It’s for “The Awesome One,” my older sister. I’ve noticed in my life she’s done a lot of kind things for me. She’s supported me. She’s done some basic kind of things, like making dinner. And the basic stuff builds up and makes you feel nice.

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On Thursday and Friday it will be really fun because tonight, today and tomorrow people are going to come to our house! My friends are coming! It takes eight hours, I mean seven and a half hours, for one friend. It takes three hours to the other house.

And they are driving all that way to see you?

Yes! I have new friends in my neighborhood and my dad said I can take them with me to play with them.

And also yesterday, with my friends, I went out and I played football, and they taught me. And I got two touchdowns!

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Being at school makes me happy because I like having good grades and I want to have a nice job when I get older — a job that I like. I like learning new things because it just makes me smarter and I like that.

If I get into a good college, I can get a better degree. I want to be a therapist and you need a lot of college experience to do that. If I start young with a good education then I can get better.

There is an art and journaling therapist and that sounds interesting, and being an occupational therapist sounds interesting. My grandma was a therapist. It’s kind of a thing in my family. It just sounds interesting.

My cousin has Down syndrome, and he’s really smart and really awesome. Occupational therapy helps kids with special needs and I love that. So, I think I’d like helping people with special needs because he is such an inspiration.

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We are all unique in our own different, but great, way. We all don’t have to be the same and we can all be different the way we are. Everybody can join together and be a group because of their uniqueness and differences. People can have different hair colors; they can wear mismatched socks just because they like it. It’s OK to be different from others. I’m more like an active, crazy, sporty, dancer, singer, actor.

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I’ve been playing soccer since, I believe, I was 4. Right now I’m playing for the Beach FC U12 travel team and a lot of my friends here play soccer. I’m also on what is called the Olympic developmental soccer team where it’s kind of giving you a better chance of being on the Olympic team. It’s training you earlier when you’re younger. I practice Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and sometimes Thursday and usually Friday. Then I have games on Sunday. On Fridays, when I don’t have practice, I help the coaches coach the younger kids. And then on Saturdays I coach younger kids when they have players missing. I have a really big passion for soccer and it’s just something that I’ve really enjoyed doing.

I’ve played tennis. I always do swimming in the summer. I’ve played basketball sometimes. I used to play the piano but then I didn’t have time for that. A lot of things I’m pushing into my schedule because I always want to get new opportunities to do things so I can really try out everything, not just one thing that I’m doing.

I’m in the ODC art program. I like cartoonist style. I don’t like doing realistic things. I like making stuff up and making things look funny and making it look weird — giving it my own perspective. There are only two boys that go there and we’re always making comic strips. We’re taking things that we see around us that seem like they couldn’t be funny and then we take them and blow them up or shrink them down, and we do a bunch of stuff to make it look really funny and it makes people laugh. It’s really fun.

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It is important for me to love my job. “Find a job you love and you will never work a day in your life.” When I come to work I feel at home. My coworkers are like my brothers and sisters, and the students are like my own children. I have worked here for nine years and it feels good to not count down the days until I retire like most people would. I enjoy being here. In life I am very passionate about family, Landstown Middle School is part of my family! I am passionate about the children and making sure they feel loved at all times. I am passionate about my coworkers and making sure I treat them all as equals. And I am passionate about doing my job and doing it well with all credit to God.

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I like headbands. A lot. I have a lot of them. I haven’t counted, but it looks like I have 13 of them. I wear one every day because I think they are pretty and I like to wear them. My favorite one has a really big pink bow with gold hearts on it.

I also like to play outside and ride my bike and go to the beach. And I like to sleep in on weekends.

My favorite color is violet-blue. It’s a little light and a little dark, and I like light and dark colors mixed together. And I really like blue.

Do you have a violet-blue headband?

Yes, I do.

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I’m very passionate about Young Life, which is a Christian youth group. On Mondays we meet as a group and on Thursdays we do Bible studies. It brings people together and I’m really passionate about that and working hard and being a leader there. When we first moved here I didn’t have many friends but then I went to Young Life. It’s a way for me to connect with people.

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I like to play basketball and to play with my brother and sister and my little baby sister. I also like to go see my grandma. She lives in Georgia but we go to see her in the summers. I like to go see her because a lot of my family lives in Georgia. I like to play a lot of sports. When I’m losing at a sports game I always try to win, but it’s okay to lose in a sports game. In basketball, I use my Habits of Mind, like listening, because a starting point guard has to listen more. And when I listen, I get more plays and people start to score more. It’s okay to win and lose. If you use good sportsmanship, it’s okay if you lose. If you lose you can always win a new game and you can always play them in the finals.

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I like to make books. I’m starting one about Hogwarts. I have one about baseball, Star Wars… I made a Finding Dory book. On the Finding Dory one I told the same story because it’s easy for me to tell the stories if I put it in a book. Sometimes I do it on the computer; I’m not very good at that yet. Right now I’m making paper books though I’m starting a series on the computer. My latest book though is a paper book. It’s the one about Hogwarts. I haven’t finished that one yet. I just made the cover yesterday.

Do you want to be an author when you grow up?

Basically, YES! On my “All About Me” thing, it asked what you want to be when you grow up, and I said, “Author.” I have thousands of books! I started when I was like six…and now I’m eight. I have one in my desk right now that’s not finished, but I’m on the last chapter.

It must be hard to hand write chapter books.

My hand gets tired. Sometimes I put my pencil down and just lay back and take a break. Then start doing it all again.

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I want to go to William & Mary when I go to college and I want to get a degree in engineering. I really love science and mathematics, ever since I was little. I love working with science and math. Math comes easy to me; my mom’s an accountant. I want to go into fire technology.

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My family is my driving passion. I have twins, a boy and a girl, who are 11. My wife works at Kellam with me and I have worked with her for years. I basically like to hang out and spend a lot of time with them. I like to surf and fish, and I truly do like American history. I spend a lot of time reading American history and visiting a lot of local sites whenever I get a chance.

I think my love of family comes more than anything from my parents. I have a father who is still alive. My mother passed away 11 years ago. We were always a very close family, and the relationships that they had with my sister and me reminds me of the relationships that I have with my kids. That’s something that keeps me grounded and reminds me of the relationship that I had with my mom. She’s not around anymore so that’s important to me.

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I served 14 years in the United States Navy. I rode an aircraft carrier. I’m here for a Veterans breakfast with my girls. I think it’s important for people to take the time to recognize what we do – our hard work, our sacrifice, our dedication, away from family for a time. Especially with holidays and birthdays, it’s a lot.

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I have two brothers and one sister. My youngest brother is a baby. He’s like two months old. I have a little bit older brother who is one. I have a little sister who is four.

Being a big sister means it’s my responsibility when my mom asks me to do something with my little sister and my little brother, to do it. It’s my responsibility. It’s a lot of hard work because if Hudson wants something, that’s the 1 year old’s name, and if the baby is crying…I have to do a bunch of things.

What do you like to do when you’re not helping mom?

I like to ride my bike because I get to play with my friends. We have to watch out for cars. I also like reading. I really like it because if you read a chapter book it gets really interesting, like if there is a problem to solve. The Magic Tree House books, they are really interesting. I’m going to buy the whole set. I like the characters and I always love at the ending, especially if they get surprised.

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Outside of school what I really enjoy is sitting in my den reading a good book. I love reading. I’ve always loved reading since I was in elementary school. When I retire, I would love to go into the hospitals and become a reader. I would love to go in there and read stories to children.

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When I’m not at school I like to play soccer. I’ve been playing six years. I play center back.

When you’re not playing soccer what do you do?

Soccer….and more soccer. I want to be a professional soccer player.

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I love drawing and spending time with my family – any possible time because my dad is in the military. He was supposed to go to Bahrain this year but he couldn’t because he was replaced by another person, so I was really happy that I could spend time with my father.

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I like playing games. I like playing Xbox. I like to read comics. I think it’s important to always read. It helps you learn how to pronounce words better and other big words you might not know.

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I love that every day is different. The kids make me laugh, and I think if you can make children laugh and they know you believe in them, and you really do believe in them, they’ll do whatever you ask. You can tell them, “You’re amazing,” but you have to show them that they’re amazing and you have to show them how great they are. They’re just amazing. And some days you just don’t love your job, and you go home. Yesterday I went home and I was not loving my job because I felt inundated with paperwork and I was all stressed out. I was thinking, “Why am I a teacher?” I’m sorting through my papers and this letter falls out. I can’t even read it to you. I’ll let you read it.

I do a letter at the beginning of the year explaining why I’m a teacher and how excited I am to meet each one of them and how much I love reading. They are supposed to write a letter back explaining who they are and what they need for me to know and about their families. So this was a letter a boy had written at the beginning of the year, he’d been sick so he turned it in late; and I’m crying.

So you get reminded on a regular basis of why you do this job. He’s so excited to come to school and hear stories, and he’s excited to read with me. He is excited every morning when he wakes up and shows up at the door ready to go. His letter was amazing and it came at the best time. It was so random; it fell out of this stack of papers. I was so overwhelmed and then…this is why I’m a teacher.

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Outside of school one of my major passions is running. I’ve been a runner my whole life and I’m actually a pacer for the J&A training team. That’s like a subgroup for J&A Racing; they put on all the big races in the area like Shamrock and the Wicked 10K. I work with the team twice a year: the fall training team and the spring training team. I’m the 10-minute pacer and I love what I do because I’ve been a runner forever. It’s a chance to improve yourself at any given stage in life and for me, a lot of it started as way to get away and mentally think about things and process things. It’s a chance for me to relieve some stress, too, because no matter if it’s good stress or bad stress there always needs to be an outlet.

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These days I have an interest in human/robotic combinations, genetics, arthropods, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera.

I’m thinking about building an industrial company someday. In the early days…I mean, there are just so many stages of my career that I’m thinking about. I’m thinking about oceanography. I’m thinking about being an arthropod biologist. I’m also thinking about industrial technology, cybernetics, and, well, generally just things that would help people. I’m just thinking about so many things! I mean cybernetics would be a next gen thing for humankind. Have you ever heard of the Six Million Dollar Man? My grandmother told me about that. I’m thinking about trying to do things like that. I’m thinking about how to be a good robotics industrialist. Let’s just say I want to be the next Tony Stark in many different ways.

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I have always wanted to be a teacher, as long as I can remember. I even went through all my elementary school papers and found a paper I wrote about how I wanted to be a teacher. It was probably third or fourth grade. I love kids. I love being around kids. I love doing activities with them. And I’ve always wanted to make a difference. I think teaching is the best way to do it because they are the future.

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In school you can actually learn a lot of stuff.

I like to learn about cars, like the 1967 z28 Camaro.

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What drives me as a person is my belief in God and my family. I have four grandsons who are coming through the Virginia Beach system. I’m a product of Virginia Beach and I just wanted to make sure they had the great experience I had: teachers who reached out and saw them for what they were and the potential that they have. Not that they’re perfect, but they have the opportunities.

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I like reading chapter books. I like when it has words on one page and then on the other page it has pictures. Then you have two pages that have words, and it goes in a pattern. When I first get a book, I don’t just grab another book because I like that book and just keep reading it and reading it. When I get a chapter book from the library, I like to take it home and read on the bus. And sometimes, if I’m angry at home, I like to read a little bit. When I calm down, I just go back downstairs.

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I like to play video games because they’re fun. I’ve been playing video games since my dad showed me. You have to use a controller to do all the stuff. It’s just fun. It makes me happy. It relieves stress.

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We got pumpkins!

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I’m very proud I am Hungarian. It’s a really small country and I feel honored to be here. You don’t hear often of people saying, “I’m from Hungary.” You just don’t.

In school here they aren’t like grade, grade, grade — it’s more like getting to know the things. In social studies we’re getting to know the land. In language arts it isn’t about the grade, it’s about getting to love reading. Here, you have more fun but you still learn the same amount.

I don’t say this often but I am so proud that I can achieve the most that I want in a different country. I want to coach wrestling. I started wrestling two years ago in Hungary. It isn’t hard for me, but what is hard is not knowing how to be better when I want to be better. When my parents told me we had to move here, I was happy that my dad didn’t have to come here alone. We could support him. But I was sad because my other family is in Hungary and so are my friends. I know when I go to practice I will just forget about it and I will just concentrate on my wrestling. It’s such a good feeling when you’ve found what you love, love, love. That, or I want to work in the military like my dad. If those two things don’t work out, then I want to be a police officer, fighting crime, maybe putting my wrestling moves to use.

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I worked for the Department of Labor for a program that is known as the Job Corps program. I was in management there. My last position was in Pennsylvania, and the weather was so bad that year I thought, “It’s time to go.” So my brother lived here and said, “Come to Virginia Beach. Winters are nice.”

I started working here at Woodstock in August 2002 and actually came in with the new building in November of 2002. It is a very special place. It’s really easy to share with people when you believe in what you do and you believe in the staff. Greeting the students, greeting the parents and, over the course of the years, just seeing how they get to fifth grade and then sixth grade. We have a large group of students who come back to Woodstock to volunteer over the summer and I really encourage that because it makes us who were are. It’s the strength of the school – the students. I’ve enjoyed working with the little ones and the staff here at Woodstock. What I really enjoy is the students and just how over time they’ve matured, how they’ve grown and graduated and come back. That’s what’s really special to my heart because those are the kinds of relationships and friendships that last for a lifetime. I enjoy that a lot. Once a woodchuck, always a woodchuck.

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#WeAreLynnhaven #PinkOut

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When I grow up I want to be an ice cream girl to serve ice cream. My favorite ice cream is strawberry because it has strawberries in it.

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