Proud

Duncan's Quest class has been working on non-profit series. This series began with the kids volunteering some of their time to a non-profit over the winter (Duncan and a friend spent their time at the Capital Area Food Bank) and then diving into more around what various non-profits do more specifically. 

The teacher divided up the kids into several teams, and they then chose a topic to research and build their own non-profit around. Duncan's team chose drugs/drug abuse and then created a fictional non-profit that would help with drug abuse. They spent the entire 45 minutes of class time on Thursday presenting about various drugs that get abused, what their non-profit was, it's mission statement, successful case studies  and a lot more. I was floored with how thorough and well-thought out the presentation was. It was a huge step above any projects that we had seen him do in Quest before.

But what struck me the most about the whole thing and made me SO PROUD of Duncan, is that he was an active participant in the presentation. That may seem like an odd thing to be proud of, but to give you some perspective, two years ago when he had a Quest presentation in front of his class, Duncan went and hid in the bathroom when it was his turn. Jeffrey had to fish him out of there. When he finally presented that day, he merely stood in front of the class and showed his powerpoint slides, he didn't say a word. Last year when he had a presentation, he tried to make a break for the bathroom, but we caught him in route. So, he got up in front of the class and his presentation, as it turned out, was not very thought out and sub-par to say the least. Needless to say, multiple unpleasant conversations with his teacher followed suit.

Now fast forward to this Thursday, and without any cajoling, Duncan stood up in front of the entire class and presented his material. You would never have guessed that he has had such a significant fear of presenting as he has had based on how he did this week. He was prepared, articulate and stepped up to the plate. I could tell he was still a little nervous, but in my opinion, he knocked it out of the park. He didn't say it, but you could tell afterwards he was proud of himself too.

Love it. Just love it.