True Story
The following article is 100% TRUE according to Snopes.com…and I’m GLAD!
You should go there and read what else it says about this inspirational teacher.
Blessings,
Mike Tummillo
http://www.snopes.com/glurge
Back in September of 2005, on the first day of school, Martha Cothren,
a social studies school teacher at Robinson High School in Little Rock , did
something not to be forgotten.
On the first day of school, with permission of the school superintendent,
the principal and the building supervisor, she took all of the desks
out of the classroom.
The kids came into first period and there were no desks. They obviously
looked around and said, “Ms. Cothren, where’s our desk?” And she said,
“You can’t have a desk until you tell me how you earn them.”
They thought, “Well, maybe it’s our grades.”
“No,” she said.
“Maybe it’s our behavior.”
And she told them, “No, it’s not even your behavior.”
And so they came and went in the first period, still no desks in the
classroom. Second period, same thing, third period too. By early
afternoon television news crews had gathered in Ms. Cothren’s class to find out
about this crazy teacher who had taken all the desks out of the classroom.
The last period of the day, Martha Cothren gathered her class. They
were at this time sitting on the floor around the sides of the room. And she
says, “Throughout the day no one has really understood how you earn the desks
that sit in this classroom ordinarily.” She said, “Now I’m going to tell you.”
Martha Cothren went over to the door of her classroom and opened it,
and as she did 27 U.S. veterans, wearing their uniforms, walked into that
classroom, each one carrying a school desk. And they placed those
school desks in rows, and then they stood along the wall. And by the time they had
finished placing those desks, those kids, for the first time I think perhaps in
their lives, understood how they earned those desks.
Martha said, “You don’t have to earn those desks. These guys did it for
you. They put them out there for you, but it’s up to you to sit here
responsibly to learn, to be good students and good citizens, because they paid a
price for you to have that desk, and don’t ever forget it.”
Friends, I think sometimes we forget that the freedoms that we have are
freedoms not because of celebrities. The freedoms are because of
ordinary people who did extraordinary things, who loved this country more than life
itself, and who not only earned a school desk for a kid at the Robinson High
School in Little Rock, but who earned a seat for you and me to enjoy this great
land we call home, this wonderful nation that we better love enough to
protect and preserve with the kind of conservative, solid values and principles
that made us a great nation.
“We live in the Land of the Free because of the brave.”
Please pray for our Troops, their families and our nation’s leaders! There’s power ONLY in unity.
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