By Burak Uzun

It was rainy and it was Wednesday – usually a tough combination. But this was no ordinary rainy Wednesday for me; I was shadowing Soul Joel Richardson on his speaking engagement at Lavelle Prep, a brand new charter school in Staten Island, NY.

We were met and ushered into Mr. Winik’s classroom to wait for our time. It seemed different right away. The desks weren’t in perfect rows. In fact, one student was hiding under a box in the corner. Book bags and coats were kind of tossed around. And there was more open discussion than there was hand raising. <!–more–>

The loose format didn’t mean that the kids weren’t engaged. They were learning how to build a bibliography using Microsoft Word. This is something I, myself; do not know how to do. They were also using laptop computers. That’s right; students had a notebook-sized computer in front of them.

I felt old. I didn’t own a computer until I had already graduated high school. But I was also happy to see this kind of progressive thought. In a time when all you hear about is budget cuts for education, it was great to see people doing something new and innovative.

With a changing world there should be changing education. It looked like it was working.

A pair of “Career Day Ambassadors” wearing sashes that said as such escorted us from Mr. Winik’s class. They seemed like old-fashioned Hall Monitors until they recited a prepared greeting and shook our hands like adults. You could tell that Joel was impressed. How could he not be?

Soul Joel’s presentation to about twenty sixth-graders had the same relaxed tone as the other class. He won their attention when they found out that he was a comedian and comedy show producer. After all, spending class time listening to someone paid to entertain is no real chore. It wasn’t as if he was there to talk about his accounting practice.

“Make us laugh!!!” and “Say something funny!!!” were heard from the mob. As well as, “Don’t hold back on the inappropriate stuff. We know the deal!” from a little girl in the back of the room.

But Joel did hold back on the inappropriate stuff and got some clean laughs instead. He talked about how his comedy business, Soul Joel Productions, his radio show, The Comedy Point, and his struggles with weight, FarRunningFatMan.com.

He also talked about setting goals. Having just celebrated his first full year in business, Joel now needed a new one-year goal to go along with his three and five year plans. His overall message is that you can get what you want in life if you work hard and go about it the right way. Of course the lesson wasn’t presented in as dry a way as you might be imaging. Being that Joel gets most of his comedy material from his life, these life lessons were met with laugher.

“I don’t really write jokes. I’m more of a storyteller,” Joel explained to his new fans.

And in his day at Lavelle Prep, he has another great story to tell.