You’re My Inspiration: MLK Jr. (Katie)

Today marks exactly one week into the new school year.

I spent most of the week talking expectations. My standard spiel starts with “”turn your papers into the inbox” and ends by stressing that calling people bleepety-bleepy-bleeps makes you eligible to win a free, all-expense paid trip to ISS.

The students spend the whole first week telling me what they did over the summer. A few got jobs. Some watched their little siblings. A few got arrested and served jail time. A couple got kicked out of a parent’s house. A few more were put back on probation; one of them got shifted to an adult p.o. One just got jumped by a former student of mine. Several got chinks shaved into their eyebrows (because that is their new gang sign). One got teardrops tattooed next to the eye (for family members that died). Four in one class are now pregnant. (This is not new. Several already have more children and older children than me!)

In spite of some of the challenges involved, they are by and large BEAUTIFUL human beings who hop up to clean the board when you ask for a volunteer.

Really.

Education is not always the first thing on their minds though. To be honest, there are days when it’s not the first thing on mine either.

And that is why it’s nice to have some inspiration.

Last week, I introduced my blog readers to the Inspiration Wall. It’s a board in my classroom where we collect inspiring stories, quotes, examples, pics etc. The students contribute to it, but they could sure as heck use more inspiration from people like you too.

So if you’ve got some, feel free to send it along to me at sarahraymondcunningham (at) gmail (dot) com.

Today’s Inspiration was emailed to my kids by Katie Standlund. Thank you, Katie.