About Mr.T
Top 10 Common Kid Mistakes about Mr.T… (updated for 2009-2010!)
Mistake #10: Mr. T was born in Japan.
False: I was born right here in Spokane, Washington at Deaconess Hospital!
Mistake #9: Mr. T is Chinese, Korean, African-American (yes, kids have said this!) (you fill in the blank and it’s been said).
False: While my nationality is American, my ethnicity or cultural background is Japanese. It was my grandparents who originally came from Japan (the Hiroshima area to be exact) in the early 1920’s and settled here to make their start at the American dream.
Mistake #8: Mr.T speaks Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Filipino (you fill in the blank!).
Somewhat FALSE: While I do often speak in Japanese, Korean, Hawaiian, Cantonese (a dialect of Chinese), Mandarin (the primary Chinese language), French, Russian, Vietnamese and Hmong, I certainly do not speak them at all well. In fact, with the exception of Japanese, which I learned while studying in Japan as a student, I can only communicate in words and partial phrases in most of these languages. Languages are a window into new worlds and new ways of thinking and have always fascinated me. Most of what I know has been taught to me by several of my many students because I feel I have much to learn from them.
Mistake #7: Mr. T loves coffee.
FALSE: This used to be true. I used to consider myself quite a “coffee snob” as I lovingly and proudly refer to it. Now, after years of super high caffeine drinks, coffee, espresso and guarana, I prefer black tea. Earl Grey to be specific. Good Earth Teas are also my fav.
Mistake #6: I have lept out of helicopters to snowboard (also called heli-boarding).
TRUE: True in the sense that the helicopter LANDS and THEN you snowboard down with only the sounds of your own hooping and hollerin’. Helicopter snowboarding is a rare chance to really push your limits to the edge and I’ve been blessed to heliboard all around the Canadian Monashee mountain range as well as in the North Cascades – near Liberty Bell, which is viewable from Highway 20 which crosses into Western Washington when it is open during the summer months. Highlights have included a first descent (coming down an area that no one else has ever snowboarded or skied), making a rescue from a small avalanche and snowboarding where Warren Miller makes his ski and snowboard movies each year.
Mistake #5: Mr.T has superhuman hearing.
TRUE: Well, don’t all kids have superhuman hearing? At least until you’re giving directions and then this power simply vanishes? I guess I credit my superpower with my room being upstairs when I was a kid and always needing to hear when I was in trouble and my mom was on her way to get me! (I tended to stay up all night!)
Mistake #4: Mr. T was a NASA astronaut.
FALSE: Students often look at my photos near my desk and notice the NASA patch and my picture in an astronauts uniform and comment, “Wow. And you were an astronaut too? Wow. Just wow.” So, since that’s not really asking me a question, I figure it doesn’t really need an answer. You notice that next to that same NASA photos sits my Darth Vader mask, a light saber, a photo of me as a Barbarian and one catching a 5 ft barracuda in Hawaii! Sticking to the question, however, it is not true that I was a NASA astronaut. I did however spend a fun summer one year visiting the Kennedy Space Center in Florida and among other things, seeing how big the Saturn V rocket really is in person, got my photo taken and photoshopped into the picture you’ll see near my desk!
Mistake #3: The candy in the poster near my desk is edible. I mean, candy is candy!
FALSE: The creative poster (read it if you visit sometime!) made by students in only my 2nd year of teaching, was made in 1996! As I often tell kids, that candy is older than many of my students! Anyone expecting a pleasant chocolatey, sugar high from that candy is in for a treat of a different kind!
Mistake #2: Among other urban legends, I’ve heard Mr. T never yells.
TRUE: Although I can very well belt it out like anyone else, I generally don’t find the need to. My track record is good – I’ve only yelled once in 10+ years of teaching. One thing I did learn from many of my own teachers is that getting singled out and yelled at in front of all your friends and peers is well, humiliating. That’s not what I’m about. I want to build little people up, not tear them down. My bargain with students however is that in order for me not to yell, it requires careful listening. And the one time I did yell? Well, Tiffany fell into the shallow pool anyways on the field trip to Seattle Center and remained squishy wet all day long! So even though I did yell, well, it didn’t do much good anyways.
Mistake #1: I hear you play alot of fun games in and out of class. How is that suppose to help? They’re there to learn, not play!
TRUE: Learning requires repetition. Games are, by nature, reptitious, but bearably so because they’re so fun! Not only that, learning requires that we be open to novelty – the possibility for something new and unexpected, so we can make connections and understand something in a way we didn’t before. One of our landmark games, Acid Lake, has pushed kids as young as kindergarten and adults as old as 70 to think beyond their fun, into very complex areas of reasoning, math, science, physics and social behavior. From the outside it looks like a game. From the inside, it is a game! Once we debrief it, it becomes so much more. So yes, we do play games. Do they help us learn? Absolutely.
As some James Bondesque individual once said and I fondly repeat to my students (especially after a particularly harrowing game):
“Trust me kids. I’m a professional. I do this for a living.” 
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