Barbara Kincer

Retired pre-k teacher, Braves fan, dog lover

[diane mckenzie @dianemc34717099]

What an interesting read...........

On Jeopardy the other night, the final question asked: “How many steps does the guard take during his walk across the Tomb of the Unknown?”
All three contestants missed it.
Tomb of the Unknown Soldier
1. How many steps does the guard take during his walk across the Tomb and why?
He takes 21 steps — symbolizing the 21-gun salute, the highest military and foreign tribute.
2. How long does he pause before turning to walk back and why?
He waits 21 seconds, again in honor of the same tradition.
3. Why are his gloves damp?
They are lightly moistened to ensure he never loses his grip on his rifle.
4. Does he keep his rifle on the same shoulder, and if not, why?
He always carries it on the shoulder farthest from the Tomb. After each crossing, he performs an about-face and moves it to the outside shoulder.
5. How often are the guards changed?
Every 30 minutes, 24/7, 365 days a year.
6. What are the physical requirements for a Tomb Guard?
Applicants must be between 5'10" and 6'2" and have a waist no larger than 30".
Other expectations of the Guard:
They devote two years to the Tomb, live in the barracks beneath it, and must refrain from drinking alcohol on or off duty for the rest of their lives.
They can never swear in public or dishonor the uniform or the Tomb.
After two years, they earn a wreath pin signifying their service — fewer than 400 are currently worn.
If they violate the code, they must relinquish the pin.
Their shoes have thick soles to protect against extreme temperatures and metal heel plates that create the crisp click when they halt.
Uniforms must have zero wrinkles or lint and are inspected in a full-length mirror.
For the first six months, guards do not speak to anyone and do not watch television.
Their off-duty time is spent studying the 175 notable individuals buried at Arlington National Cemetery, memorizing who they are and where they rest.
Among them: President Taft, Joe E. Lewis, and Audie Murphy, the most decorated WWII soldier.
Every guard spends five hours daily preparing their uniform.
ETERNAL REST GRANT THEM, O LORD, AND LET PERPETUAL LIGHT SHINE UPON THEM.
When Hurricane Isabel approached Washington, D.C. in 2003, Congress shut down for two days. The guards were offered permission to suspend duty due to danger.
They replied: “No way, Sir!”
Drenched and marching through the storm, they insisted that guarding the Tomb is the highest honor, not just a task.
The Tomb has been continuously guarded — day and night — since 1930.
God Bless and Keep Them
I don’t often encourage sharing posts, but I would be honored if this one reached as many people as possible. We should always feel proud of the men and women who serve, wherever they are stationed.
Duty – Honor – Country
IN GOD WE TRUST — with Herbert F Wieland.

[Barbara Kincer @bjkteaches]

Let's go BRAVES!!

[Atlanta Braves @Braves]

LET’S HEAD BACK TO ATLANTA!

#LetItFly

[Barbara Kincer @bjkteaches]

Let's go, Braves!!

[Atlanta Braves @Braves]

Brb gonna go watch this over and over again

#LetItFly

[Barbara Kincer @bjkteaches]

Exactly!!!

[Ron Lee @ronlee1975]

Braves win 94 games, win the East and the reward is a cutthroat 3 games series where the first two games are played while growns are at work and kids are in school. I don’t know the answer, but division winners shouldn’t be in the Wild Card round.

[Barbara Kincer @bjkteaches]

Go Braves!

[Atlanta Braves @Braves]

THE ATLANTA BRAVES ARE 2026 NL EAST CHAMPIONS!

#BravesCountry

[Barbara Kincer @bjkteaches]

Treat everyone with kindness and respect . . .

[Ron Wright @ronsterd89]

I don't Ever want to go into a nursing home, but if worse comes to worse and I have no other choice because I'm well out of it, 😁 then this will be my wishes, to be upheld and respected. 😁😁

If I ever get dementia, I’d like my family to hang this wish list up on the wall where I live. I want them to remember these things.

1. Every time you enter the room announce yourself. “Hi- it’s ………...” NEVER ask- Do you know who I am??? That causes anxiety.

2. If I get dementia, I want my friends and family to embrace my reality. 🌸 Careers included.

3. If I think my dead friend is still alive, or if I think we’re visiting my parents for dinner, let me believe those things. I’ll be much happier for it.❤️

4. If I get dementia, don’t argue with me about what is true for me versus what is true for you.👍🏽❤️👍🏽

5. If I get dementia, and I am not sure who you are, do not take it personally. My timeline is confusing to me.👍🏽👍🏽👍🏽

6. If I get dementia and can no longer use utensils, do not start feeding me. Instead, switch me to a finger-food diet, and see if I can still feed myself.❤️🥰❤️🥰

7. If I get dementia, and I am sad or anxious, hold my hand and listen. Do not tell me that my feelings are unfounded.

8. If I get dementia, I don’t want to be treated like a child. Talk to me like the adult that I am. ❤️

9. If I get dementia, I still want to enjoy the things that I’ve always enjoyed. Help me find a way to exercise, read, and visit with friends. ❤️

10. If I get dementia, ask me to tell you a story from my past.

11. If I get dementia, and I become agitated, take the time to figure out what is bothering me. ❤️

12. If I get dementia, treat me the way that you would want to be treated. ❤️

13. If I get dementia, make sure that there are plenty of snacks for me in the house. Even now if I don’t eat I get angry, and if I have dementia, I may have trouble explaining what I need.❤️

14. If I get dementia, don’t talk about me as if I’m not in the room.👍🏽

15. If I get dementia, don’t feel guilty if you cannot care for me 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. It’s not your fault, and you’ve done your best. Find someone who can help you, or choose a great new place for me to live.👍🏽

16. If I get dementia, and I live in a dementia care community, please visit me often.❤️

17. If I get dementia, don’t act frustrated if I mix up names, events, or places. Take a deep breath. It’s not my fault.👍🏽

18. If I get dementia, make sure I always have my favorite music playing within earshot.❤️❤️❤️

19. If I get dementia, and I like to pick up items and carry them around, help me return those items to their original place.👍🏽

20. If I get dementia, don’t exclude me from parties and family gatherings.❤️

21. If I get dementia, know that I still like receiving hugs and plenty of laughing ❤️🥰❤️

22. If I get dementia, remember that I am still the person you know and love.”🌼❤️

In honor of someone you know or knew who has dementia. In Honor of all those I know and love and lost who are fighting Dementia/Alzheimer’s.

Someone once said if you take care of someone with dementia, you lose them more and more every day. When they get the diagnosis, when they go through different stages, when they need treatment, and when they pass away.

This is called "the longest goodbye ". As the brain slowly dies, they change physically and eventually forget who their loved ones are. They could end up lying in bed, not moving and not eating or drinking.

There will be people who will scroll past this post because
dementia has not touched them. They may not know what it's like to have a loved one who has battled or is still battling dementia.

To raise awareness of this cruel disease, I would like my friends to put this on their page today.

Hold your finger on the post to copy and paste to your timeline.

A special thank you to anyone willing to put this on their timeline for Dementia Awareness Week.
💜💜💜💜💜💜💜💜💜

[Barbara Kincer @bjkteaches]

Amen.

[Barbara Kincer @bjkteaches]

Amazing lady!

[Matt Van Swol @mattvanswol]

In 1988 Dolly Parton pulled every 7th and 8th grader in Sevier County into a room and told them to pick a buddy.

She made them sign a contract.. if BOTH graduate, she hands you both $500. One fails, nobody gets paid.

The county dropout rate went from 35% to 6%.

She handed out the checks herself.

In 1989 she offered $500 to every kid in the county who wanted to go to the local college.

When Gatlinburg burned in 2016, she sent 900 families $1,000 a month for six months.

You've probably heard that part.

Here's the part you haven't:

The fund raised more than expected, so she showed up in May and handed every one of those families another $5,000 on top.

Then she quietly put $3 million into the recovery group that handles the years after the news trucks leave.

She built her county an entire hospital.

She played a benefit concert in 2007, Dollywood and the Stampede matched it, and LeConte Medical Center opened in 2010 with a birthing unit and a women's center in it.

In 2022 she started covering 100% of tuition, books, and fees for Dollywood employees.

Full-time, part-time, AND seasonal.

In 1991 she paid for a bald eagle sanctuary because the birds couldn't be released back into the wild, no press release.

And when Hurricane Helene came through here in Western North Carolina, she wrote a personal check for $1 million and her companies matched it.

She didn't owe North Carolina anything, but she helped us anyway.

She started the Imagination Library because her daddy couldn't read or write. Before he passed, he told her it was the most important thing she ever did.

Rest in Peace, Dolly 🇺🇸

[Barbara Kincer @bjkteaches]

Agreed

[Trooper Ben @TrooperBenKs]

One moment, a stranger was thanking me for my service.

Less than a minute later, I was searching for a calm and respectful way to end our conversation…

This is the chair where he sat.

I had a small window to answer emails at Starbucks before heading to the school pickup line. At the other end of the table was an older gentleman, probably around 75, slowly drinking his coffee and looking around like he wanted someone to talk with him.

After noticing “Trooper Ben” on my laptop, he pointed toward it and said, “Thank you for your service.”

I smiled, thanked him, and explained that I was retired now, but I loved my years in uniform.

Then came his next sentence.
“I gotta tell you, I hate all these dirty illegals…”

The words caught me off guard. 😶
Maybe seeing “Trooper Ben” made him believe he already knew where I stood.

As he continued talking, other customers began looking over.👀
I had no interest in creating a scene, but I couldn’t allow my silence to sound like agreement.

After taking a moment, I said:

“Sir, I don’t think I’m the right person to continue this conversation with, because I don’t share those opinions. I hope you have a wonderful day.”

What he couldn’t see was that my viewpoint had been shaped long before I ever wore a badge.

Back in school, my two friends were Jose Pena and Rico Fuentes. Those were my guys.

Both wrestled with me. We practiced together, pushed one another to improve, competed beside each other, and cheered for each other.

Jose lived just down the road. I ate meals with his family, worked alongside his brothers, and picked on his sisters. His dad was building a family farm while also working at an automobile plant in Lansing, Michigan.

Their home was filled with family, loud Hispanic music, and food. I also learned to ask a few questions before taking a large helping from the stove. Menudo taught me that lesson.😄

Some family members and relatives traveled very difficult paths to reach America. Their stories are theirs to tell. My memories are of hard work, sacrifice, laughter, and a family that made me feel welcome.

José and Rico’s friendships gave me a different view of life long before I wore a uniform.

That same kind of connection is part of my family’s life today. My daughter is excited to attend a quinceañera for one of her classmates.

I think our children understand something adults sometimes forget. Communities are built through classmates, neighbors, shared celebrations, and friendships.

Now, disagreement is welcome here on my page
Hatred is not…

Any comment that attacks or dehumanizes people will most likely be hidden. If someone wants to spread that kind of message, they are free to build their own page and use their influence that way. This space will not be used for it.

My purpose is to create calmness and help us see the neighbors already standing beside us.

Looking at this empty chair, I thought about the seat waiting for me at Jose’s table all those years ago.

His family made room for me.
I want to do the same for others.

Love thy neighbor.

#HelpMore

[Barbara Kincer @bjkteaches]

How lovely!

[James Lucas @JamesLucasIT]

This is one of the most romantic paintings in American history, but the artist hid a second story in it, one that only reveals itself once you know who the tired old man in the corner really was...

The painting is Marriage License, made by Norman Rockwell for the cover of the Saturday Evening Post in 1955. It is late on a Saturday afternoon in a small-town clerk's office. A young couple leans over the desk to fill out the paperwork for their marriage license, the man's arm around her, the woman up on tiptoe in a yellow dress to sign her name. The whole room is dim and brown, and a shaft of golden light falls through the window and lands on just the two of them, as if the day itself knows what is happening here.

Rockwell built it out of contrast: the couple glow with the beginning of everything, and, slumped in the corner, the old clerk waits, ready to go home, because for him, couples in love are just the ordinary traffic of an ordinary day.

But here is what almost no one knows: the clerk was a real man, a local shopkeeper named Jason Braman, and Rockwell chose him for a reason. Braman had recently lost his wife. Rockwell knew it, and he asked him to pose, in his own words, "as a way to give him something else to think about."

So the tired old man watching two young people promise themselves to each other is not acting. He is a widower placed by Rockwell right beside the very thing he has just lost.

Once you know that, the whole painting deepens because it is no longer only about young love. It is about the full arc of it, the beginning and the end in one room, the couple who have everything ahead and the man who had it and lost it, sitting a few feet apart in the same afternoon light.

And here's the best part: the young couple were real too, engaged in life, Joan and Francis Mahoney, and Rockwell gave them the oil sketch as a wedding present. They married. And they stayed married for the rest of their lives...

[Barbara Kincer @bjkteaches]

Love the heart of this young man!

[Andrew Daub @TheResoluteLife]

A big scary monster. A fearless little boy. And a powerful lesson…

On display at Costco is this larger-than-life Halloween animatronic butler — a frightful blend of Lurch and Count Dracula — sinister laugh, fangs, glowing eyes, startling movements designed to make grown adults jump.

Everyone else passing by that animatronic decoration saw a big scary monster. The chance to spook young trick-or-treaters or shock neighbors.

But not Iron Will.

Iron Will walked right up to him. Not with fear. With a hug.

I think he just saw someone to love.

I can’t explain it and I’m fascinated by the interaction. Because that’s what it was to him — an interaction. Granted, I’m blissfully fascinated by the wee little man and his audacious spirit anyway, but this was something more.

Maybe it’s because he didn’t stop at the surface — the mask, the roar, the things that are supposed to scare you off. He looked past them. Saw beyond the exterior?

It’s what he does. He senses worth intrinsically. No coaching necessary. And he loves unconditionally.

I know what you’re thinking: “Oh, c’mon, Andrew! It’s just a big puppet.”

Maybe. Maybe to most of us. Maybe not to Iron Will.

And if so or if not, his unprompted action and affection were equally authentic and powerful.

At one point or another, most of us have played that monster’s role — convinced we’re bad, unworthy, broken, unfixable, unlovable, scary. So we put up walls. We act unapproachable, ill-tempered, fierce — we try to frighten people away — because it’s easier than being vulnerable and opening ourselves up. Easier than acknowledging that we’re the ones who are scared. Certain that if people see us they’ll back away for one reason or another.

Oftentimes, it takes another person willing to ignore whatever mask we’ve chosen to wear. Someone undaunted by the walls we put up or the roar we put out. Someone who loves us anyway — perhaps to the surprise of everyone else around.

Iron Will is beautiful proof that someone — any of us if we work at it — can look at what the world calls scary and choose to love instead.

#IronWill #TeamIronWill #DownSyndromeAdvocacy

[RHUGHES,Ph.D. @RHughesPhD76721]

Make no mistake. Labels are not always identification markers signifying truth. Last night in Dearborn, Michigan 28 miles from me, incidentally the same town where I was in my rehab Center recently, a Christian coalition had announced days earlier that they would be coming to City Hall to protest against the Islam residents in the city. They have made it clear they want them gone.
There were many arrests last night following great agitation and unwelcome aggression.
This is not Christian. There is nothing Christian about it. What person would Jesus look at and say you are not welcome?
Once again we are living in an age where time after time we are witnessing not Christianity but rather the agenda that individuals possess of their own self-aggrandized interest.
When Jesus Christ died on the cross for all there was no exception. There were no exclusions. He paid the price for everyone.
The person that you despise or do not favor is welcomed by Christ.
What needs to be removed from Dearborn, Michigan is the hypocrisy.
I find it interesting how people believe that God is in heaven or up in the sky or as Bette Midler sang "watching us from a distance." There is a sense that God won't know or God will understand our choices fitted within particular yet misunderstood Scripture.
The truth is God is not watching us from a distance. There is no distance.
"On Earth as it is in heaven." The spirit lives within us. Do we nurture it, or reject it? Rejecting the spirit is the one true blasphemous sin.

[Dr. Bryan Pearlman #MaslowBeforeBloom @DrP_Principal]

Why I Love Public Schools
My answer is simple.

Because I've seen what happens inside schools that most people never get to see.

The headlines rarely tell the whole story.

Most people don't realize that public schools are one of the few places in our society that welcome every child, regardless of ability, income, language, disability, background, or circumstance.

Every child.

If a student has autism, ADHD, dyslexia, anxiety, depression, a traumatic past, a medical condition, or a physical disability, public schools don't get to choose whether to serve them. They do. Every single day.

If a student is exceptionally gifted and needs greater academic challenges, schools work to provide those opportunities, too.

Through IEPs, 504 Plans, gifted programming, counseling, speech therapy, occupational therapy, school psychology, nursing services, social work, behavioral supports, English learner services, and countless other programs, educators work tirelessly to meet thousands of individual needs.

That is an incredible responsibility.

Here's something else many people don't know:

Our teachers are among the most educated professionals in the workforce. More than half of public school teachers have earned master's degrees or higher, and nearly every school administrator holds graduate degrees with many completing specialist or doctoral programs.

These are highly trained professionals who could have chosen careers with higher salaries and fewer demands.

Instead, they chose children.

Research consistently shows that the single most important school-based factor affecting student achievement is the quality of the teacher standing in front of the classroom.

Think about that for a moment.

One caring, knowledgeable, encouraging teacher can literally change the trajectory of a child's life.

I've seen it happen thousands of times.

I've watched teachers buy winter coats with their own money.

I've watched custodians quietly become mentors.

I've watched bus drivers become the safest adult in a child's day.

I've watched cafeteria workers learn every student's name.

I've watched counselors save lives.

I've watched school nurses comfort frightened children like they were their own.

I've watched paraprofessionals celebrate the smallest victories that most people would never notice.

I've watched principals lose sleep because they couldn't stop thinking about a struggling student or staff member.

None of those moments show up on a standardized test.

Every year, millions of students graduate from public schools and go on to become architects, nurses, electricians, plumbers, engineers, teachers, therapists, entrepreneurs, military service members, first responders, artists, scientists, mechanics, parents, physicians, and community leaders.

They build our homes.

They care for us when we're sick.

They protect our communities.

They invent, create, teach, lead, and serve.

And almost every one of them can point to a public school educator who believed in them before they believed in themselves.

Are public schools perfect?

Of course not.

No organization made up of millions of human beings ever is.

There is always room to improve, innovate, and do better.

But don't let the challenges overshadow the extraordinary work happening every single day in classrooms across this country.

Every morning, before the sun comes up, millions of educators walk into school with one goal:

To make life a little better for someone else's child.

That deserves our respect.

That deserves our gratitude.

And that deserves far more attention than it receives.

To every teacher, school counselor, social worker, psychologist, paraprofessional, nurse, secretary, custodian, cafeteria worker, bus driver, coach, administrator, and support staff member...

Thank you.

Thank you for believing in children.

Thank you for seeing potential where others sometimes see problems.

Thank you for choosing a profession that changes lives, often without recognition.

[Ideal Lady @Ideallady5]

This is NOT the kind of surprise she was expecting. 😂

[Barbara Kincer @bjkteaches]

@Mimiiben1 5 seems to be the answer.

[Barbara Kincer @bjkteaches]

@FixingEducation Retiring!

[HOW THINGS WORK @HowThingsWork_]

This isn’t just a ceramic bowl! - it’s a perfect example of how traditional craftsmanship can make everyday tasks smarter!

[Erica 🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸 @EricaRN4USA]

I can’t see right now to create a post but this goes out to my lady friends who can relate! The struggle is real 😂

[Dr. Dana Figura, DPM @footdocdana]

What do you think? #endometriosis #endometriosisawareness #womenshealth #doctorexplains