Truly Inspirational

As I was digging around today, looking through a diigo update email. (love that I am part of a group of fine educators who selflessly post to their diigo accounts to share important readings with me!) I came upon this post from Kevin Jarrett's blog site. "Every educator must watch". Of course I had to do what they were telling me to do and I watched! What a truly inspirational and motivating speech! How amazing for such a young child to capture an audience of 20,000 people. Truly amazing. I then began to read over the comments. Was this student coached and taught to "act" out this speech? Was this a speech written by adults and this student was just the "messenger"? I say yes to both. Was this speech touching and did it make the point? I have to say yes to this question as well. At the heart of it all, it is a small child's voice that we are hearing, telling us something very important. Do not lose sight of what is important to us as educators. We are there for the children. We are there because we chose to do this noble profession. We are truly important to the kids we teach, even if we reach just one of them in our lifetime. We can not lose sight of who we are. We also need to not lose sight of our colleagues and respect them for choosing this noble profession. They may not do things the same as we do, they may not like the way we do things, but we should respect each other and know we are all here for the same reason... to change a child's life.
Every educator should watch. Not through a critical and cynical eye, but just because it is a wonderful reminder and affirmation of what we do each and every day.

If youtube is not working, try this link to their site in Dallas.