 When I think of the promise, I think of progressive education and the father of that movement, John Dewey. And while Dewey promoted education as a critical component to democracy, it was his unwavering belief that education was the only way for a child to reach their full potential. And that still moves me. Dewey said that education is not preparation for life, education is life itself. And now before I knew who John Dewey was and before I knew that I would become a teacher, it was my father that embodied that quote. My father's family came from Jalisco, Mexico. He, along with 12 brothers and sisters, were migrant workers along the southern border of Arizona. And from the age of three, he picked cotton in the fields. A 100-pound burlap bag would get him $3. And when he was school age, he still had to head to the fields before school and immediately after. And as brothers and sisters, they stopped going to school around the age of eight. And as my father picked cotton, all he wanted to do was be in school. His brothers and sisters would badger him relentlessly, saying that he was going to school to get out of work. But he really did love to learn. He was curious with an insatiable love for learning. Now growing up in the 1940s and 50s in very segregated towns in southern Arizona, that was no feat. The Chicano workers and the families were treated as second-class citizens. My father told me that he remembers signs that says no dogs, no Mexicans. The struggle to stay in school became harder and harder for my dad. He made it to the eighth grade farther than anyone else in his family. And while his formal education stopped early, his love of learning did not. My mother too only received an eighth grade education growing up in Southern California, leaving school to work and to raise her younger brother. And these two people became the biggest champions for public education I would ever know. My father in particular allowed zero excuses for not making school my top priority. His promise to me was to give me the opportunities that he never had, and to squander those opportunities was unthinkable. My father never minced words about how to uptake his promise. Hard work was non-negotiable, service, a necessity, and ganas, the Spanish word for something stronger than desire. And for whatever I wanted, I'd have to work. Now my parents owned a landscaping business, most of my childhood. I worked every day after school. I was running the register by the time I was eight, driving the tractor by the time I was 10, and putting in sprinkler systems by the time I was 12. And on our hardest days outside, planting hundreds of bare root trees, which I hated, or digging trenches for a sprinkler line, my father would playfully nudge me, and he'd be like, Miha, how important is your education? And I, yeah, and I would give him that irritated, preteen look, oh, dad. And he would smile and he'd say, most important. My parents' sacrifice for me was evident throughout my childhood. They knew that my education was my ticket, my chance, my opportunity to live the life I wanted on my own terms. Now there is honor in a life of physical labor, but my father wanted it to be my choice, not a default, because I didn't have an education. So education was gospel in my house growing up. And as I grew older and was encouraged to take more difficult classes in high school, and I started looking into colleges, my father, again, helped me uptake his promise. We had really honest conversations. You'll have to work harder than many of your peers, Miha. You're Chicana, and we're poor. We don't have the money to put you through school. Your mother and I don't know how college works exactly, but we've given you the skills you need to figure it out. And so he'd ask me, how bad do you want it? So it was never a question if I would go to college. Every struggle I had in university, really hard struggles, difficult classes, and working two jobs through my undergrad, an infant on my hip, much earlier than I had planned, my father would continue to ask me, Miha, how bad do you want it? And while I thought I would be a lobbyist, advocating for the underdog, life led me to be a public educator. And my commitment to the promise of public education became as uncompromising as my parents. That notion of hard work, service, and ganas became a mantra in my classroom with my students, in my union work, and with my own children. I find myself echoing my father in my classroom, not allowing any of us to make excuses for our responsibility to our education. I want my students to have the opportunity so many of our family members were denied because they were immigrants, because they're poor, because they were marginalized in some way. I think of my parents and I channel my father in every challenge I face through my undergrad, through my masters, and now as I finish my doctorate. I am going all the way because I can, because I am conscious of the sacrifice my parents made for me and I fully understand what it means to uptake the promise of public education. And now my own daughter just started her sophomore year at college. In one generation, my father, a migrant worker picking cotton for $3 a bag, changed the entire trajectory of my life and that of my children through his commitment to education. I can't be undone and I can't take it from me. The desires and hopes for our children, both in the classroom and within our own families are not exclusive to a particular nationality, race, socioeconomic status, immigrant or not, or native born, we all want better for our children. My father's dreams for his daughter were not hindered by his documentation status, nor the persecution he experienced, nor the challenges he faced. He knew that education was a way to a better life and while he wasn't able to obtain it in any formal arena, my dad's the smartest guy I know. My passion for public ed is directly related to the example he set for me and the doors that were opened because of education. And so brothers and sisters, we are all still Ellis Island. Public education is still the gateway to those opportunities and hopes and dreams and those who have agonized for something more. It takes hard work though and while we are in the trenches with each other, fighting for public ed, organizing, campaigning, advocating, telling our stories, our work doesn't end here. What do we need to do to uptake the promise of public education for all students regardless of zip code, race, gender, class? How resolute is our courage to do this great work? We are so blessed to be here to fulfill the promise of education within the most critical profession there is. So John Dewey's quote, education is not preparation for life, education is life itself. That is our map for the future. We must work and serve and have the ganas to commit to this uptake like our very lives depend on it because it does, not just our lives, but the lives of our children, our kids. And we can do it together. But I ask you, how bad do we want it? For over 50 years, NEA member benefits has focused on making members' lives better, helping them build wealth as they save money, bringing joy as they finance a home, and inspiring peace as they help protect their families. By supporting members at home, NEA member benefits helps them bring their best to the classroom, creating stronger, more focused educators and more successful students for a brighter and even more vibrant future. I stand before you, the proud product of a public school education. Born and raised in New York City, the third of five kids to parents who immigrated from the Philippines in search, like many before them and many after them, of the American dream. They knew about the promise of public education even from afar. They knew the power of public schools, particularly in New York City. And like Sonia before me, if there was ever a mantra spoken at home, it was that school came first. Before dating, for sports, before friends, for any extracurriculars, school always came first. And so, for all intents and purposes, that promise of public education was realized. To some extent, here's me in the first grade. I can get this going. I mentioned I have four siblings, so among the four siblings, we have two lawyers, one PhD, and one medical doctor, all five of us products of New York City public schools. We owe so much, obviously, to our time there and couldn't be where we are and who we are because of that. But earlier I said to some extent, because it wasn't all easy. I grew up at a time when wrote memorization and teaching to the test and staying within your lanes was reinforced not only at school but at home. There were inputs and there were outputs and there wasn't much in between. The school at the time was not reinforcing things that we've grown to know and call global competencies, this ability to demonstrate and practice empathy, to be critical thinkers and problem solvers, to navigate the world through ambiguity, to understand the connections to the greater world around us. And so, without that preparation, as you could probably imagine, the next stage in higher education, I struggled. After the first year, I quickly found myself on academic probation and I almost failed out of school. Luckily, through the support of friends and family and professors and academic advisors and counselors, I made it through. And not surprisingly, it was education that brought me back. I ended up volunteering and eventually teaching for a few years at our local preschool. And for me, it was this opportunity to nurture in these young students those very global competencies that I was only strengthening as an adult. This ability to see the world as much bigger than it was to make connections, to ponder questions like, why is the sky blue? Why do we laugh? Why do we cry? You two are fighting over that same toy. How can we problem solve and figure that out together? And so, as I was volunteering and as I was teaching, the promise of education was becoming promising once again. So, in my next chapter in my journey, it took me to graduate school, where I was earning my master's in education and I was learning about how do you nurture the whole child, the cognitive, the social, the emotional, the artistic, the ethical parts of the child so that they reach their full potential. You all know that we're living in a vastly changing world. And in order to prepare our students to be successful in that world, we need to really evolve how we're teaching. And so, in my work as a COO of a national nonprofit called World Savvy, our team has really invested in how are you developing these global competencies, these skills, these values and attitudes in the very fabric of teaching and learning so that the students are ready to face these new realities. And so, we work all over the country with public school teachers, private school teachers, charter school teachers, you name it, to develop these skills, these attitudes, these beliefs, these dispositions. And the results are phenomenal. I had an opportunity this past May to visit one of our partner middle schools in San Diego and the students had been grappling with some of the world's largest issues by focusing on the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals and we had been empowering their teachers through professional development and coaching to guide their students through a design thinking process to begin to address how these global issues are manifesting locally in their communities and take a stand, make a difference, take some action. And so, I met a group of seventh graders who were studying sustainable communities and they learned that they lived in a food desert. They didn't have consistent, affordable, regular access to healthy produce and food on a regular basis. And so, what they did was they found a food truck that wasn't being used two days a week. They found some farmers who were always looking for more consumers. They married them together and created this business plan where everyone profited and they would park that food truck in their neighborhood two times a week so that their families could benefit from that partnership. I met a group of sixth graders who were also studying sustainable communities and human migration and they were noticing patterns in the changing demographies of their communities and they said, these folks are coming into our communities. We can do better in how we welcome them and how we support them. So they designed the skeleton of an app where in their home language, these folks can access resources around food, shelter, jobs, you name it, so that they would feel more welcome, more productive and more contributing to their community. Now, I don't know about you all, but when I was in middle school, I don't think I was ever this empathetic, this action-oriented and quite frankly, to have this desire to make a world a better place. And so when I think about that promise of public education, in some regards, it's fulfilled. These students will go on to more education to the workforce and the foundation that's being built by the teachers that are caring for them, it gives me so much promise. I feel so much promise for the future. So as you can probably tell, I'm a big fan of public education. I had my own ups and downs, but I made it through. I have the privilege, and my team has the privilege of working with these teachers every day all over the country and get to reap the benefits and see the results of their hard work. But now I'm also a parent of two young boys, one of whom is six years old, he's in the first grade, and he attends our local public school, and yes, there's a farm on that local public school called California. And these global competencies that I've been talking about, they're embedded in the very fabric of that school. It's a project-based learning school with mixed age groups where social and emotional wellness are key to everyone's success. And the way that they're approaching teaching and learning is awe-inspiring. Case in point, one day I come home from work, and before I could even take off my backpack and take off my bike helmet, my son Cole comes up to me, he's five at the time. He says, hey dad, can we go to Ushuaia? I said, what? He said, you know, Ushuaia. And I said, can you tell me some more, Cole, because I don't understand. He said Ushuaia, so he goes and runs and he gets his globe and he spins it around and he finds at the very bottom, dear of the fuego, is Ushuaia. Ushuaia is a city that often uses a jumping point to go to Antarctica. His class had been in the midst of what ended up being a three month long unit on penguins because the kids were just so engaged in the content and the teacher was hitting all of her learning standards and goals that she just kept going with it. And so now he comes home and he wants to go to Antarctica so that he can visit the penguins. But this is what we're talking about, right? This is public education. This is a desire to make connections, to understand, to see, to touch, to feel, to recognize that there's something much larger than you, but you can be part of that, to embrace the world and to traverse the globe with arms wide open. And so now I need to plan a trip to Antarctica. But one of the other competencies that they're developing in this school and what we're trying to do in our work is this desire to make a difference, to make a positive difference. So I don't know if any of you are familiar with The Lorax by Dr. Seuss, but it has an environmental theme. And at the very end of the book, I've read this book millions of times to Cole. It says, unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot, nothing is going to get better. It's not. So one night Cole looks up to me and he says, hey dad, could we go plant some trees? I said, of course, let's go plant some trees. We hooked up with the local nonprofit. We planted some trees and I said to myself, that's what we want education to be. Again, this ability to nurture in our youth and our students, this desire to engage and explore the world with ambiguity, with curiosity, with arms wide open. So when I think about the promise of public education, I couldn't be more excited. Thank you. Pamela Broussard. And today we're going to be talking to you about shoes. This year over 100 million shoes will come into our public schools, representing over 50 million students. Some people say that you can't really know a person until you walked a mile in their shoes. Well, this year, one in 10 students will be English language learners. Some might say those students can't learn, but we think, well, we know they can. The United States Supreme Court decision of Plyer versus Doe said that we are responsible to educate all children regardless of their immigration status, their first language, or how long they've been in the United States. These students have bet their lives, their cultures and their language, their communities on the promise of public education. These are their stories and these are their shoes. Now, I would like for you to do a little something with me. If you don't mind, would you put your feet forward so you could see your shoes? Now, look to the person on the left or the right. They picked those shoes today because they were exactly right for them. Could you imagine wearing those shoes all day today? The rest of the evening for our students who are immigrants, refugees, and asylum seekers, that's what coming to our school feels like, stepping into shoes that maybe just aren't right because some of our public schools have the idea and they make their expectations of these students too small, too binding. Other schools, they're too wide and the students are flopping around. They just don't fit right. We are new rival center teachers and as teachers of students who come to the United States knowing almost no English, we have seen many of our students find success. We've found and have seen many students find the right fit. When I think of students who've walked into my classroom, one of the first ones I think of is this child, Helen. She came from Panama. She would tell you that her life there was perfect. She had friends and family and a rich community all around her. What she didn't know was that 15 years prior, her father had applied to come to the United States. When they got the paperwork, she was devastated. She came to my class and she would tell you she was angry and she was sad. But at the end of the year, when she was surrounded by all of her friends and a gold medal for winning all honor roll, all A honor roll for the entire year, she was happy she was here. I'm reminded of one of my students. Her name was Anh. Her mother immigrated from Vietnam to the United States and left Anh in Vietnam with her grandmother. It would be 10 long years before she saw her mother again. When Anh walked into my classroom, she was very shy and timid. She told me how difficult it was to be in Vietnam when she felt all alone. And then when she got here to the United States, she had to not only learn a new language and a new culture, but she had to learn how to be with her mom. It was very difficult for her. But she persevered, she tried her best. And the first year in US schools, she made honor roll every semester. What I think of students who've walked in my room, I think of Javier. Javier grew up in Mexico. He was abandoned by his father when he was three days old and abandoned by his mom when he was three months old. You might know him, you might have met him while on one of your trips. He was that kid selling the gum in the street in Mexico. He was the kid who washed your windows. And as he grew older, selling gum and washing windows wasn't enough money to survive. So he decided he would come to the United States and try to connect with a father that had abandoned him as a child. When he walked into my classroom, he was bright-eyed and hungry to learn. He made straight As for two years solid in our program and in the classes after us. He passed his state exams the first time he tried. He moved to a new school and they realized really quickly how incredible this kid is who had lived on the streets and been homeless his whole life. With only a two days notice, they grabbed him and said, hey, why don't you represent us in the state history competition? He readily agreed. And when he came home with a fifth place medal for the first time in five years, that school had won an award. I'm reminded of Luis. Luis is from Venezuela. And one day I asked, well, why did you come here? And he said, I didn't wanna die, miss. I was really shocked. This kid was always happy and smiling and ready to help everyone. And so I asked him a few more questions and he told me, he said, well, one day, because of the political division and unrest in his country, he was kidnapped. And as they were placing him in the trunk of the car, he didn't know if he was going to live or if he was gonna die. Luckily, just as that was happening, a police convoy was passing by and they rescued him. He knows it's only by the grace of God that he was saved. His parents and his family, they went into hiding and eventually they immigrated to the United States. He knows every day is his second chance. And so he works hard. He even went to summer school so that he could be a senior this year and work toward graduation in the spring. When I think of remarkable students who walked in my room, I think of Glory Devine from Cameroon. Her family was a family that won a visa lottery, diversity visa. That program now is in danger. They came and what she would tell me, she said, you know, miss, I came from a poor country and there they called us poor. But Glory wasn't poor. She was rich with a hunger and a desire to learn. She looked around my room and the first time I read a book to the whole class, she laughed as a small child because she loved the words and the rhythm of the words. Last year she read over 1,000 books from my classroom library, her first year. And you know those state exams that everyone's always complaining about and the American kids have to take? My kids take them too. And she passed it as a non-English speaker to passing the exam in one year. One of my favorite students was Jamila. Jamila's family is from Sudan. And she can remember having to walk and walk and walk because of the civil unrest there, they just couldn't stay. She was very young, so she doesn't have too many memories but she does remember arriving at the refugee camp where there was no school. By the time she immigrated to the United States, she had missed several years of schooling. So school for her was very difficult. She was frustrated and that frustration showed up in my classroom as anger every day I had to face it. So let's fast forward two years. She walks into my classroom again. Now she's a little bit older, she's an eighth grader. And when she came in, she had a different attitude. I saw a different person. I said, what's going on? You okay? She said, oh yes. She said, last year I just decided to try. And so I said, okay, if she's willing to try so hard, I'm gonna be willing to try hard for her too. Now that took a lot after school tutorials, modifications, accommodations, you all know those words. And it also took some mentoring. And even celebrating her birthday with her very first birthday cake, encouraging her. Now she's a freshman at Sam Houston State University. When I think of students who've walked in my door, probably the story that hits me the deepest and touches me the most is the story of Marcos. Marcos is from Honduras and his family has a coffee plantation there. The problem is that the cartel wants it. They've wanted it for a long time. In the beginning as they began to threaten his family, the family was able to pay off a little bit, a little bit, a little bit in order to keep peace and to keep their property. But in time, as you know, the cartel does not stop. They ask for more and their demands become higher and more difficult to fulfill. When the family could no longer provide the finances that the cartel wanted to keep them happy, they threatened to kill Marcos. Marcos ran to save his life and he made it to the U.S. border. But when he got here, he was handcuffed and put in chains and his hands and his feet. He said, miss, when they walked me through that Miami airport, everyone was so afraid of me. I was just trying to stay alive. He came into my classroom and he also wanted to learn. He was hungry to learn. He was excited to not have that daily pressure anymore. But after a while, he found out very quickly that the cartel was not gonna stop. He would still have to be able to send money back to keep his family alive now. He started working. He came to school every day. He was making straight A's. He stayed and came to tutoring. He worked 50, 60, 70, 80 hours a week as a young teenager. Finally, the pressure just got too much. He just couldn't take it anymore and he quit school. We were devastated because we all loved him. One night at 2 a.m., he heard people screaming. He looked out his window and he realized that underneath his apartment, there was a fire. The building was already pretty consumed with fire and he, just in his boxer shorts, jumped out the window to save himself. When he looked back at the apartment, he realized not only did he lose all of his certificates and things that showed he's done well, he lost the two months of cash that he had saved in order to be able to come back in school. He was devastated. As a community, as a school, we rallied around him. We got him clothes, we got him the school supplies, we got him things for his apartment and a new bed. We got him everything he could need to start again. And Marco said, if I'm gonna come back to school, I gotta make the same grades I made before. I have to make straight A's. We're like, it's okay, you don't have to just come back. Well, that wasn't good enough for him. He came back and he made all straight A's and he graduated and now he has his own construction business. Our students can feel big shoes and just like those immigrants who've come before them, such as Albert Einstein, Madeleine Albright, Steven Chen, Sergey Brann, just to name a few. Our students can be successful. They can walk in greatness too. Good afternoon. Yeah, I'm supposed to be in front of 30 chemistry students right now teaching and they can do a better job than that and there's like 400 of you, so I'll try again. Good afternoon. Oh, that's good, thank you. I am absolutely honored to be here with all these amazing educators that have been speaking and in the audience and I do find a hint of irony in it because I was never meant to be a teacher. At least in my mind, I was never supposed to be a teacher. My first five years of college, I bounced around from degree program to degree program. I was gonna be an engineer and then I was gonna be a biologist and then I was gonna be a wildlife biologist and who knows what else I thought I was gonna be. The trouble was I couldn't really see myself in those positions. I couldn't see what I was gonna do with my life once I got that degree. All of that changed when I enrolled in a chemistry, I'm sorry, in a physics class and from day one, this man got up front and he smiled the entire time he taught. He bounced around the room. He had an absolutely blast teaching and I sat there just completely enamored with his teaching that I forgot to write down anything that he was teaching about. So it turns out I got to take his class again the next year and believe it or not, I'm glad I did because again, I was so enamored with how he was teaching, I began to realize, wait a minute, maybe there's a profession out there for me. Maybe I could do something where I get to have fun every day and so I started taking more education classes or I started taking them in more and more and pretty soon, three years after that, I graduated. Now if you're a math teacher, you know that's eight years to become a public school teacher which is not the norm, but I made it and I sure am glad that I did. Now there were a lot of things that this professor did in his class that really, really stuck in my mind and most of it was his delivery and one of those days, one of the real big things that just still is burned into my memory was the day that he came out with a bed of nails. So mine's got 540 sharpened nails on it and he said, I'm gonna lay on this bed of nails and teach you about physics. Remember I missed the rest of it because I was just enamored with his teaching and I forgot to write things down and he said, my assistant is gonna come out, welcome my assistant, my assistant is far more beautiful than his, this is my wife, Christy Beals and she has got an eight pound sledgehammer so we can talk about my stupidity later because I think you're about to see what's gonna happen and then he laid down on the bed of nails. I wanna put these on and he encouraged his assistant to smash a cinder block over his chest. Okay, there we go, okay, okay, oh. And just to model because that's what we do in teaching, right, we model. All right, mama in one, two, three, hit me. Good gravy, I don't know why she enjoys that so much but she does and thank you, give Vanna a hand. Thank you. But the thing was, it wasn't actually the act of being crushed that stuck into my brain. What did was that when he got up off of the bed of nails and went to put his coat back on he briefly turned around for just a split second and then he went on teaching physics. I'm in the back of the class going, that dude had fake blood on his shirt. At some point, this man had to lay awake at night and say, how do I take that where I'm gonna lay on a bed of nails and get crushed with a cinder block? How do I take that and step that up one more notch to grab the attention of that kid in the back of the class who's been here for two years. He hasn't written a single thing down and grab him by the collar and shake him and go, you can do this man, you can learn. And I found myself continually thinking about how much joy this man had in his job. And I wanted that for myself. So I said, I finally graduated, right? Finally, and I got a teaching job and I was so honored to get a teaching job. I didn't think they would ever hire somebody who had failed so many classes as I had. I retook them all, so my GPA wasn't that bad, but that's because I took them all twice. And I got a job. I said, I'm gonna start to change lives. I'm gonna, we're gonna have so much fun in my class. I'm gonna be that teacher. And these kids are gonna know science like nobody ever knew science. So I stayed up every single night late making these PowerPoints that were the most amazing PowerPoints you've ever seen. I literally had words that would fly in from the side of the screen. And if it was something I really wanted them to know, I would make it spin. And that was, I mean, I was proud of myself. I had photographs, they were open source, so it was totally legal. I was pretty proud of that too. And every day I would be like, all right, get out your notebooks, we're gonna do some PowerPoints. And finally this kid says in the back of the class, he goes, oh my gosh, you gotta be kidding me. I looked at him, I said, what do you mean, oh my gosh? He says, it's so boring. I'm like, what's so boring? He was your class, dude, it's so boring. And I was mad because quite honestly, I was staying up all hours of the night. And this is how I thought I was gonna inspire young people. I was gonna get them to know science and love science. I was wrong. And then it had something probably even more wrong, but I thought it was very creative at the time. I met that young man at the door the next day with a big garbage bag. And I said, if my class is so boring, I've got another activity for you to do. You can go out to the garbage, or out to the parking lot and pick up garbage while the rest of us learn from my magical PowerPoints. And off he went, about halfway through class, he came back with a very full garbage bag. And I was awful puffed up and proud of myself. And I said, so, welcome back. Why don't you grab your seat and join us? And he said, oh no, dude, I was just seeing if you had another garbage bag. Oh, now I'm really mad. And that night, I reflected on it and realized he was right and he was speaking for every student in my class. This was not why I got into teaching. So I don't know why I was teaching it that way. I thought this is how I was supposed to do it, but I was doing it all wrong. And I wasn't even having fun. I started to change things. I started to change my thinking. And instead of staying up late, making PowerPoints, I stayed up late and started making things that we could play with in the class and that we could model science. We could do science. We could, like, science could become a verb in my class instead of this passive thing where they sit there. And then I came up with stories. Like, one of the stories I love to tell is that before I was a teacher, I was a ghost buster, but it turns out ghost busting didn't pay all that much so I got a teaching job. Even my students understand the irony in that one. And I started to destroy things around the house. Like, I took our garbage cans and cut holes in them. And then I raised money to buy things like fog machines so I could teach about vortices and pressure. And we could really start to remember, have fun and find the joy in science. Look at that. Yeah! Ha, ha, ha! See, now you want to come back to high school science class, right? And that's just the tip of the iceberg. Because I don't want the alarm to go off, I'm gonna stop now. I'm actually quite famous for that in my school. But that's a whole other talk. And when I first started teaching and I was PowerPointing away like a crazy person, I refused to go to the local fast food joints in our small town. Because I knew every kid that was working there and I knew that they would spit in my burger. How did I know that? Because if I was a teenager working at a fast food joint and I would have shown up, I would have spit in my burger. But then I knew that I had arrived as a teacher. Some years later, when I pulled up at the McDonald's drive-thru with my whole family in the vehicle and one of my students stuck her head out the window and said, oh, Mr. Beals! And she turned around into McDonald's and yelled, Mr. Beals is here! And three kids, three other kids, stick their head out and they all wanted to talk. They wanted to say hi to my kids. They wanted to see what my family looked like. I realized I'd arrived. I was finally doing something right. The kids enjoyed me and I enjoyed seeing them out in the community. And to me, this is the really, really important thing. There was one other really, really important person in my teaching when I was trying to decide if I was going to become a teacher. I would race home during lunch while I was in college because I only had one station, you know, the rabbit ears and I couldn't afford cable because I was in college. Still can't. And I would race home and turn on the TV and I would watch Bob Ross. You remember Bob Ross, right? He enjoyed his job so much that he called it the joy of painting. So here I am in my formative years and I'm finding out that, wait, maybe I could take some education classes. I could become a teacher. This guy in front of me, he's having a great time and then at lunchtime I'm watching Bob Ross and he's having the time of his life painting things and I said, I want to be Bob. I want to be that guy. And so finally we reached that point. Now I think that the important thing is I've been trying to do that with my hair for years. I think the important thing is this, is that if we as teachers can find the joy in teaching, we can really transform things for our students. And it's the people that enjoy teaching that need to convince everybody else that they can enjoy teaching as well. There's nothing wrong with enjoying this job. It's the hardest job you'll ever do, I get that. Which is why we need to have a little bit of fun sometimes. And if we're gonna spread the joy, maybe we should spread it like toilet paper all across this crowd. This is me spreading joy, people. Wait for it, wait for it, wait for it. That is not joyful. Somebody, somebody loaded my cannons wrong and I'll give you a hint, it was not my assistant. It was me. Let's try this one. Yeah, that's better. Ha ha ha ha, that's the joy. Yeah. Oh, Costco's got good toilet paper. So here's the deal, I think if we can find the joy in teaching, we can do just like those teachers that impacted me so much. They can teach, or we can teach our students to find the joy in learning. And that is our goal as teachers, thank you. All the way from Miami, Florida to Washington, D.C. At the NEA symposium, hi everybody, hey. And you are a community organizer. And you are Afro-Latinx, your trans-masculine non-binary person of color. And most importantly, you have a lot to share with us, really important insights about the promise of public education. So what's brought you here today? So it was an evening after work, fairly early in the evening, you know, sun is just beginning to set. And I was laying on my bed surrounded by concert memorabilia and posters about trans liberation. And as I was leisurely just scrolling through Twitter, I stumbled across a tweet that struck me and it stayed with me. And it said, if you were a gifted kid in elementary school, there's 100% chance that you're gay and depressed now. And initially I laughed because I'm queer and I'm also diagnosed with depression. But I noticed when a close friend retweeted it, I had a really sobering moment of realization. And it was almost everybody who I was with in the biomedical and agriculture magnet program has either experienced or is experiencing some form of depression. And when you look at the number of people who have passed away due to suicide or drug overdoses, there's an alarming truth that no one is looking at. And it's that millennials on forward are in a very intense mental health crisis and no one is talking about it. So as you know, it's very easy to connect depression to a tumultuous home life, but there's another connection that oftentimes people fail to make and the connection to the school system. So what do I mean by that? The school in itself is seen as a safe home away from home that's all about the wellness and success of students. But the unfortunate truth is that schools perpetuate the same systems of oppression that we're fighting against. So we're talking about class-based systemic oppression and race-based systemic oppression, which is oftentimes internalized. Yeah, so oppression, can you say more about what that is, what that looks like? What are you talking about when you say that? Okay, so first let's take a look at the geographical inequity. It's not a secret that low-income schools are completely underfunded and under-resourced. What's interesting is that in the state of Florida, there's a guidance plan mandate, but there's no mandate for an actual school counselor. So what that means is that if you attend a low-income school, you're either at risk of losing your school counselor or you don't have one at all. Whereas wealthier schools have the extra dollars to invest it in their students' wellness while lower-income schools don't and they don't have to invest in their students. And then there's also the piece around identity politics, right? So depending on the intersections of your identity, it exposes you to a certain level of trauma in schools. So for example, black and Latino girls face higher rates of suspension in their white counterparts and they're also met with harsher and way more punitive measures than their white counterparts. And there's also some really disturbing information about trans students and their experiences. So I mean, 47% of trans students have admitted that in a 30-day period, they've skipped school at least once. 50% of trans students have admitted that they've seriously contemplated suicide. And there's a very direct link between harassment in schools and low GPAs. And that's not even to mention all of the trauma and stress that's triggered by overmilitarization in schools. And because of the utopian school myth that we all believe in, students are not getting the support they need or deserve. So some people might say, how would you respond if someone said, okay, that's probably just a few isolated cases. This sounds kind of like a fringe perspective. How big of a problem is this really? So I mean, the statistics can speak for themselves, right? But there's also tremendous value in actually listening to the experience of students. So I was able to find a tweet that really talked about experience and it reads, after seven hours of school, I should be able to come home and chill, but no, I have to sit down and do three hours of homework. When will this stop? Why do we have to act like this is normal and acceptable? The system is so messed up and harmful. School is the leading cause of my depression. So we talk a lot about what it is or what is the impact, right? So what happens when students leave the school system by however they leave it, whether they're pushed out or whatnot, they can be faced with increased mental health issues as they attempt to unlearn all of the toxic behaviors and ideals that was instilled in them from their experience in the school system. And there's also this really intense and tricky stigma about seeking mental health services. So what if you don't normalize it in grade school? When you get to a point where you're like, hey, I may need to see a therapist, it's intimidating and it's foreign. But on the flip side, it's a double-edged sword. The help that you can receive in school isn't always help that has the student's best interest in mind. So because of all these things that pile on top of each other, unfortunately that means that not all of us survive. Suicide is the second leading cause of death for young folks between the ages of 10 to 24, which includes college age youth, which means to put it into perspective, more young adults and youth die from suicide and cancer, heart issues, AIDS, birth defects, stroke, pneumonia of the flu, and lung issues combined and it's absolutely terrifying. Yeah, so this is a really big problem, clearly. Can you tell us a little bit about where you are in all of this? So my experience in the school system is pretty intense. My dad immigrated to the States in the 80s from Columbia for the promise of a good education. My mom, she didn't want to be living in projects for the rest of her life across the street from Edison Senior High School. She wanted to get out of the hood by any means necessary and for her that meant education because that was the only way you could get out. So as you can imagine, a lot of the messaging that I received around education was pretty intense and toxic for my development and then of course all the trauma that I accumulated before and after my mom passed away while I was still in high school. So I had to graduate by any means necessary and I did but was it all truly worth it? I'm honestly not sure. Yeah. So you are a community organizer. Can you tell us a little bit about what all of this means in your community organizing? Yeah, so I started organizing after my mom passed away so about four or five years give or take and I've heard I witnessed a lot of things in those years and one of the most powerful things that I witnessed was when we were holding a series of circles under the Black Girls Matter Miami Coalition and during the closing leadership summit there was a Q and A panel and a foreign principal stood up and was basically asking how can you help Black girls when they have such abhorrent attitudes and don't respect themselves? Very heavy engagement in like respectable politics and the youth responded with authenticity and truth. They pointed out that when Black girls act out it comes from somewhere and it comes from pain and hurt and trauma and instead of chastising them actually listen to them and value them. All she could do was take a seat. The youth organizers felt truly empowered and finally heard the principal gave a deeper understanding of what it meant to be trauma informed and this is what happens when you invest in the leadership of Black and Brown girls, femmes, non-binary and trans youth and this is why I organized. Beautiful. So can you talk about what you want to leave everyone with? Yeah. So we're looking at divesting and investing. So divest from reactionary and shallow responses to youth bad behavior, invest in holistic support that isn't patronizing or trivializing by hiring more school counselors who actually have time to counsel, divest from law enforcement in schools, invest in very intentional restorative justice practices and at the end of the day just listen to the students because they are the masters of their own experiences. And before we close out we just want to show everyone a really quick video. Could we roll the footage please? Duty to fight. It is our duty to fight. It is our duty to win. It is our duty to win. We must love and protect one another. We must love and protect each other. We have nothing to lose but our chains. Thank you. I think I should be here. I don't say this because the other Jake came out with his guitar and serenaded you and all I have is this tie bar. I say this because I don't think I should be standing here breathing. That was the trajectory of my life. Much of my youth was this darkness. You see I grew up in a rust belt forgotten America where I lived in more homes than I attended grades. I maxed out the days you could be suspended three of the four years in high school. Yeah, that's a thing. And I chose drugs and drinking and my friends reflected that. You see they ended up in hospitals, jail and the obituaries but me I escaped this darkness. Why? Because I learned to love and find a home in school. It was because of my teachers. They were my light and they saved my life. The first of these many lights was Mr. Rossino. In second grade it was the year I got that stupid laser line haircut on the side of my head. You know what I'm talking about? It was also his first year in a classroom and the year my parents got divorced. You know, he didn't ask for a kid who brought baggage like me but he stepped up. He was the man I needed in my life every day and he was the first of many who inspired me to enter this noble profession. That divorce took my family and me to a new home the next year and with that new home came a new school and boy I was nervous to go to that school. It got a bit more complicated when my mom and my doctor gave me some bad news. I had to go to that new school with grandma glasses. I know what you're thinking. New kid, new school, grandma glasses, lots of friends, right? Those kids blackballed me. It wasn't until about halfway through the year when I met Miss Lapis. She was a long-term sub of all people and her pearly smile and warm heart flipped my life light-side up and she made me love school again. Later on in elementary, I was diagnosed with a learning disability. Nobody could really figure out what was wrong with me. They just knew I was starting to struggle to read and because of that, I was a pain in my teachers. You know what, it wasn't until I met Mrs. Kennedy who was a special ed teacher and she came up to me and said, honey, don't worry. I think you just have a bit of dyslexia. Watch me teach you through this. And I don't know how she did it, but she took my disability and judoed that stuff into an advantage. Yeah, she taught me how to speed read. In sixth grade, I came to middle school with the worst bowl cut possible. Oh my God, those things were so terrible. The Beatles would have even kicked me out of the band. But I met three of the most luminary ladies who could have done no better to this bowl cut laden brain. They were Mrs. Zubeck who taught science, Mrs. Balliott who taught social studies, and Mrs. McKee who taught math. She was also my aunt too. The three of them had a policy together. Nobody failed sixth grade. Smart Alec. Me, first day of school, raised my hand and said, hey, I've failed a lot, and they cut me off mid-sentence and said, Miller, you're gonna keep on failing, but in the end, you're gonna succeed with us. I don't think I've ever worked harder in my life. All the homework, the projects, the tests, and all the retests. But above it all, they smothered me with love, and therefore they never smothered my light. Mr. Hoffman was twice my math teacher and always the intimidating wrestling coach. He treated math problems like workouts, man. It was all about repetition, repetition, repetition, until your form was perfect. I was never much of an athlete, but boy did he turn me into a math elite, and I'll never forget the big warmth and bare hug that he gave me when I showed him my near-perfect math SAT score. In 11th grade, I ditched the glasses, I ditched the bowl cut, but then I started wearing Janko jeans. Oh God, if you're not laughing, I'll explain them to you real quick. Think of like a middle schooler, high schooler's waist, and then expand that, and it's bigger around your ankles. So when you're walking down a high school hallway, it's like flowing denim. But my 11th grade literature teacher, Mr. Morgan's, looked through that tough skater boy exterior who thought he was the class clown, and he said, you know what? When you come to school, which is often, you do pretty well. You participate, you think you're a funny guy, but you're kind of smart too. You should be going to college. I don't really think about going to college until he said that. And he took me on my first college visit. It should surprise nobody in this room that I attended Mr. Morgan's's alma mater, Bloomsburg University of Pennsylvania, and that's where I learned to become a teacher, just like him. In 12th grade, I met the final flame of so many amazing individuals in my life. That was Mrs. Terana. She taught British literature, and it wasn't so much about Chaucer and Shakespeare, which oddly I loved. Don't ask why. It was she taught us how to talk to one another. She taught us how to learn to love to read on our own. And yeah, she even took this dyslexic boy and his poems and got them published. You see, I don't write poetry anymore, but I do get paid to write, and every time I put my name at the top of the page, I think very fondly of her and all those other amazing lights that came before her. Now I have a question for you. You know what makes them so special? You know what makes you educators so special? It's not how you teach. It's how you ignite the passion in your kids. It's not the content of your curriculum. It's the content of your character. When you return to your schools next week, you're gonna see kids in your class whose stories rhyme with mine. I invite you to make your mark, be their spark, and don't be afraid to light candles in the dark. Thank you. Hello again. I'm gonna need you to get your glow sticks out again, please. Thank you. You probably remember that a good list of superlatives, things like most likely to win a Grammy or run for office, are often the most talked about sections of the yearbook. Let's take a look at another set of photos. Where are these students now? Are you shaking them up? Okay. Which one do you think is true? We're gonna vote. A, raise your glow sticks. Where do you think they are? Or B, okay, now for the reveal. Okay, here's another one. What's your best guess? A, and the real answer is? Good guessers out there, Tay. Okay, here's the final one. What do you think? A, or B? I show the answer, the reveal is? Yes. Who among us is most likely to win that Grammy or travel the world? I can't wait to find out. We're not the commercial. Good afternoon. My name is Anne Pigram. This is Sharon Yates. And this is our story, A Promise Kept, developing 21st century thinkers and learners through culturally responsive teaching. My name is Sharon Yates. I'm a lifelong career educator with 41 years of dedication and service to one locality and one school district. However, my aha moment and story began in 1965 after the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was passed. I was in ninth grade, just beginning my high school journey. It was a time of racial upheaval and uneasiness across the country and Denver D. County was no different. Schools were under attack and were being forced to provide a plan to integrate public education. Denver D. County followed the freedom of choice as its means of complying with federal laws. Of course, only a handful of black students chose to go to Denver D. High, the all white high school and no white students chose to attend Southside, the all black school. But after being encouraged by my algebra teacher, I chose to leave the county's only secondary school for African American students to attend Denver D. High School. I left an educational environment that was familiar, comfortable and where I related to my teachers and fellow classmates to go to where I was unfamiliar, uncomfortable and yes, unwanted. Though there were other black students who chose freedom of choice, there were so few of us that often I was the only African American student in the class. I did not speak up, volunteer and always sat very quietly, trying desperately to be unnoticed unless the teacher singled me out, which was always terrifying. What's the experience all bad? No. For I learned some things from this chapter of my life and one of those lessons was to try and never put my students in that situation to always provide an instructional environment, conducive to learning, one that was comfortable and that my students could relate and a place where they could respect diversity. So I know firsthand the importance of a culturally responsive instructional environment. So you may ask, what is a culturally responsive instructional environment? What is culturally responsive teaching? It is pedagogy that integrates a diverse curriculum and an instructional environment which reflects the student demographics. How does it manifest itself in the classroom for teachers? Here is the self checklist in providing a culturally responsive educational environment. Know the cultural backgrounds of your students. Integrate resources from students' cultures and their lessons. Introduce lessons with what students already know from home, community and school. Find ways to bridge the social language and academic language. Allow opportunities for students to talk about elements of their cultures. Provide assignments that encourage students to share experiences. Ensure that classroom visuals are representative of all cultural groups. Encourage interpersonal interactions and a sense of community within the classroom. Find ways to engage all students in each lesson. Vary the use of culturally connected instructional approaches such as storytelling, affirmation, imagery, call and response and mnemonics. So how does this keep the promise of developing 21st century learners? A culturally responsive instructional environment provides the skills needed to be productive citizens and work and function in a global society. Those skills intentionally provide opportunities for communication, collaboration, critical thinking and creativity. How can stakeholders create a culturally responsive environment? This is where my story begins. It begins in the mid 1980s when I moved from teaching English in a rural school setting to teaching English in Fairfax County, a large suburban school district in Northern Virginia. I was afforded the opportunity to work with students of all ages, ranges, age ranges, abilities and diverse backgrounds which brought with it successes and opportunities for professional growth. However, as my classrooms became more ethnically diverse I now had students who brought with them different types of language challenges. This led to my foray into working with a group of students who proved to be the most rewarding of all of my education, of all my experiences in my teaching career. These students were ESOL students also known as English language learners. Armed with the advice that had been passed down to me by one of my mentor educators don't allow students to stay where they are, bring them up to where you want them to be. I set out to expose these students to literary masterpieces and creative compositions. But I quickly learned that my ESOL students could not comprehend or even relate to my zeal in teaching them the intricacies and beauty of Shakespearean language. For in my attempts to bring them up to where I wanted them to be I was overlooking the cultural experiences and backgrounds that they carried with them on a daily basis. Experiences that they brought into the classroom with them every day that we would meet. This then translated into a way of letting them know that I recognize the importance of the wealth of cultural experiences that made them who they were along with celebrating the diverse backgrounds that were part of our classroom learning experiences. At that point I decided to use a variety of learning strategies at various times throughout the course which allowed students to showcase their cultural and ethnic backgrounds to each other and also to me. One of the most effective of these strategies was a variation of a vision board which I like to call, if I can see it, I can be it. In creating this visual presentation students would be encouraged to not only show pictures and images of their future goals and accomplishments but they were also asked to include something on the board that would give others a snapshot into their cultural or ethnic background. As a classroom teacher these images helped me to learn the importance of the quinceanera to the Spanish culture or the significance of Ramadan in the feast of Eid to my Muslim students or to the importance of the centuries old Asian custom of animal birth signs, much like our zodiac. I came to enjoy hearing stories from my native African students about their naming ceremonies or admiring the beautiful pictures of hijabs and saris that would be illustrated on these vision board presentations. As each student took a turn in sharing this important representation of themself I noticed how each one became more comfortable and supportive of each other. And as the year progressed with these vision board presentations afforded me the opportunity to frequently check in with the students using the board information as a conversation starter. Posting them in the classroom demonstrated the importance that I saw in their representations and eventually it helped me to make some real life connections between their boards and many of the academic topics that we covered in class. I also enjoyed sharing with students any attempts that I made in creating my own visual interpretations of topics that related to cultures that were of interest to me. As you can see from this example I recently had the opportunity to summarize my visit to Montreal, Canada by putting together a representation of images along with words and phrases that are entirely in French. In doing this I created an environment where students view my way of connecting to a culture or language that is not inherently part of my background but then be used to make universal connections which can extend far beyond the classroom. So in conclusion, our story ends with a promise kept developing 21st century thinkers and learners. However, this could be the beginning of your story and keeping the promise. How can the information presented through this brief presentation apply to you as a promise keeper of public education? Reflect on your role as a stakeholder in education and briefly share a statement or a thought with your shoulder partner as you talk about maybe some of the important points that we have brought forward. It's just the importance of recognizing cultural teaching as an important component of 21st century learning. How does this connect to you? Think about it, share about it. Ann and I are gonna come down in the audience and we just like for you all to just talk a little bit about some of the points that we have presented to you this afternoon about cultural responsive teaching. I wanna keep that going. We would like to leave you, this is the official end right now. We would like to leave you with a quote by Johann Goethe, which says, there are only two lasting bequests we can hope to give our children. One of these roots, the other wings. Thank you so much. Thank you. Keeping the promise of public education. Harriet and the NEA Foundation has provided us an excellent snapshot of all that it takes to keep the promise of public education. We even saw someone who was willing to lie down on a bed of nails to keep the promise of public education. We heard the stories and the journeys of so many people from so many different places. And the takeaway is this, that we're all in the same boat together. In fact, there's clear biological evidence that indicates that regardless of race or ethnicity, we're 99.6% the same, 99.6% the same. In fact, there are more genes to explain the variants in our eye color than our racial or ethnic differences. So to the degree that we're 99.6% the same, any variance that we see in educational performance is not caused by the racial or ethnic differences but the social policies and social practices which create those differences. But yet today, we're still able to identify by race and ethnicity, who's more likely to graduate, who's less likely to be gifted and talented, who's more likely to be in special education. Our challenge in what this tells us that the work that we're doing today is not head work, it's hard work. It's about closing the opportunity gaps and that's something that we have to acknowledge. We've so codified the process of learning that in many respects, we've removed the joy of teaching for too many and we also have made it virtually impossible to achieve the core result, learning. So now that we know that it's about closing the opportunity gap, it is about building relationships. There are important standards and assessments but the work that we have before us is about building relationships, building relationships with students, parents, community organizers because in those relationships, we begin to create the type of environment necessary for all students to have an opportunity to learn. It's about building loving relationships. It's not just about standards or assessments but if we know that it's about building loving relationships, we even have to change our language. Not to say that we created the language but I've never had a loved one lean over to me and say, I love the way you assess me. Or you had me at accountability. But even our young people are telling us this. We cannot ignore that the question of the day is, Kiki, do you love me? Or in a more serious note, they're asking, do our lives matter? Do our lives matter? You know, a colleague and friend, Gail Christopher, summed it up this way. Racism is nothing more than institutionalized lovelessness because you wouldn't starve those who you love. You wouldn't leave those that you love without clothes. So at the Shaw Foundation, for us, it became very important that since there have been so many standards and assessment critiquing students, teachers, parents, let's assess whether or not cities are providing the types of loving ecosystems where all students can have a fair and substantive opportunity to learn. You know, and the data's clear. I'm sorry, as many arguments that we've had about what's happening in the school, around the school, the data's Sean Reardon from Stanford University. He looked at 13,000 school districts across the country. And regardless of race or ethnicity, the number one factor in whether or not a student performed high was parental income, the ecosystem that the student exists in. So while we fight pro-labor, anti-labor, at times when we've had discussions around education vouchers, but this seems to indicate we should have had discussions around housing vouchers, affordable housing. As much as we like to believe that we can solve it all, it takes building loving systems. And this is not a kumbaya moment where we just need to spread love across the room. Because love is actually an action word. You know, it's easy to critique and assess. It's much more difficult to love. And even more difficult to love someone that's difficult to love. Someone who the very fact of loving them takes a year off of your life. And if you don't know anybody like that, you might be that person. But it's about building loving systems. And what do we mean? Not accountability, not just assessment, but does this system care? Do you provide the types of support to healthy nurturing environment? Having access to health insurance is an education issue. Accessing healthy food, like kind snack bars, is a healthy, is an education issue. Sure, Daniel, I appreciate that. Stability. Parents making a livable wage is an educational issue. Transportation, affordable housing. So the fight for 15 is an education issue. Commitment supports to is this city, the district committed to ensuring that all students have an opportunity to learn? Or when they go a little south or off track, will we just push them out? Or will we think through alternatives to suspensions like restorative justice? Will we put that actually in place to ensure that we give all students an opportunity to learn? Because if we tell the truth throughout all of our lives, we've been on track and off track. And we can think about a father, brother, sister, pastor, whomever that brought us back on track. Some of us are still off track. We just have more resources to cover it up. But are we committed to young people? And then do we have the capacity and whether or not the state or city is investing the resources necessary for all students to have an opportunity to learn? You know, the only people that I've ever heard say, resources don't matter are those who actually have the resources. Resources matter. And it matters in such a way that we need to give all students the resources that are necessary. You know, my grandmother never knew Sean Reardon at Stanford or his research. But the way she explained it to me is if you ever walk past a river and you see a duck laughing at a fish barking, don't ask what's wrong with the duck or the fish ask what's wrong with the river. We've got to assess our systems. Are we creating the type of healthy living and healthy learning environments so that all students can have an opportunity to learn? At your best, if you're only focused on what's happening in the school and in the classroom, the research is saying that's just not enough at a systems level. You can do it at a school level, but at a system, district or above, we've got to ensure that we're providing healthy living and learning opportunities. And there's no other better platform to do this than our public education system. It's the only mandatory network of systems in our country. And let's be clear. There is a narrative out here today that says our public education system is a failure. That could be no further from the truth. Our public education system yesterday, today and tomorrow has educated over 85% of the students in this country. And in every sector, we can point to examples of success, whether it's legislators, pastors, fathers, mothers, every sector, doctors, entrepreneurs, people who are part of our public education system who are successful. In fact, it was our public education system in Georgia that was able to take a young man who would later change, it worked to change the landscape of our civil rights laws and policies. Dr. Martin Luther King, a public school grad from Booker T. Washington. It was our public education system that created the Lawrence Greta, who started the Farm Workers Association with Cesar Chavez, a graduate of Stockton High School, a public education grad. Matt Damon, Cambridge Ridge and Latin, a public school grad, Magic and Cookie Johnson, public school grads. Michael Ely, a public school grad. Yes, he's so cute. Danny Glover, a public school grad. Cynthia Nixon, public school grad. Donald Trump, not a public school grad. And maybe that explains everything. I'm trying to calm my amygdala. The issue here is that our public school system has been very successful. And yes, we still have work to do to keep the promise of our public education system. But part of that work also involves ensuring that the resources are made available. According to the Alliance for Reclaiming Our Schools, our public school system has been underfunded by over $350 billion when you look at Title I spending throughout all of the states across the country. But yet in spite of that, in spite of that, our public education system is the vehicle for the pursuit of happiness for so many of our students, so many of our young people, it has been successful in spite of being under-resourced. In spite of under-resourcing our public school system in the state of Georgia, a young girl, the daughter of two Methodist ministers who grew up in Gulfport, Mississippi and in Georgia was able to go from there and to become the first African-American female gubernatorial candidate of a major party, Stacey Abrams, public school grad, Avondale High School. Despite the public school system being underfunded in the state of Florida, a young man who is the son of a construction worker and a school bus driver was able to still become the first African-American gubernatorial candidate in the state of Florida, Andrew Gillam, a public school grad, Gainesville High School. So the public school system can do amazing things. And we can fulfill the promise of the public school system. Let's not get so frustrated to believe that we're not making progress because we are. But there's something that we still have to do that a young boy had to teach his father. The only thing that's keeping us from where we are to where we want to go. Father was reading his son a bedtime story, finished the story, kissed his son on the head, said good night, son, began to walk away. Before he walked out, his son said, Daddy, can you bring me a glass of water? Father said, son, I'm sorry, I can't bring you a glass of water. It's bedtime, you had all day to get water. Good night. Father gets up, walks out again. Here's his son. Daddy, can you bring me a glass of water? Father a little more frustrated, said son, I'm sorry, I just explained to you, I can't bring you water. I'm a little perturbed. If I have to come back in here, I'm gonna have to come back in here to spank you, sorry. Father walks out and begins to close the door. And he hears his son. His son said, Daddy, when you come back in here to spank me, can you bring me a glass of water? It's going to take a level of persistence if we are serious about securing the promise of the public education system because we have everything that we need. We just gotta keep loving, keep building the types of loving systems that's necessary to provide all students an opportunity to learn. And it's only in building those loving systems will they have the type of pursuit of happiness that they are guaranteed, that they should be guaranteed. So we're doing a great job. And I know we've been through a number of journeys, a number of battles, but at the same time, I wanna leave you with the words of Robert Frost. The forest is dark, lovely and deep, but we've got promises to keep. So many mouths before we sleep, many mouths before we sleep. Thank you. There's nothing wrong with someone, yeah. Oh, baby, love had happened. Love had happened.