Leave Your Mark
What will you be remembered for? How will you leave your mark on the world? In this blog we will discuss Nicola Tesla and Dr. Izumi Tabata and how they left their mark on the world. Great teachers change the world around them by leaving their mark on students. Leave Your Mark.
A Conversation about Ribs and Leaving Your Mark
I was sitting with a group of friends and we were talking about food and how much we loved good food. For me, 95% of my happiness comes from food and so I’m passionate about cooking. One of the guys started talking about his inability to cook, but how he had always wanted to learn how to smoke ribs. I then told him that my dad had a signature dish and it was chicken fried steak and that he needed to have a signature dish and maybe it could be ribs. I told him I would teach him how to make some ribs so that would be his signature dish. He would be known among his friends for making the best ribs. So that leads me to the question – what are you known for? What is your signature dish, or thing that you are passionate about that you know so well, that people would almost want to name it after you?
Dr. Izumi Tabata and “Tabata This”
Have you ever done any CrossFit exercises or HIIT training? My mentor encouraged me to take a CrossFit class and I signed up and the workout of the day or “WOD” was called “Tabata This”, it was a series of high intensity trainings that were done to a timer that was called a “Tabata Timer.” I honestly thought that timer was called that because it was a name brand like Timex. It wasn’t until years later when I was on my Peloton bike doing a Tabata climb that the instructor told us about Dr. Izumi Tabata. This got me thinking, “How cool would it be to have something that became a household name, named after you?”
According to Merriam-Webster.com: “Tabata training (also called Tabata protocol) is a type of HIIT (high-intensity interval training). It originated in the research of Japanese scientist Dr. Izumi Tabata and his team from the National Institute of Fitness and Sports at Kagoshima Prefecture, Japan, on high-intensity exercise during the early 1990s. Their objective was to find out if short bursts of high-intensity exercise followed by shorter rests might condition the body better than a continuous moderate-intensity exercise.”
So millions of people around the world are doing Tabata exercises because of the research done by Dr. Tabata.
Nikola Tesla Left His Mark
A lot of people probably know about the name “Tesla” because of the cars and Elon Musk, however, many people may not have heard of Nikola Tesla. Nikola Tesla’s biggest rival was Thomas Edison who created the light bulb, but Tesla is credited with creating the alternating current that is used for electricity today. He was a “Serbian-American engineer and physicist Nikola Tesla (1856-1943) that made dozens of breakthroughs in the production, transmission and application of electric power. He invented the first alternating current (AC) motor and developed AC generation and transmission technology. Though he was famous and respected, he was never able to translate his copious inventions into long-term financial success—unlike his early employer and chief rival, Thomas Edison.” – History.com
The name for the car Tesla was already chosen before Elon Musk joined Tesla, “Tesla’s name was actually thought up in Disneyland’s Blue Bayou restaurant, when Tesla cofounder Martin Eberhard pitched it to his then girlfriend, and now wife, Carolyn, according to Business Insider.” – Fox Business
Mr. Terrell and Mrs. Gray
For me, I had a number of amazing teachers, but there are two in particular that really left their mark. Mr. Terrell was my 6th grade teacher at Liberty Christian School in Denton, TX. I remember him bringing the first CD player I had ever seen to class and reading Encyclopedia Brown books to us after lunch. He also listened when you talked to him. He let you know he cared. To this day when I think of one of my most impactful teachers, he is at the top of the list.
Mrs. Gray was also an amazing teacher. What made her stand out was that she loaded us up with a lot of work, but she helped us stay organized and on task by giving us extra points if we kept all of our work in an organized folder. She helped us with the folders and if we were missing an assignment, she didn’t count off if we at least had a blank piece of paper where the assignment was supposed to be and the title was on the sheet of paper. She was also hilarious and made learning Geometry fun – so basically in my mind she was a magician because I thought I hated math. Geometry to me wasn’t like other math, she made it accessible to a creative mind like mine. To this day, she had left her mark.
What teachers left their mark on you?
Become a Teacher. Leave Your Mark.
If you are passionate about impacting the world around you there are few places where you can influence the future as much as a teacher. Teachers have the ability to build students up and set them on a positive course that can have a ripple effect for future generations.
If you are interested in becoming a teacher, check out our online teacher certification process and you could be teaching in a matter of weeks.
