids as far as helping others, but I think we are doing good with them for now and we will continue to try and do more,” Michele said.
How YOU Can Help
Amanda and Michele are organizing a Valentine’s Day Food Drop at the Anna Louise Inn, and are looking for volunteers to help. If you’d like to participate, please email Michele at Michele@PetWantsCincy.com.
This Teacher Awakens Souls
Passionate teachers have such power to nurture and empower lives. Like soil, light and water is to seedlings, they are the nourishment from which beautiful blossoms grow. Their greatest satisfaction often comes through watching as hurdles are broken down and dreams take flight.
Nick Rose-Stamey is among these life changers. Now program manager at the Music Resource Center – a Cincinnati nonprofit teen center in Walnut Hills that blends performing arts with life skills mentoring to help young people discover and pursue their inner talent and strengths, Nick found his calling when working at Elementz, an Over-the-Rhine hip hop youth center sharing a similar vision.
It happened around six years ago. One day he was sitting in his cubicle at Pure Romance where he spent much of his time as a copywriter, and it occurred to him. “I wasn’t happy,” he told me. “When I was truly happy was the hours that I spent volunteering at Elementz. I realized THAT is what fed my soul.”
Soon after, he left that job to pursue plans that were barely made. Nick began teaching guitar lessons but then, after about a month, everything dried up. It was the winter of 2015 when he zeroed out his bank account, calling his parents in tears.
That is when fate stepped in. Elementz got a grant. They hired Nick to make community concerts with My Cincinnati (a free youth orchestra program in Cincinnati), and those concerts packed Woodward Theatre.
It was the start of Nick’s beginning as a teacher. His first class at Elementz was called Studio E, where junior high school students learned how to record productions. That core group of youth are now graduating high school. It is Nick’s proudest joy.
Recently Nick shared this with his friends on Facebook and I asked him if I could share it with the greater world, as it speaks to his heart and his journey….
Nick’s Own Words
This is a really emotional post for me to write.
This week one of my students asked me to write a letter of recommendation for their application to the jazz program at the Oberlin Conservatory Of Music.
It’s a big deal. And I’m totally confident they’ll make it.
But while writing this letter, I started to reflect on my own experiences. What came to me was that feeling of pressure; like dropping into senior year all over again. The pressure to decide who you are NOW, what you want to do NOW, what you stand for NOW!!
It made me laugh. Because I never went to music school. I graduated with an English degree, worked in advertising for what felt like forever. Then I jumped ship. I quit my comfortable corporate gig and pursued this (at the time) spontaneous dream of making a difference through music.
It did not go well, at first. I lost everything. I failed. But I did not give up.
Then, over time, things worked out. I started a music program with Elementz Urban Arts and played a lot of incredible shows. Then I got to try my hand at revamping a struggling music program. And, 2 years later. it’s doing really, really well!
So to my kiddos who are graduating this year, there are a million directions you can take in life.
I can’t lie. The pressure will always be there to pick certain paths over other ones. To make decisions that lead to a high-paying job, something sensible or a cookie-cutter lifestyle. I won’t tell you not to pursue these options. I only ask that no matter where you go, always take the way that makes you happy. Because you can have everything in the world but feel like you have nothing too.
Find your dream. See it through.
Even if it doesn’t work right now, you can always try again later.
Rock on guys!
Rock on Nick…keep making dreams come true!
Human Values Festival This Weekend
Looking for an opportunity to inspire your children to do good or to meet others who are focused on the good in this world? This Sunday, April 29, the Institute of Sathya Sai Education will be hosting a free community and family-centric Festival dedicated to the practice of five core human values inherent in everyone – Love, Truth, Right Action, Peace and Non-Violence -and to the expansion of love and service in the community.
Dr. Karthik Raghavan, a member of the Event Coordinator Committee, told me, “Our purpose for organizing the Festival is as an explicit celebration of human values that is inherent in all. We want to create a gathering of like minded folks who are sharing their efforts to improve the community towards the better.”
The Festival includes:
An art and creative writing competition. Local students in grades K through 12 have submitted work showcasing their interpretation of the human values.
An art workshop. At around 3:30 pm, Radha Lakshmi with the Kennedy Heights Celebrate heARTt will lead attendees in this thought provoking exercise using a combination of stencils and colored sand and rice flour.
Entertainment. Internationally acclaimed Nimo, known as Empty Hands Music, will perform a very special concert from 5 to 7 pm aimed at spreading the seeds of goodness in the world. According to his website, from an Ivy League education to Wall street to fame and fortune as a MTV Rap star, at some point along Nimo’s journey he realized that we was walking a path of suffering and that the only path to light was through selfless service to others and his own internal purification. For the past 7 and half years Nimo has been serving and working with the underprivileged communities in the Gandhi Ashram in India. Most recently Nimo has reconnected to his roots of music and is offering this gift of love, peace and oneness through his songs: an offering he calls “Empty Hands Music”. www.emptyhandsmusic.org
Community Awards. Nimo will introduce and help recognize Individuals for their service to the community.
About the Institute of Sathya Sai Eduation.
The Institute of Sathya Sai Education is a non-profit character-education institution. ISSE is an organization that is part of bigger org called Sathya Sai International Org or ISSE. The main goal of ISSE is to promote human values through education. They have developed curriculum that they share with teachers to help them incorporate HV into their lesson plans. A good example is taking about George Washington and American revolution. To weave in the story about him and chopping of cherry tree to illustrate the need for telling the truth. It is more of emphasis to things like these that allows children not only learn dates and events in history but look at the human side of the people involved.
Human Values Festival
When: Sunday, April 29 from 3 to 7 pm
Where: Kennedy Heights Arts Center
(6620 Montgomery Road)
Cost: Free
Kevin Hall Broke The Mold In Golf
Each of us has a fire deep inside – a flame that, with kindling can burn bright, its heat fueling our pursuit for something that makes us feel alive.
Kevin Hall’s fire was lit more than 25 years ago, after school one day on the Avon Fields Golf Course. He remembers those moments as if it they 
yesterday. It was an afternoon following his last class when he walked onto the driving range for his very first ever lesson with Sonny Barnes. The then bright eyed nine-year-old with a natural ability for sports paused. Holding a club in his hand, he stood and watched other golfers. He noticed their every movement, the way they positioned their body, the tightness with which they gripped their club, their weight shift, and the direction of the ball as it became airborne. Like a sponge, Kevin soaked it all in, learning from observation their focus and technique.
There is a lot of complexity to the anatomy of a solid golf stroke. Much more than stepping up to a little white ball, holding a club with your hands and powering a swing with all that you have.
In those few minutes, Kevin got it. He wrapped his hands around the club handle and mimicked what he saw. It was a solid contact. The ball finished about 125 yards away.
Kevin was hooked.
As a teenager, he met Tiger Woods, at a Cincinnati golf clinic. After giving Kevin a tip on driving the ball further, Tiger looked the young player in the eyes and told him, “I’ll see you on the Tour someday.”
Every day since, Kevin has had one dream. One focus. To be a professional golfer. Not just a teaching professional, a PGA Tour member.
AND, a PGA Tour member who would break out of the mold. Kevin is African American in a predominantly white sport; but also, he is someone who will never hear the crack of his club as it makes impact on the ball. Kevin is deaf, losing his hearing when he was two years old from H-flue meningitis. (His initial diagnosis was death or life as a vegetable.) He relies on feel and sight to know when he has hit a good shot. He hears his fans’ ovations with his heart.
The year was 2004 when Kevin, a graduate of St. Rita School for the Deaf, would win the individual Big Ten Championship by 11 shots as a scholarship athlete on The Ohio State University’s golf team. That, Kevin told me, was one of is proudest moments. “It was probably the greatest gift I could have given my mom since it was also the first year after she lost her mother. It was great to just play sold golf and get it done for her.”
Kevin was the first African American golfer at OSU, serving as co-captain his junior and senior years. He turned professional after graduating in 2005 and logged 14 years playing in the minors. Last February (2017), he was honored with the Genesis Open’s Charlie Sifford Exemption by the Tiger Woods Foundation, given annually to a minority golfer. He is a member of the 2018 Web.com Tour.
Reaching his goal is no longer just a dream. It is a reality.
“Success did not come quickly after I turned pro. There were periods where Golf was just plain tough for me and periods where I questioned myself but nothing has been as hard as dealing with life being a Deaf person,” Kevin told me. “Dealing with not only that but the struggles that come with playing professional golf has strengthened my resolve because I see what I’m made of and I know I can hang in there and get it done.”
I asked Kevin a few more questions.
Lisa: What does success look like for you?
Kevin: Creating goals and sticking to it through the good and bad times. Success is the feeling I get when I’ve put in the work and accomplished my goals but it can also be the feeling at the end of the day that I’ve given it everything I’ve got.
Lisa: Do you see yourself as a role model and inspiration to others?
Kevin: I know that my story inspires others and God is using me to do just that. At the end of the day I am just a human being who tries to do the right things in life and work hard to achieve something. If that inspires even just one person to reach deep inside and be extraordinary then I’m happy about that.
Lisa: Outside of golf, what is another one of your life goals?
Kevin: I just want to do the best I can in life and to make my mark in the world. If I keep doing what I’m doing, I will do just that. 🙂
Sue Reminds Us To See Possible Greatness
Sue Schindler remembers the moment as if it was yesterday. She was eight years old and she was terrified. Sitting beside her was her dad who was about to call her third-grade teacher. For a young daughter of a father who was known to raise his voice now and then, those few seconds of uncertainty felt like an eternity. “In those days,” she recalled, “kids were called on the carpet in class either because they were disruptive or were academically struggling. I was the second.”
Sue dramatized the impact of her early years before our Toast of the Town of Kenwood Toastmasters Club this past week in a speech, and with it, some powerful lessons that we all can learn from.
“I didn’t care about academics that year.,” Sue continued. “Mrs. Seim would walk through the room and look at our papers. She would look at me and say, ‘You are just not like your sisters.’ What she meant was, I was stupid. I wasn’t understanding and my sisters were so much smarter.”
Such a deflating choice of words from an adult who, in that moment, could have just as easily bolstered her student instead. Had Mrs. Seim delved into why Sue wasn’t achieving high scores like her sisters, that third grade teacher would have learned it was just at the end of the last school year when Sue’s mother died suddenly. That kind of tragedy is not easy for anyone, especially a little girl who would never again have her mom to greet her in the morning or to ask her about her day in the evening.
Luckily for Sue, she had a father who understood.
“My dad was really cool and assured me that I would catch up,” Sue told us. “That was a special time with him. One of the things I loved about my dad was that he never said to me, ‘You are not like your sisters.’ Instead he’d looked at what I was studying and went, ‘No wonder you didn’t understand it. This is how I learned it in school. And this is how I am going to teach you.’
And all of a sudden I caught up.”
At the end of that year, Sue was promoted to fourth grade. And she was super excited to be able to spend her days surrounded by friends. However, instead, she was sent to general education. Again, Sue was devastated. She had worked so hard to catch up…and it didn’t matter. It didn’t pay off.
It was yet another lesson in punishment for a girl who had not even reached her teen years.
“The first time I stepped into Mrs. Clark’s room I could feel a difference. It was like right then she never saw any of us as having possible greatness. We were those general education kids she was forced to teach and to get that paycheck,” Sue recalled. “By the time I was in fifth grade, I was purposefully putting answers down incorrectly because I didn’t want to stand out as a kid who knew the answers when others didn’t.”
What a difference a year can make
Whether by fate or luck, in Sue’s sixth grade, she found herself in the classroom of Ms. Strickland, one of those very special teachers who saw in every child their awesomeness.
“She didn’t care what level you were on or what grade you were on, she knew that we all had possible greatness, and luckily, she took me under her wing and encouraged me,” Sue told us.
By the seventh grade, Sue was back with her friends and never looked back again.
Ms. Strickland and her dad made such a huge impact on Sue that while in college, she switched to special education path because, she told us, “I saw that those kids were the ones that were put into the basement classrooms, in the makeshift janitor closets. They were told they didn’t have possible greatness. If I could take what I learned from my dad and teach them at their ability level and say, ‘hey you guys are great,’ I knew I too could make a difference. And I did.”
With that, Sue looked out into our Club, and posed these two challenges.
1. It is so easy to label people without thinking even before a word comes out of your mouth. Instead, look at people for their potential greatness. Delete those labels and negative judgements. Reach out and say hi.
2. When you go home tonight, look in the mirror and see your own possible greatness and what you have to offer.
A personal note:
I most definitely see and admire Sue’s awesomeness. She and I first came to know each other when we worked together years ago at an organization called the Inclusion Network, which promoted the inclusion of people with disabilities. We reconnected on LinkedIn last year when she reached out to me, out of the clear blue, to tell me how impressed she was with my work on a project. Little did she know, it happened to be a time when I really needed encouragement. It was fate, just as it was fate for her to find herself in Ms. Strickland’s classroom at just the right time. Sue has been a shining light for me ever since. She is one of the most uplifting people I have ever come to know and has this magical way of bringing out the best in everyone. My world is a better place for having her in it.
