Who Is Your Hero?

We are doing heroes as a theme this week. We were doing a think-pair-share type activity and I asked the kids to share with their partner who their hero was and why. We were sharing out the answers, when one of the students asked "Miss Trayers, who is your hero?". And I am embarrassed to admit I was stumped. Usually I have an answer to the questions I am asking them to answer. I have an opinion about why Shel Silverstein wrote The Giving Tree. I know what the pattern is in the life cycle. I did not have an answer to that question. After thinking about it, now I think I could answer (I have read a lot of different books about Joan of Arc, I have always admired the chutzpah of Bette Davis. If we are talking education, I could name more than a few). But I wondered if I was the only grown-up who had difficulty or if it was a common thing.

So I gave the kids a homework assignment to ask someone at home who their hero was. They wrote about their choice and their family member's answer and compared the two. What do you notice-are they similar or different? Can we find a trend? In our discussion afterward we decided that many different kinds of people choose family members as their hero.