Tell Me What Happened

By the time Travis Koury was 14, his hard working single mother and his 10 year old sister had lived in countless apartments and living conditions. Because his mother worked as a bartender in the evenings to make ends meet, the two children had become, in Travis's words, 'feral', enjoying an independence from rules and obligations. When the family moves in with his mother's boyfriend, a small town...

MacAlester grad Thomas Liebert a voracious childhood reader, searches for ancient artifacts and makes historic connections in his backyard in Albany, New York and while on a family vacation to the Scottish island where Mary, Queen of Scots, was imprisoned. Tell Me What Happened features the music of Susan Salidor. Get Susan Salidor’s One Little Act of Kindness Children’s Book Get Susan Salidor’s I...

In an effort to soften the blow of divorce on her two young children, Randy's mother invites the duo to each to pick out a toy at.a local store. Randy's eight year old sister picks out a doll while Randy picks out a hockey helmet. Randy recalls wearing the helmet home, although he had never played hockey nor had an interest in the sport. An attorney and award-winning journalist, Randy Richardson i...

Bill Ayers , renowned peace activist and social justice advocate, grew up during the idyllic '50's America, immediately after the end of World War II. A lover of movies, Bill spent his childhood weekends at the local cinema, admiring the characters portrayed by John Wayne and other American war "heroes." One day, while playing "war" in the streets with his friends, the police and firefighters of h...

Kennedy Baldwin is a writer, improviser and actor based in Chicago Illinois.. In this episode of TMWH, Kennedy recalls being 14 years old and having two of her Black friends tell her she isn't Black. (She is - Her father is Black and her mother is Afro-Latina.) The experience has led Kennedy to a continuing quest of self-identity. (e.g., She's hellbent to learn Spanish.) Tell Me What Happened feat...

Anna Munson - Carpenter's childhood included a great deal of hard earned success. Highly disciplined and well practiced, Anna grew up as an accomplished athlete, academic, public speaker and musician. A four year starter on her high school softball team, a top student with the ability to speak with ease in front of thousands of people, as well as a first chair violist as a freshman, Anna was confi...

Bree Lind is an actor and writer from Seguin, TX. She appears in Jordan Peele’s Candyman, Showtime’s Work In Progress, and on improvisational stages in Chicago. With her parents and older brother steeped in the joys of rodeo, Bree recalls her disastrous first ride on a horse as a five year old. As her father accompanies her on a Texas horse trail, Bree keeps asking him to make the horse go faster....

Ed Dziedzic taught history in the Chicago Public Schools and worked on the trading floor of the Chicago Board of Trade . He is a great believer in the power of music and serendipity to change lives. In this childhood memory, Ed recalls discovering the blues through old record albums and two blues harmonicas that his older brother left behind when he moved out of the family house. Ed takes us throu...

Michelle Gunderson, an early childhood educator and expert in the field, recalls having had a place to play when she was young and the importance of having such a place is for all children. Linking her own childhood to her teaching, Michelle reminds parents and educators not to suffer from "Childhood Amnesia." Ms. Gunderson notes that on her tombstone, she'd like it to read, "She Let Them Play." T...

Kathy Kelly is a peace activist whose efforts at times led her into war zones and prisons. She now coordinates the " Ban Killer Drones Campaign ." Hers is a love story, of first meeting Bobby Alberts when she was in first grade, only to reject his romantic advances in fourth grade. Fast forward fifty years of peace activism and Kathy finds herself looking out a prison window only to see Bobby Albe...

Encouraged by his mother, 15 year old Randy Williams (the future R DUB!) hesitantly and reluctantly applies for a local DJ job in Tucson, AZ. Feeling totally unqualified and fully convinced he has little chance of being hired, young R DUB! interviews for the job, earns it, and learns a lifelong lesson. Thirty years later, and the rest is history. By combining his love of talking and listening to m...

As a fifteen year old, young Duane Davis interviews for a business internship though the Inroads Program. It is from that experience that he determines he will become an English major in college. Duane recalls wearing a clean shirt and pants and an earring to the first interview after filling out the Inroads application and including both "business" and "English" as he current fields of interest....

Kenzo Shibata, currently studying to be a social worker, recalls repeated attempts to recruit him into the "pee wee" version of the Latin Kings when an older member asks him to steal a bike. Fearful, young Kenzo declines the invitation, unlike other classmates, one of whom is killed before graduating from high school. Kenzo reflects on his younger days, and has used his experiences to empathize wi...

Zaya Odish tells the story of his first days in the United States at the age of nine after having been born in Iraq and having lived in a Syrian refugee camp. Zaya recalls his first days in Chicago and his first bus ride to school with his younger sister. Unable to speak English, Zaya is helped by his teacher and school mate and, over time, learns to become resilient to life's hardships. Tell Me W...

Timothy Troy, a filmmaker (Crazy Little Monsters Productions) who lives and works in Chicago (working on the crew side for an NCS TV show and directing his own short films) tells the story of trying out for his high school baseball team although he had never played organized baseball before. After training with the team for a season, he is cut during the tryouts but is brought back in by the coach...

Eli Boyer, a strong family man, discusses the night he was physically removed from his house by two "large men" and taken to a therapeutic wilderness camp in remote Minnesota. The young Eli initially has a great deal of anger about his family's drastic actions, but ultimately concludes that the courageous action taken by his parents has helped him in his adult life. Tell Me What Happened features...

Nina Slesinger recalls her teen years "secretly" blogging about music. Unbeknownst to her parents and most of her friends, Nina develops an ever larger audience for her blog. Over the course of a year, record labels reach out to her and she successfully "crashes" a large music event held on the National Mall in Washington DC by boldly asserting non-existent media credentials. Nina relates her memo...

I reconnect with a former student of mine, Lawyer Darfour, whom I met 35 years ago as his sixth grade teacher at St. Thomas of Canterbury, in Uptown, Chicago. Lawyer details his journey from transferring from a South Side of Chicago school to one on the North Side. As he recalls, his experience in Uptown led him to a greater understanding of the ethnic and cultural diversity of the world. Lawyer t...

The story Dr. Martinez tells is profoundly moving and, ultimately cathartic. Dr. Efrain Martinez describes a painful childhood in which he slowly realizes why his mother both physically and mentally abuses him. As a pre-teen, Efrain realizes that his mother's attitude towards him is the direct result of the fact that he and his sister are the children of a relationship his father had with a Venezu...

Kristel Bauer PA-C, Wellness Expert and host of the podcast " Live Greatly, " recalls traveling to Austria as a little girl, not speaking the language, but being able to communicate with her cousins through the joy of play. Tell Me What Happened features the music of Susan Salidor. Get Susan Salidor’s One Little Act of Kindness Children’s Book Get Susan Salidor’s I’ve Got Peace in My Fingers Child...

Kaelin A. Vu is a self-love coach who specializes in helping young adults love themselves and step into their power to manifest success in every area of their lives. She has overcome addiction, sexual abuse, suicidal thoughts, and so more. In her words, she is grateful for every experience because they have shaped her into the best version of herself and gave her life purpose. She has picked herse...

Eva Lopez, a former student of mine at Whitney M. Young High School , recalls going to a market in Mexico with her aunt to buy a chicken. At the time, Eva was eight and believed she was choosing a chicken that would live in the farmyard and produce eggs for the family. Little did she realize, she'd be eating chicken soup in the evening. Eva's experience has led her to a deeper appreciation of the...

This podcast is a reminder to all early childhood educators that children are often greatly impacted by their words, especially if those words are a remonstrance. Tell Me What Happened guest, Kelley Gessner, recalls being wrongfully accused as a first grader of "making a ruckus" during quiet reading time. The actual culprit, a fellow student in her reading pod, points at Kelley and the teacher bel...

Doctor Joyce Kenner , educational leader, innovator, and the Chicago Public Schools longest serving principal, discusses the values she learned as a young girl working in her parents' record stores in Dayton, Ohio. Kenner, a triplet, recalls working alongside her siblings, and learning how to listen and react to the needs of people from all walks of life. Tell Me What Happened features the music o...

Jay Rehak, author, educator, podcaster, recalls being surrounded by 8 suburban Illinois squad cars and having a gun pointed at his head as he is arrested for aiding a friend in the stealing of a car battery. Cuffed and driven to the police station, he is released to his parents without charges, in large part due to being given the benefit of the doubt that many people of color or means often do no...