All posts by Jonathan Hilton
Jon Hilton Article about Vernon and Barbara Davis
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2010 recap of Greenville news by Jon Hilton
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Web Sites I Built
Here you can follow the links and see some of the websites I have built in the past. Perhaps you will see something that catches your eye and could be used for your business. Unfortunately all of the Moosehead Messenger sites have been taken down due to a restructuring in their company. I have still included the screen shots so you can see what they did look like. Towards the bottom of the site are some pages I made on Squidoo which helped support some of the sites I was working on. They are fun to make and you should definitely give it a try if you want to quickly and easily put something online!
Sites
Satellite Sites
Touch Tank
Stewie Griffin Adult
Costumes
Disney Halloween Costumes For Girls
Superman Costumes
Wonder Woman Halloween Costumes
Sexy Halloween Costumes
Indoor Air Pollution
The Best Way To Get Rid Of Belly Fat
Making Soy Candles
Snoogle Total Body Pillow
Eliminate Joint Problems
Fat Burning Exercise
Deluxe Shrek Adult Costume
Aerobic Cardio Workouts
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What Teaching Taught Me
For 14 years of my life, I was fortunate enough to be a teacher. In that time I learned many lessons about life, people and how to treat others. I was most interested in having a forum to teach valuable life lessons in the relatively safe environment of the classroom. Where else can you learn about responsibility, work ethic, honesty and integrity in such a safe environment.
Let me share a few universal truths that teaching taught me.
Set standards for behavior. Good teachers, as well as managers, know you need to be specific and spell things out. This is not micromanagement; it is positive reinforcement. I always made sure that there were clear expectations for behavior and experiencing success in my class. There can be no real gray area or the confusion will lead to wasted time and wasted effort. Setting clear standards for the behavior you expect is paramount to success.
Insist on those standards. It is up to the teacher to make the standards real. For example, if participation is important to you, you need to explain that when students don’t participate , they deprive the class of their unique perspectives in the learning process. I wanted students to draw conclusions about what I taught based on material I shared with them and what they heard from fellow students. When some students didn’t participate, they hurt the learning of others in the class. Likewise, when an employee fails to work productively, he or she hurts team performance.
Hold people accountable. Leadership begins with accountability. When people don’t fulfill their obligation to a class, call them on it. If a student doesn’t get their homework done or doesn’t study for a test properly, it is your job to hold them accountable. Managers do this by docking pay; teachers do it by issuing lower grades. All people have to be held accountable for their actions. If you can teach a student about this then they may not have to learn this lesson in a more painful and financially distressing way later in life.
Students, like employees, are accountable for results. They do the work and they are graded, compensated, and possibly rewarded. But too often we overlook the human dimension. Teachers should insist that students must abide by the three C’s: cooperate with one another, coordinate tasks inside and outside the classroom, and collaborate with each other for the greater good.
Every Person Is Unique
Every person is unique. And every time I interacted with another person during my classes, something magic happened. It’s hard to describe it but when you allow someone the space and ability to grow you grow yourself. Suffice to say that I drastically improved my interpersonal skills.
Daily Humor is Vital
If you have a positive attitude and a sense of humor, you will find things to laugh about each day. Sometimes it will be silly jokes you will make up as you teach that might get a laugh from your students. Sometimes it will be jokes that kids share with you. And sometimes students will come out with the funniest statements without realizing what they’ve said. Find the fun and enjoy it!
Teaching Will Help You feel Younger
Being around young people everyday will help you remain knowledgeable about current trends and ideas. It also helps break down barriers.
Student Success
Unfortunately, not every student will succeed in your class. However, this fact should not keep you from believing that every student has the potential for success. This potential is so exciting – each new year presents new challenges and new potential successes. Student success is what drives teachers to continue. Each student who didn’t understand a concept and then learned it through your help can be exhilarating. And when you actually reach that student that others have written off as being unteachable, this can truly be worth all the headaches that do come with the job.
The Great Things About Teaching
It is no mystery why most people get involved in becoming an educator, you have an opportunity to make a difference in someone else’s life every day. Most people can look back to a time in their youth when they found an adult figure who liked them and believed in their abilities. The chance to have that impact on people and to take advantage of it is a truly awesome thing.
Building relationships is another aspect of teaching that I think is often overlooked. You are constantly building new relationships as each year brings new students into your classroom. You are also in a position to benefit from the relationships you build with your co-workers as well. Each individual that you come in contact with leaves some kind of impression. It may be a small one or a large one depending on the interaction, but all leave an impression. I can honestly say that 99% of the students and teachers I worked with made a positive impact on me.
Teaching is fun, most of the time. I can remember all of the fun I had working with kids, getting them to learn about history despite themselves and their own dislike of the subject. The most fun came from getting to know each other.
Here is a short list of things I learned while being a teacher.
– How to organize my time efficiently
– How to speak in front of a large group and small groups effectively.
– How to work well with individuals who have different interests.
-To look for the good in all people and the talent that they possess.
-The ability to handle a crisis, and give comfort to others.
– How to follow and enforce initiatives I don’t personally agree with.
– Being creative is ok.
– There is often more than one answer to problems
– Leadership
– Responsibility
– That I never have, nor will I ever, know it all.
– How to be respectful of others especially those that have different beliefs than you.
– Work within a system
– Putting extra time in is a requirement of the job.
-How to communicate effectively.
-How to analyze a problem, form a plan of action and implement that plan to solve the problem.
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Greenville, Maine
One of my favorite places in the world is Greenville, Maine. I was fortunate enough to be raised there until I was 13 and then even more fortunate to return and live there last year.
It is like a time machine, all of the good things that I remember are there, great people, beautiful scenery and lots of moose running around. If you have never visited the Moosehead Lake Region, you should put it on your list of things to do and spend some time in one of the most beautiful places on earth.
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To Kill A Mockingbird
To Kill a Mockingbird is a novel by Harper Lee published in 1960. It was instantly successful, winning the Pulitzer Prize, and has become a classic of modern American literature. The plot and characters are loosely based on the author’s observations of her family and neighbors, as well as on an event that occurred near her hometown in 1936, when she was 10 years old.
The novel is renowned for its warmth and humor, despite dealing with the serious issues of rape and racial inequality. The narrator’s father, Atticus Finch, has served as a moral hero for many readers and as a model of integrity for lawyers.
I love this story I think because at it’s core it is a story about simpler times and reminds me of my own small town upbringing. I also believe that at the end of the day, we should all try to live our lives in a way that isn’t destructive to things that should be treasured and/or appreciated. Too often I think we pass through our lives without noticing the good things that are happening right in front of us. If you haven’t read it………..read it! If you have read it before…………READ IT AGAIN.
To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee is rightly considered an American classic. Lee writes wonderfully, in the voice of a Southern child. The story is easy to read and the action is entertaining. While all these characteristics would qualify To Kill a Mockingbird as a good read, they do not necessarily indicate a classic.What moves To Kill a Mockingbird to classic status is its morality and ability to draw sympathy out of readers as much today as when it was written in 1960. To Kill a Mockingbirddeals with heavy issues–racism, oppression, injustice. Amazingly, it is able to handle these deep and sensitive areas without feeling depressing or preachy. Lee accomplishes this by making the narrator a child and allowing us to learn along with her.
Lee’s writing makes it is easy to enter the world of depression era Alabama. Despite all the flaws of the town, it is also easy to love many things about the place and many of the characters. If you have not yet read To Kill a Mockingbird, you will not regret picking it up. If you read it awhile ago, it may be time to visit this world again.
Favorite Quotes From To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee
“They’re certainly entitled to think that, and they’re entitled to full respect for their opinions… but before I can live with other folks I’ve got to live with myself. The one thing that doesn’t abide by majority rule is a person’s conscience.” – Atticus Finch
“I think I’ll be a clown when I get grown,” said Dill. “Yes, sir, a clown…. There ain’t one thing in this world I can do about folks except laugh, so I’m gonna join the circus and laugh my head off.” “You got it backwards, Dill,” said Jem. “Clowns are sad, it’s folks that laugh at them.”
“Well, I’m gonna be a new kind of clown. I’m gonna stand in the middle of the ring and laugh at the folks.”
“I think there’s just one kind of folks. Folks.” -Scout Finch
“Bad language is a stage all children go through, and it dies with time when they learn they’re not attracting attention with it.” – Atticus Finch
Atticus Finch: “If you just learn a single trick, Scout, you’ll get along a lot better with all kinds of folks. You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view… Until you climb inside of his skin and walk around in it.”
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What I Learned From Coaching
“Leadership, like coaching, is fighting for the hearts and souls of men and getting them to believe in you.” — Eddie Robinson
Coaching has been one of the more rewarding activities I have ever participated in. The ability to teach valuable life lessons in the relatively controlled environment of an athletic season is a powerful experience.
My basic philosophy of coaching is simple. Learn as much as you can, then provide the skills and information necessary to allow an individual to experience success. As a leader, it is your responsibility to demonstrate the values that you feel are important. If you say being on time is important, then you had better never be late. If hard work is important, than you had better demonstrate that in the way that you approach your task.
As a young coach, I always put so much into developing practice plans, building skills, and forming game plans that I always took the failure of a player or a team too personally. It is a mistake that is easy to make. Instead of keeping my focus on the big picture, the team, I dwelt too much on the mistakes that were a natural part of the process. In life, mistakes are opportunities for growth and that is no different in the realm of athletics. As a more experienced coach I found that unfortunately mistakes will happen, and the best you can do is to make them teachable moments and learn from them. What I found was that individuals, given the ability to experience this became more proficient at whatever they were trying to accomplish.
Coaching also taught me to be more patient with people. Nobody is trying to fail or make a mistake. Giving them the proper feedback and tools to do something right without belittling them or destroying their self-esteem is the job of any coach. I watch some coaches who just berate a player almost mercilessly for an error made on the field or court. I listen to them yell and scream. I wonder how well they would perform at their job if they were treated in such a manner.
Coaching also taught me that it is important to realize that you are working with the team and they are not working for you. You are all committed to an activity to reach a common goal, winning. It isn’t about you and what you are recognized for, it is about the accomplishments of the group. Which in the end are far more satisfying than individual accomplishments. The experience of being part of a cohesive group that can achieve it’s goals is one of the most rewarding things I have experienced.
Some of the life lessons I have learned from being involved in coaching are:
Bad calls are part of life, often times things happen that do not seem fair or just. The ability to overcome these obstacles and still experience success is possible in almost every circumstance. It is easy to look at a bad call at the end of a game which seemingly costs a team a victory. However if you look at the whole contest you can always find many things that you had control of and didn’t do which allowed the game to come to that situation. A recent example happened in the NCAA tournament when Butler faced Pitt. Pittsburgh was called for a foul with virtually no time left to lose the game. The focus should have been on the free throw they missed prior to that that would have virtually iced the game for them. If you focus on what you can do throughout the game and in life you will find, bad calls or tough breaks will more often than not go your way.
How you practice, so you play
The way that you approach every practice, every day will directly relate to your performance and the quality of the finished product. If you are lazy and take short cuts when the opportunity presents itself, you will often lack the work ethic and determination required when things get difficult. In life you have to strive to do your best in anything that you do. It may seem extreme, but if you put your best into everything, always, success will come when the chips are down, and the pressure is on. Putting all of your effort into a practice to make yourself and your team better, will allow you the ability to put all of your effort into your job, everyday and make yourself and your company more successful.
Failure to plan is planning to fail
If you don’t have a plan and prepare your team for the circumstances they might face, you can’t very well be upset when those situations do occur and the team doesn’t handle them.
For me as a coach, practices were always split into three parts, physical, technical, and tactical. The physical in being capable of performing whatever task or challenge you are facing. This includes fitness and conditioning. The technical involves teaching the skills necessary to be a success. Skill development should never stop as all individuals have the propensity for growth, always. Then there is tactical, that is where you prepare your team for whatever situations they might face. This could be generic clock management in any basketball game, 30 seconds left, down two your ball, what do you do? Or it could be relaying a scouting report, what you know about an opponent, plays they run, defenses they play, how to best find success against them. I have found this approach helpful in life. Developing the physical skills needed to effectively do your job is vital to success. If you don’t take care of yourself physically, you will miss time from work and be unproductive. Strive to be proficient in how to do your job. Take time to develop your skills and continue to develop your skills to continually improve. This will allow you to achieve success and to feel a fresh approach about your job and not feel “burned out”. Thirdly, master the tactical aspects of your job. Know the situations and duties you have to perform and understand them in the context of what you are trying to accomplish. If you are prepared for what might happen you will succeed when it does happen.
Your either getting better or worse
In athletics and in life every person, every day is either getting better and improving or you are getting worse or diminishing. There are not many instances where you stay the same. The positive thing about this I learned is that you have almost total control over what type of person you are. In athletics, a player who doesn’t continually practice properly will more often than not regress as a season progresses, while an athlete that continually strives for improvement, will almost always get better. It seems simple, but if you implement that into your daily performance, how would you stack up? Are you continually trying to improve your game? Or are you satisfied with your place in life? You are either getting better or worse, you decide which.
Your past does not define you
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Working At The Moosehead Messenger
[cincopa AECAmr6DEqIv]Skills I developed working for the Moosehead Messenger. Time management, graphic design, meeting deadlines, people management, relationship building, teamwork, dealing with deadlines, advertising and marketing, customer service, and website development.
“Success comes from knowing that you did your best to become the best that you are capable of becoming.” – John Wooden
I think this quote is applicable to my time working at the Moosehead Messenger because I know I did my best to make the Messenger a success and serve the area in a positive way.
Key Examples Of My Dedication To My Job:
Worked Until The Job Was Done:
Routinely worked 6-7 days a week, in order to cover events and report them in the paper each week in a timely manner. The deadline day was Monday and Tuesday and many of the events of interest would happen on Sunday. Therefore, I would cover an event, return to the office and write an article, format pictures and write a cutline for that picture. Often weeks would put in 7 days to get the job done appropriately. If there was a local sporting event on Tuesday night, I would go to that event, return to the office when it was over and write an article about it and produce stats or whatever I felt the story warranted. Often times working until 12 AM or later to meet deadlines and produce the most up to date newspaper I could.
Attention To Detail:
When organizing a newspaper or anything else, often times it is the attention to detail that separates the quality of your product from someone else’s. For me that was true in developing a lay out for the paper. When I was responsible for the layout of the paper, we were always making sure that the eyeline of the page was straight. All of the columns and rows were even and matched up. I never realized what a great job we did, until that responsibility was given to someone else. Now our product had giant holes in the content that wasn’t appropriately lined up. It was o.k. but not excellent. You could clearly see that even though the content would be similar the quality of production was allowed to suffer to save a buck. That has continued as a practice at the Newspaper. Good enough is o.k.
Helping to build good will in the community:
A key factor to my success in the job of editor at the Moosehead Messenger was that I took being a part of the community seriously. I didn’t just try to make money from them, but tried to provide a service to them. A service that informed them about what was happening around the area. A service for advertising and growing their business. A service to promote events in the area for the greater good of all involved. I felt that I was just a member of this great community and it was my duty to provide them with a newspaper that reflected all of their endeavors, From sporting events at the high school to turkey pie sales at a local church, I endeavored to cover and promote all of these events and the people who participated in them.[cincopa AcGAZo6pEuK6]
A quote that describes my time at the Moosehead Messenger:
Working at the Moosehead Messenger
The short version: I returned to the town I grew up in to work for a few months selling ads and ended up staying for over a year. In that time I performed every job there was at the paper at one time or another, ending up as editor, where I was able to significantly contribute to community, by reporting on the events that the people wanted to read about. The most significant time for me, was from September 13 to October 31. During that period much of the production was done by me for the entire paper. With the help of the very capable Tara Heffner we worked a lot and produced the newspaper by ourselves. At the end of October the paper was taken over by Hometown Newspapers, who promised much and delivered little. From November 1 to March 11 I worked 50-65 hours a week to produce the paper that reflected the attitude and events of the area. I was let go on March 11 so that the paper could go in another direction.
Longer Story
I never imagined myself working at a newspaper, but there I was, the editor of the Moosehead Messenger. It was a job I never choose, but that seemingly choose me. I first came back to Greenville in January of 2010 to sell ads for the Messenger. I only planned on being in Greenville for a couple of months, to see what the town I grew up in was like now in 2010.
The first thing I learned was that I didn’t really like selling ads. I think it takes a special skill set to enjoy doing that on a regular basis. I found out that I did like getting to know all of the people in the community. That was the backbone of my success and enjoyment of my time at the newspaper. In June, my position was changed to include Office Manager and ad creation. I enjoyed this part immensely. I was able to be creative and write articles and create ads using graphic design software. I was also able to continue building my relationships with the community. In September, I was moved to the position of Acting Editor. This entailed me doing everything from laying out the paper using Adobe Indesign, writing articles, building ads and providing customer service to our many subscribers and advertisers. Throughout all of this time I enjoyed getting to know all of the people in the community. There is just something great about this small town that made me feel like a part of everything. Between putting the paper together and covering events, I was working 7 days a week and believe it or not really enjoyed it. There is a great satisfaction that comes from creating something that wouldn’t have existed except for you and your abilities. I knew I couldn’t keep up this hectic schedule forever, that is when things changed.
At the end of October there was a discussion about the Messenger being taken over by Hometown Newspapers. This is an organization which already produced several local weekly papers and felt they could make money with the Messenger. There was a deal struck and on November 1st the Messenger was under the control of Hometown Newspapers. My contact with the new management was brief but initially impressive. They wanted me to stay on as editor, and in fact told me that keeping me was a requirement of the sale to go through. I really thought that was probably half true and was proven right. We had a lot of discussions in the beginning about the direction of the paper and the community of Greenville and what they wanted in a paper. They came to town a day or two a week for two weeks and then they didn’t come back much at all. I was told to come up with content. How much? Where it would be placed in the paper? None of this was addressed. So I went about producing as much content as I could. Every week, going to Selectmen’s Meetings or School Board Meetings or school related events and then returning to the office to write about them.
I appreciate the opportunity that the Moosehead Messenger gave me to become a part of a great community. I also really appreciate all of the opportunities I was given to develop my skill set. Learning the technological nuances of producing a high quality publication was a definite bonus. Also being able to manage an office that was a positive place for employees, subscribers, advertisers and the general public was a tremendous experience. I would express my thanks to all of those who helped provide me with such a great opportunity.
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Get To Know Your Lakers
