 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 then just 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 A's 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've 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 locked 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 the 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 Brin, just to name a few. Our students can be successful. They can walk in greatness too. Thank you.