Thursday, January 14, 2010

Hmmm, what to write . . . .

Tuesday began with (you guessed it) another meeting. This meeting featured a guest teacher who shared effective teaching strategies and practices. We all know that teachers who are engaged and excited about their work are somehow magically able to motivate and engage most students. It was a very good meeting, and I walked away with some good stuff.

The meeting wrap-up was the best part for me. The guest teacher shared a two-minute snap shot rendition of Dr. Martin Luther King's I Have a Dream speech. He was so believable! He said he had practiced for hours with a DVD of Dr. King's speech to perfect his performance and decided to start sharing it with his students a few years back. It's kind of his personal way of sharing his deep-seeded feelings to and connections with Dr. King as the Monday holiday approaches. He told us how as a young college student at USU, Corretta Scott King made a visit to Logan for a speaking engagement and that he was assigned by the university to drive to the SLC airport to pick her up and take her to Logan. Obviously, that is something he will never, never forget. Mrs. King's advice to him as they parted was "be the best teacher possible." He told all in the meeting how those words have resonated throughout his career.

I love that speech! I was in elementary school when the speech was given at Lincoln Memorial. I distinctly remember something about it, but it wasn't until I was in junior high that I saw a film of Dr. King's speech at a church youth fireside. One of the members of our ward's bishopric was the school district's library/media director (Don Hess). When new movies came to the school district, he tried them out on the youth in our ward. I remember the I Have a Dream film/documentary like it was yesterday.

My favorite line in the speech -- "I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character."

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