Thank you, President Obama

Today is a great day for our nation's students, yet political divisions are distracting. President Obama is addressing American students at 11:00am today to tell them directly how important their education is, not only for their own futures but also for the future of our country. Only two Presidents (Reagan and Bush 1) have ever addressed students directly in this way. From what I've read, Bush's student speech proposal was also met with significant opposition from parents whose views differed from his own politically.

My last year in the classroom (before beginning graduate school) was 2007, when Obama and Clinton were beginning their runs for presidency. My class that year was made of 100% minority children, about 85 to 90% of whose families relied on government assistance for food and other necessities. Almost every child was from a broken home, and at least 3 of my 26 students that year had fathers who were currently in prison. In the past two years, one of the fathers of one of those students murdered the child's mother, and one of my female students is now pregnant. So many of the students were victims of abuse and had unbelievably low self-worth.

I realize that these facts may seem extreme for people who haven't worked in the education system or with government or nonprofit services that benefit those at need in our country. But my classroom was not an anomaly. Every other classroom at my school had similar issues and continues to. Austin is not an aberration either. These challenges are plaguing our country's children, and it is definitely impacting our overall level of education and our country's workforce. Our dropout rate remains around 30% (thirty percent!), and our children continue to lag behind children in other developed nations, especially in math and science. Teenage pregnancy is a problem now more than ever, and the percentages of young minority males in our correctional system greatly outweighs the similar percentage for white males. These are deep, complex problems in our society.

I applaud President Obama for speaking directly to students today. He has spoken to teachers, to parents, and now he is working on motivating the students. He's asking them to take responsibility for their education, their future. And I think it's unfortunate that many children will miss out on his speech today because their parent(s) disagree with the President's stance on health care, the economy, or the Middle East. I would have felt the same way if I was a teacher during Bush 1's speech. Our young people are capable of listening and having discussions within their classes following the speech, just as we adults watch televised debates and later discuss. In fact, I hosted classroom debates in 2007 with my fifth graders regarding presidential candidate agendas. These children were not only extremely motivated and excited about the presidential candidates, but also eager to discuss what they liked and disliked about their platforms. And the icing on the cake was to hear one student explain to the others in an "I Told You So" moment that yes, Black people and women were in fact allowed to be president in our country.

President Obama is a role model to millions of children. He was a role model well before he became president. And he is doing the right thing by drawing on his own experiences as a child to create a commonality with many of our kids today and give them hope for their own futures. If little Barack Hussein Obama can do it, so can they. And believe me, they are listening.

Read Obama's speech to students here (pdf file).