Not Just a Day Off

A week from Monday TPA, like all other schools in the United States, will be closed. All of us students, teachers and administrators will have the opportunity to enjoy a three-day weekend.
But why?

Since 1986, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s birthday has been observed as a national holiday on the third Monday in January (signed into law in 1983). A Baptist minister and a revered leader of the civil rights movement, Dr. King was assasinated on April 4, 1968. He was thirty-nine years old.

Most of us have a tendency to think little about why we have a day off on that the third Monday in January every year - we're just grateful to have one. But our gratitude should really be paid to the man who had a dream, and whose dream was kept alive even after his death.

This morning the students in Room 503 had the opportunity to watch and hear Dr. King's "I Have a Dream" speech along with one of the Eighth Grade sections. This weekend they are reading the speech.

Hopefully this month, when we have the third Monday off from school, one or two, or maybe twenty Sixth Grade students will take a moment to appreciate where we have come from as a country and how we still have quite a ways to go. And maybe they'll take a moment to think about Martin Luther King, Jr., and his dream, and how each of us is responsible for keeping that dream alive.

I have a hope...

Cheers,
Ms. Pitman