Dr. Chuck Smith

I am a professor and state extension specialist in the School of Family Studies and Human Services at Kansas State University and the sole author of the website The WonderWise Parent. I have also taught 4-year-old children at Purdue, Bowling Green State University, and Texas Tech. I have been a Child Development Center Director, a Medical Social Worker, and a Play Therapist in a children's hospital. I recently served for two years as the Interim National Program Leader in Human Development for the Families, 4-H, and Nutrition unit in the Cooperative State Research and Extension Service at USDA in Washington, DC.

I am an Educator because I want to make a real difference in the lives of children and their parents. Most of my teaching today is in communities with parents, teachers, and children rather than in the academic classroom. Although I enjoyed teaching graduate and undergraduate courses at Purdue, Bowling Green State University, and here at Kansas State University, my real interest is in practical, community education. I am a Storyteller because I believe storytelling is a powerful strategy for teaching and building relationships.

Too often in this perilous world we hear the faint drumbeats of approaching danger, a call beckoning those whose hearts are filled with hate. Yet at the moment when these merchants of misery release inexplicable pain in the world, men and women with courageous hearts appear. Their heroism rekindles hope and reminds us that good will and decency remain alive.

Alana Franklin rescues a six-year-old nephew from a gunman who invaded his home. Fallon Richards pulls a bed-ridden elderly man from his bed to safety during a fire in his mobile home. Terreatha Barnes leaps into a runaway vehicle containing two preschool children and brings it to a halt by pushing on the brake with her hands (breaking her jaw as she does so).

What do these three individuals have in common? Other than being courageous females, Alana, Fallon, and Terreatha were all eleven or twelve years old. Their example shows us that the same heart that prompted passengers on Flight 93 to rise up against their captors, firefighters to march up the steps of the World Trade Center, and two men to bring a woman in a wheelchair down 70 floors at the WTC to safety, beats inside young people as well. We are not born with courage. Threads of power, devotion, integrity, honor, and valor were combined and woven into the tapestry of our lives from the moment we were born.