I woke up 30 minutes before my alarm clock--at 4:30--and couldn't fall back asleep. I've never been so excited for a political event. I felt proud at what I did, in coloring the little circle on my ballot and helping make today happen, but even more so, I felt really proud of our country today.
Normally at school I try to downplay special events, like Halloween, or report card day. It's not fun try to teach 23 eight- and nine-year-olds when they're all riled up. But today I did my best to get them all pumped up. I wanted them to realize what an amazing thing today was. I wanted to be able to recognize the importance of today, and be able to tell their children how they got to watch it all happen.
We watched Obama get sworn in and listened to his address. I tried my best to sum up his big points in 3rd grade language as he spoke.
A lot of them got it. Many are already sensitive to inequality, and racism, and prejudice. We've read a lot about civil rights this year. And many, perhaps because we live in a hugely blue state, have a weird obsession with Obama and think he's just about the coolest guy. The fact that he has kids around their age is just the icing on the cake. Most of my students wrote letters to Obama last week, and had a solid understanding of what would happen today. I was really impressed when we talked about the inauguration afterward, especially when one of my students described how Obama spoke about all of us being "keepers of the nation."
And now I'm watching them walk down Pennsylvania Avenue, with thousands and thousands and thousands of people screaming more that probably any celebrity. It's a far cry from when I saw him way back when at a rally last winter. That night, it had been taking too long to get everyone through security and into the convention center where he would speak, so they eventually decided to let us all just run in.
This is so cool.
I've enjoyed watching Bush's time tick down on this website. It was fun to see just mere hours left this morning when I was getting ready for work.
We kicked off the excitement first thing this morning with my morning greeting.
2 comments:
It was a good day :)
i spent the speech with Jack, who came and sat on my lap after I started crying. And afterwards he asked my why Obama changed his name from "Barack" to "President."
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