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Jeremy Melton
(Mr. Melton holding a book signed by his hero Winston Churchill. The book is worth $30,000, so Mr. Melton was unable to buy it. )
Campus: O.P. Norman Jr. High
Job Title: Teacher, Dean of Students
Instructor Of: Pre-AP English
Responsibilities: I like to think of all students and all subjects as my responsibility.
Teaching Experience: 6th Year.
Education: B.A. in English, minor in Philosophy. Texas Tech University. SMU Graduate student, currently.
Personal: I am married to Mrs. Melton down the hall. We have one son (a Maltese named Jack) and one daughter (a cat named Sinny).
Birthday: September 14
Hobbies: Reading, writing, movies, cooking, watching "Lost", "Heroes", "Top Chef" and crime documentaries with Mrs. Melton. Taking naps. XBOX 360. Military history. Churchill studies. Civil War studies. Lately, all the best old books: The Iliad, The Odyssey, The Aeneid.
Favorites
Song: Thunder Road by Bruce Springsteen, The Sweetest Decline by Beth Orton, I Never Go Around Mirrors by Keith Whitley. Kathleen Edward's album "Failer" is probably my favorite album from the last five years. Currently, I've been listening to Kathleen Edwards' new album "Asking for Flowers", Colbie Caillat, Bruce Springsteen's "Darkness on the Edge of Town", Earl Thomas Conley, the "John Adams" soundtrack, and Hall and Oates. I spend more time getting songs from itunes than listening to particular artists, but I love Michael Buble and Jamie Cullum. I've also been going through another George Strait phase...probably the 5th or 6th of my life. The new David Gray album "Draw the Line" is fantastic.
Book: Far too many to name, but here's a few: All the Pretty Horses, 100 Years of Solitude, The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, Wonderboys, Middlesex, Sophie's Choice, White Oleander, The Tender Bar, The Liar's Club, In Cold Blood, The World According to Garp, The Executioner's Song, Mystic River, The Brothers Karamazov, For Whom the Bell Tolls, Anything by David McCullough, The Great Gatsby, Caro's LBJ Trilogy, Manchester's Churchill, Truman, Shakespeare's Tragedies. Last summer I read some of the crime novels of Dennis Lehane, George Pelecanos and Michael Connelly, all excellent and under-rated novelists. I recently went through a "Founding Fathers" phase and got a bunch of Rev. War books for my birthday. Right now, I'm going through a Middle-East/WW-II reading
phase. There are some parallels. Current reading: "The Second World War" by Churchill, along with "The River War" by Churchill, "Flags of Our Fathers", "The Making of the Atomic Bomb", "The Forever War", and "Ghost Wars". This summer I read "Columbine", "The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, and began "The Education of Henry Adams" and "Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire" by Gibbon. I'm thinking about re-reading "Moby Dick" and "King Lear" next. I would also like to re-read the stories of Sherlock Holmes. He was my boyhood hero.....can't wait for the new movie. The older I get, the more my interests return to the same ones I had as a boy....I'm even reading comics again.
Movie: Again, far too many to name, but here's a few: The John Adams mini-series was great. The Godfather I & II (As close to Shakespeare as American Cinema has came), Rear Window, Lonesome Dove, The Deer Hunter, JFK, The Empire Strikes Back, Rocky, Band of Brothers, Ken Burns' Civil War. I also love stupid comedies like Dumb and Dumber, Kingpin, Tommy Boy, Office Space and everything Will Ferrell has ever been in, especially Anchorman and Old School. This past year, Mrs. Melton and I enjoyed quite a few movies, and watched the entire series of "The Sopranos". This summer I've been watching "The Wire" which has been the best cop show I've ever seen. Last week I re-watched "King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters" which is the best documentary I've
ever seen. "Dark Knight" and "Iron Man" were both great. I liked "Slumdog-Millionaire" and "The Wrestler", but neither came close to "No Country for Old Men" from last year. I'm looking forward to "The Pacific", a mini-series about that campaign in WWII. My grandfather was there. Go PaPa!!
Food: Probably depends on my mood, but I get hungry for Mexican food more often than anything else. Every now and then, though, nothing beats a good plate of spaghetti and meatballs, or a well-made cheeseburger. I like to waste money on eating out at really nice places. For Mrs. Melton's birthday last year, we went to Stephan Pyles and for our anniversiary we went to Fearing's. My favorite restaurant is York Street in Dallas.
Quote: Almost everything that ever came out of Winston Churchill's mouth.
"Most people are as happy as they make up their minds to be." Lincoln
"There is a divinity that shapes our ends, rough-hew them how we will." Shakespeare (Hamlet)
I
A bit more about me
I hope it's not an educational sin to say so, but I don't think that my main reason for teaching is to show kids how to punctuate a sentence. I like to think that my main job is to inspire kids to become life-long learners. It's such an enormous world with so many fascinating things to learn and places to go. I could live a thousand years and never get bored. So, I spend a lot of time talking about things that may seem unrelated to the classroom, but it's mainly because I'm such a curious person. I tell them the stories of my life, so that they may see their own lives as stories. Stories where they are the heroes. So there's a pretty good chance they may come home and tell a story about something stupid I did when I was in 5th grade.
I want to share with them the small tragedies and comedies I've witnessed, so they get acquainted with the force of good narrative, and they'll always know that no matter what tragedy may befall them, they can pick themselves up and keep on going. Until our kids see themselves as the hero of their story, I think, we have failed to fully equip them to deal with the world.
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