“A Message to America’s Teachers from James Meredith”

“The destiny of America is in your hands. We are in a Dark Age of American education, but you will lead the nation to a new dawn, to a New Renaissance of Education for all of our children that can transform America and the world. This new age will be based not on politics or profit, but on evidence, and based on love and respect for teachers and children above all else. As Sam Cooke said 50 years ago, “There been times that I thought I couldn’t last for long, But now I think I’m able to carry on. It’s been a long, a long time coming, But I know a change is going to come. Yes it will.”     James Meredith (Winner of the 2013 Harvard University Graduate School of Education Lifetime Achievement Award)  and co-author William Doyle

The world
 would never 
amount to
 a hill of beans 
if people didn’t 
use their
 imaginations
 to think of 
the impossible.
-Pete Seeger

Thinking about James Meredith, Pete Seeger and all we can learn and take for inspiration from the Civil Rights Movement. Historian Taylor Branch writes that during the Civil Rights movement, the Freedom Fighters saw themselves every day as Founding Fathers. This gave them the vision of positive outcomes and inner sense of creation to help them push beyond everyday limits. He suggests an exercise in establishing a courageous identity. Choose what has been a boundary in the past and take a step across it to stretch yourself beyond your habits.